Ewe Want To Be Alone? Meet Independent Aretha

7:47pm UK, Monday July 27, 2009

Gerard Tubb, North of England correspondent

A lonesome ewe has turned itself into Britain's newest tourist attraction by balancing on a cliff ledge and refusing to return to safety.

No-one knows how the Swaledale sheep made its way more than half way down the 220 foot high cliffs between Whitby and Robin Hoods Bay, but it is clearly in no hurry to leave.

The animal has been nicknamed Aretha - after Aretha Franklin who sang the soul classic Rescue Me.

Pleasure-boat captain Bryan Clarkson spotted the intrepid ewe a few weeks ago from a remote bay and has been keeping tabs on it ever since.

When Sky News chartered his boat, the Specksioneer, to see North Yorkshire's answer to the film Touching the Void, he explained the sheep appeared to be happy on its rocky ledge.

"She seems to like it there, she's very mobile," he said. "Sometimes she wanders off to a patch of grass and then comes back to the ledge."

Thirty minutes after leaving Whitby harbour, we found the sheep on its favourite perch on a barren expanse of rock some eighty feet above the shore.

Oblivious to our presence, the sheep lay on its side, oblivious to the waves crashing on the rocks below and apparently enjoying the view.

In Whitby, fishermen are already planning special boat trips to take tourists to see their new attraction.

The RSPCA says it will mount a rescue operation if one is needed, but locals claim there is no need for such drastic action.

"I'm sure she could get up to the top if she wanted to," said Captain Clarkson, who rather optimistically tried to get the sheep to move by turning his boat round in circles

The sheep refused to react, although at one point it lifted its nose as if to sniff the sea air, before settling back down.

Bryan's verdict on Britain's most independent sheep: "I think she likes where she is."

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