Report: 1164
DATE: 23/6/2025
Location: A field just off of Church Road in Cheltenham Gloucestershire, part of the Cotswold Way
3 people, 2 dogs
Report: “The cows were all the way on the far side of the field away from the gate that we were walking towards. We entered the field and started walking towards the next gate which would take us into the next field (without cows) to continue along the Cotswold Way. The cows started staring at us and flicking their tails, we kept calm, our dogs were kept on leads the whole time, they were not provoking or paying attention to the cows. The cows started to walk over slowly, we became a bit wary of this.
We almost got to the next gate and one cow started charging at me. Our group unfortunately split because we panicked and ran a bit away from it. We were now far from exit routes within the field and started to calmly walk back to the nearest one, the dogs still were not provoking it or doing anything to rile the cows. Then out of nowhere they charged at us, and there were around 20 cows in this field; they all started charging, the three of us got split, one of us ran towards the original exit and the other two of us ran other ways. All of these cows were suddenly charging towards one person, and luckily her and her dog got out of the gate, if she had been 3 seconds slower they would have trampled her and as there were so many of them I think the outcome would have been bad.
I luckily scrambled under a barbed wire fence into the second field as there was no way I could have walked safely out from that field. The third person managed to scramble over a fence because they didn’t have a dog. The cows stayed waiting at the fence staring at us.”
Cattle Safety 