LOCAL PEOPLE
Helen Markou Raising alpacas on Dartmoor It must take an extraordinary amount of courage to give up a high-powered and well-paid job to pursue a dream even more so, when you have no real experience of the realities of that dream and are going it alone. But that’s what Helen Markou has done. She moved to Lydford in April 2019, leaving behind the home counties to take on a six-acre smallholding where she is now raising alpacas, with the idea of organising special walking trails on Dartmoor with these charming animals.
everywhere, Helen learned all she could about this South American species and did several courses in animal husbandry.
Helen, an out-and-out animal lover, said: ‘I fell in love with alpacas in 2008 when I was in Tasmania with my mum. We were told we could feed them and these two gangly creatures came careering down this steep hill towards us - they were so beautiful, they had such different personalities and characters - I got hooked!’
‘I’d finally got to the point where I was fairly senior in my career - but all I did was work, I really needed some kind of life. I found this place and it seemed perfect for what I wanted to do,’ said Helen, who first dipped her toe into the world of farming when she agreed to look after 18 Jacob sheep for a few months, not long after arriving in Lydford. The experience proved useful in advance of getting her alpacas - although she ended up so fond of her woolly charges, she kept five of them as pets!
The small seed of creating a business running alpaca walks was planted and somehow, while working up to 100 hours a week for a software company and flying here, there and
‘I never thought sheep could be so clever,’ said Helen. ‘They have quite distinctive personalities - apparently they can remember a human face for up to two years!’
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