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The column went along to Holy Trinity church in Coverham for the annual lambing service

THE last service at Holy Trinity church in Coverham had been at Christmas, by necessity carols by candlelight since there's no mains electricity.

That was the bleak mid-winter; last Sunday was mid-April (ditto).

It's Coverdale's annual lambing service, the sort of morning on which an extra fleece or two would indeed be welcome, so grey and so cold that breath hangs in the air like steam from the stable yard kettle.

About 60 people and four lambs are present. Though the days are happily gone when journalists stood at the church door taking the names of all in attendance, the lambs are called Mary, Michael, Lucy and Georgia.

Brendan Giblin, vicar of Middleham, and Richard Harris, Wensleydale's Methodist minister, are there, too.

The church hasn't heating, either. "I think this is what they call global warming," says Brendan, countryman's cap in cassock pocket.

It's the engaging Gary Verity, however, into whom we almost literally bump first. The sort of man with whom a journalist should be allowed to spend two hours in front of a public house fire, Gary proves something of a good shepherd, too.

He's driving a quad bike, the trailer holding four lambs (aforesaid) and his five-year-old daughter Lily, a country child glowing with rude good health.

Since the church is still 100 yards down the track, and the quad bike's a bit big for the lych gates, we help him remove them.

Though born in Leeds, Gary has for the last 18 years lived on a sheep farm at the top end of Coverdale, in North Yorkshire, more than 1,000 feet above sea level and rising yet further. "I think I must have watched too many James Herriot films," he supposes.

It's not his day job. He's employed, he says, to turn around failing companies.

A subsequent internet search reveals the man from up the dale to be a very high flyer indeed.

"A man who loves leaping high buildings in a single bound," says an admiring former colleague.

After starting in 1983 as a Barclays Bank management trainee, he has spent much of his career in the financial sector. In three years he turned the Hong Kong office of Royal Life into the most successful of its 100 overseas bases; his CV also included spells as chief operating officers of Johnsons - the world's biggest dry cleaning company - and as managing director of a division of Bradford and Bingley.

Presently he's with the Prontaprint and Kall Kwik group - "one of the top 100 men in print," says another website.

So what's he doing at the tough end of one of North Yorkshire's remotest dales? "Not making money, that's for sure," says Gary, 44.

In 2002 at Holy Trinity he married his wife Helen, who for 14 years had been secretary of Wensleydale Show. They met when he was an exhibitor. The following year, Helen was diagnosed with myeloma, an incurable cancer, and in January 2004 given 18 months to live.

In 2006 Gary - though built, he says, more like a hammer thrower than a long distance runner - raised over £100,000 for the Yorkshire Cancer fund by completing the New York marathon.

Forsaking any thought of a quad bicycle made for two, Helen has come down dale by more conventional transport.

Her treatment continues.

"I can't just sit around feeling sorry for myself," she says. "I've a five-yearold daughter and rather a lot of sheep to keep an eye on."

COVERHAM'S about four miles west of Middleham, the splendid 13th Century church just about all that remains of the village. Coverham Abbey is long gone, too.

It closed in the 1970s, now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust which has getting on 350 redundant churches beneath its embracing roof, pledged to keep them intact "for the benefit of present and future generations".

"I don't think there'd be above six coming on Sunday mornings at the end," says Maggie Suttill. "I can't remember any protests about it closing, but no doubt there would have been."

Her friend Gladys was married there in 1945 - "I was a Binks and became a Banks." It's lovely to come back occasionally, she says.

The lambs are in a little pen at the front, bottle-fed pets because they're all triplets and ewes - you learn something every day - only have two teats.

They're as good as gold, all four, save for the moment we reach the relevant bit of the tenth chapter of St John's gospel. "I am the good shepherd.."

"Baaa," says a lamb, which - translated - probably means that it's feeding time.

Brendan Giblin talks of crops of lambs, which doubtless is collectively correct, and of how the cold weather affects both mother and offspring.

Richard Harris, at his first lambing service, gives a good shepherd address.

Lustily, as if to generate both heat and light, we sing hymns like The King of Love My Shepherd Is, For the Beauty of the Earth and All Things Bright and Beautiful.

The cold wind in the winter The pleasant summer sun Chance would be a fine thing.

Brendan offers a blessing upon the lambs and upon all who work with them, the bairns are given bottles with which at last to feed them.

Gary Verity, who's had many a long night in maternity - "this time last year we were strolling around in T-shirts" - says that the appeal of sheep farming is probably that it represents reality. Cold reality, you might say. "Up here," he says, "it's all about life and death."

9:16am Saturday 26th April 2008

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