Alpaca your bags, it's time for a trek ... through Norfolk

I've fancied an alpaca trek for years. The one I managed to find outside Wells-Next-the-Sea takes in a lovely stretch of the A149In his poem The Naming of Cats, TS Eliot wrote that a cat must have three names. He defined these as "an everyday name, a name that was more "peculiar ? particular ? dignified", and the name the cat thinks up for himself, his "deep and inscrutable singular name". As an owner of felines, I can definitely see what he's getting at, but I wonder if he underestimated slightly by forgetting another name: the one given to your cat by a stranger who hasn't been formally introduced to it.I'd also extend this rule to include not just cats but the wider animal kingdom. Without setting off with any real intention to do so, on my travels in the Norfolk and Suffolk countryside I find myself naming all sorts of animals whose owners I've never met; it's as irresistible a pursuit as saying "Hello!" to a particularly proud-looking dog in a fake upper-class voice, and something my empirical research tells me happens more often than we might think. Unbeknownst to me, my neighbours have probably concocted at least a dozen names for my cats, each of which they have put their own kind of faith in. I empathise, because I'd probably be crushed if I found out that the fluffy black poodle-chihuahua cross I often see getting walked in my local park was actually called, for example, Bennie, and not The Janetdog: the name I gave it due to its resemblance to my late cat Janet. I know it would also hit my friend Jecca hard were she to find out that the nervous moggy on her street she has named Crybaby Hedgecat turned out to be called, say, F Cat Fitzgerald or Boss Man Willy.Had I met the alpaca I took out for a walk last week on the street without a proper introduction, I'm pretty sure I would have wanted to call it Peggy, or perhaps Jean. I could actually have met it on the street, since for a short spell the alpaca treks that its owner, Ian, hosts take in a stretch of the A149 just outside Wells-Next-the-Sea in Norfolk. The alpaca's real, "everyday" name is Machu, and he is a boy, though a bit of a drama queen, known to get in a bit of a flap around dogs and swift-limbed humans, and ? atypically for an alpaca ? a bit unsure of himself on slopes. "He once fell down a steep grassy bank," said Ian. "And early on, when I started walking him, he would often lie down halfway through the trek and refuse to move."Despite this, Machu is the organically nominated "leader" of the half-dozen Peruvian and Chilean alpacas Ian owns ? which is not to say Machu's companions are even more highly-strung, but is a measure of the intriguingly backward way alpacas sort out their power struggles. Were human hierarchies to work in a similar way, the comedian Alan Carr would probably be best known for hiring and firing hopefuls on The Apprentice.I'd been fancying alpaca or llama trekking for a few years, and not just because I felt it was the closest I might ever get to recreating Han Solo's early scenes in The Empire Strikes Back. After an unsuccessful call to a local llama sanctuary, whose denizens were sadly suffering from the viral ruminant disease bluetongue ? an affliction I've recently mistakenly referred to as both "bluetooth" and "camel toe" ? my search led me to Ian, who booked me, my friend Mary and her boyfriend Will (who Mary has called "an alpaca in human form") in for a two-hour trek. It turned out to be something very close to what Will referred to repeatedly as "The best day ever!" but then I'd known it could hardly be anything else right from the moment when Ian answered my opening question, "Is now a good time to talk?" with the statement, "Well, I have hold of six alpacas and a cheese sandwich, but, yes, it's fine."Alpacas come from South America and are part of the same camelid family that includes camels, llamas ? the creature, with the possible exception of Will, they most closely resemble ? and guanacos. Their difference to llamas is that they're smaller, more sheep-like, and bred primarily for their wool. They're quite common in Britain now, yet when I announced my intention to interact with them a couple of friends asked, "What's an alpaca?" ? to both of whom I patiently explained that it was a character from In the Night Garden that escaped and now lives wild, surviving on its wits alone. My mum was surprised when I told her that "alpaca trekking" meant "alpaca walking" and not "alpaca riding" but even a seven-year-old child passenger would probably prove too weighty for Machu and his companions Pichu, Pedro, Costello, Pablo and Pepe, all of whom are much daintier once you get close up to them and realise just how much of their bulk is made up of fur."These are runt alpacas ? the ones that none of the breeders want," explained Ian, a sleepily cheerful Norfolk man in late middle-age with a sun-blasted face that spoke of the happiest kind of north Norfolk life. Ian has now been conducting his tours for three years. Being of no use to breeders, his alpacas cost him only a few hundred pounds each to buy and are "very cheap to run", surviving mainly on grass and chopped apples. One thing they don't like ? as he explained just after I'd looked directly into Machu's eyes ? is being looked directly in the eyes. They fart a considerable amount, and in this sense I drew the long straw by leading our party with Machu, leaving it to Mary to bear the brunt of his pungent refried hay smells.As a treat, towards the end of the trek, the alpacas are led to a sandy bit of track near the road, where they can enjoy a dust bath before being fed the chopped apples we have been instructed to bring them. I could tell Machu was looking forward to at least one of these events, because from the halfway stage of our walk he began making a nervous quivering sound in the back of his throat. As someone whose favourite Muppet is Beaker, I didn't mind being with a creature of such comically jumpy disposition, but I did look across enviously from time to time at Mary and Will's alpacas ? particularly Will's, Pedro, whose impressive fringe I would later find myself trying to mimic in the rear-view mirror of my car during an introspective moment at some traffic lights.Perhaps in retaliation for my earlier staring Machu, having wolfed down the apples, chose to shower some of them back over my face. I'm told such an enthusiastic flob is a "gesture of affection" in alpaca-world, and it was not entirely unpleasant, even though I was still finding bits of congealed Granny-Smith-flavoured saliva in my beard and hair an hour later. The following day, I related all this to one of my neighbours and we got onto the subject of a notoriously belligerent llama we'd both taken note of, without being formally introduced to, who lives in a field about four miles south of our Norfolk town. "Yep, Big John's a character all right," she said. "Big John?" I thought. "What kind of nonsense it that? She quite clearly means Crazy Richard." But it was hot ? the kind of weather a person can easily get mixed up in ? so I nodded in agreement and let it go.Follow Tom Cox on Twitter or at tom-cox.com. His latest book, Talk to the Tail: Adventures in Cat Ownership and Beyond, is published by Simon & Schuster.To book an alpaca trek at Wells-Next-the-Sea, go to alpacatrekking.co.uk/.AnimalsNorfolkWalking holidaysUnited KingdomEuropeTom Coxguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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