Extra date added for fans to see the Yorkshire Shepherdess in Scarborough

After her evening performance at the venue sold out over Christmas, Amanda will now appear at the Spa for a 2pm matinee on Sunday March 29.

The Swaledale hill farmer and mother-of-nine is heading to Scarborough after a successful nationwide theatre tour last summer.

Amanda Owen on the harsh reality of life in Upper SwaledaleThe public appearances were timed to coincide with the release of her book Adventures of a Yorkshire Shepherdess, which was published in June.

However, during the tour her only Yorkshire date was at the King's Hall in Ilkley.

During the events, Amanda will talk about her journey from urban Huddersfield teenager to shepherdess and TV star. The anecdotes include tales of her life on her upland sheep farm at Ravenseat in the Yorkshire Dales. There will also be readings from her books, photo slideshows and a Q&A session.

Amanda and her family starred in Channel 5's Our Yorkshire Farm in 2018 and a second series aired in November 2019. She has a large social media following and has written three books.

The 6'2'' farmer hasn't been to the hairdresser's for more than 30 years - although she has been asked to model in country fashion shoots.

She and husband Clive have bought a farmhouse in Swaledale to move into when their tenancy at Ravenseat ends. The property is currently let as a holiday home, and they also run a B&B in a traditional shepherd's hut.

This is how the Owen family spend Christmas at RavenseatTickets for the matinee will go on sale on Friday January 10 at 10am from www.scarboroughspa.co.uk and the Spa box office (01723) 821888.

Amanda Owen - the incredible life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

The hardy herdswoman has lived on the Swaledale hill farm - where she tends over 1,000 sheep - since her early 20s, when she met and married tenant farmer husband Clive.

Since then, the couple have had nine children, including one who was born in the living room while Amanda was alone and Clive asleep upstairs. Several more births have happened in cars and ambulances at the side of the road during the two-hour trip to hospital.

Amanda is not actually from a rural background - her mother was a model and she grew up in Huddersfield, but she fell in love with country life after reading the James Herriot books. She offered her services as a labourer and shepherd at farms in the Dales before finding work and meeting Clive.

During heavy snowfalls, the family are often stranded on their remote property - when the Beast from the East struck in the winter of 2018, they struggled to even open their front door, and faced huge logistical challenges in getting feed to their livestock.

Amanda admits she hasn't visited a hair salon since the age of 12 and laughed when she was asked to appear in a Burberry fashion shoot - although she does wear make-up while tending to her flock.

The TV show focused on her experiences parenting her free-range children, who face a journey of several hours just to get to school. Although the older ones have mobile phones, the farmhouse has no mobile signal or broadband coverage, so they are unable to spend time on social media at home. Their interests include fixing tractors, helping out with the animals and going off for picnics by themselves in the Swaledale countryside. Her eldest son once received a deactivated World War One bomb as a Christmas present.

Despite sharing his name with a Hollywood actor, her husband Clive Owen has a much lower profile and often stays out of the limelight. He's a father of 11, as he was already divorced with two children when he met Amanda in 1996, when she was 21.

Then working as a contract shepherd, she was sent to collect a ram from Clive's tenanted sheep farm, Ravenseat near Keld in Swaledale, and love blossomed. Amanda described the cottage as rundown with damp carpets and smoke-stained wallpaper, and she compared it to a TV programme called The Dale That Died. But she realised its potential to become a warm family home and was desperate to bring life back to it.

Amanda admits she was more concerned with looking for a sheepdog than a boyfriend when she met Clive, who is also from a non-farming background and has never been to London. He had been living on the farm, which dates back to the Viking period, since 1989, moving from a farm in Stainmore which he ran alone. He chose Ravenseat because of its position in the heart of Swaledale and associations with the breed of the same name.

In an interview with The Telegraph, she spoke of how Clive was so concerned with his flock that he survived on pies and cornflakes, and used one of his living rooms to keep feed bins in.

She says they didn't plan such a large family, but that each addition to their brood fits in well with their free-range life on the farm.