Alison O'Neill: 'I'm a Yorkshire shepherdess - and this is why I will always drive a Land Rover'

“I couldn’t reach the pedals when I first started driving,” she said. “It was an old model but it would get across fields and streams with no trouble.

“I still drive an old Land Rover now. It’s traditional green with a white roof.

"Someone once told me years ago that it had a white roof so you could see it in the countryside because the green of the body blended in with the background.

“I only ever go 40 miles or so from the farm but even if I had to go further I would just take longer to get there.

"Would I get a new Defender? I don’t think I could afford one! They’re OK but it’s not for me, really.”

Alison - famous for her social media activity - runs a farm near Sedbergh in the Yorkshire Dales which overlooks the majestic Howgill Fells in historic Westmorland.

She says: “I am blessed with a rare freedom, a life lived in nature amongst such natural beauty. I work quietly in the old way, woven to my landscape, betrothed to the life of a shepherdess.

"I don’t like sheep, I love them and I always have. I care for my flock and in turn they provide for me.”

Her father and grandfather were both farmers, “shepherding is in our blood,” she says.

She enjoys the anonymity of the Land Rover but says she is still recognised.

She is known as Vera to some after the Brenda Blethyn character.

“The first one I drove didn’t have any heating and I seem to remember it had moss growing inside it,” she said.

In May 1999 she took on the tenancy of Shacklabank farm.

“I have farmed this 37 acre plot for over 20 years. My daughter Scarlett was born here on the hill.

"I have weathered the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic and came out the other side of divorce. Through sheer Dales-woman grit and determination, I was destined to remain here at the farm on the hill.”