Country Mouse
Giles Wood
‘Few people want to waddle more than 100 yards from their vehicles’
Footfall on the medieval right of way that cuts diagonally across my little domain has risen exponentially during the second COVID wave.
I am constantly aware of the metallic clink of the latch of the newly installed access gate.
This is separate from and in contradistinction to the field gate, which affords vehicular access to septic-tank contractors and other operatives. Each clink causes a release of cortisol – the stress hormone that is injurious to the health of this sufferer of hypertension.
Lurking in the undergrowth as I usually am, I can quickly identify which breed of intruder is present. OS maps dangling inside laminated pouches are indicia of the militant tendency of the rambler, especially when coupled with ski sticks – despite scree and icy conditions being rarities in Wiltshire.
Tweed is another rarity. Synthetics are the norm. The attention-seeking breed of rambler tends to wear terylene or Gore-tex ‘shells’ of colours which could be easily spotted by the helicopters who might later be required to ‘pluck them to safety’.
Mary has identified another type, namely ‘social walkers’. These are distinguished by incontinent mobilephone usage as their single purpose is not exercise, nor assertion of rights, nor to appreciate birdsong nor the ‘music of the hounds’, but to upload images and GPS co-ordinates of little-known beauty spots to encourage their Instagram followers into the area.
To these I must add a new breed of clueless countryside newcomer. They park across gates and slam the doors of their 4 x 4s. The other day, they released off leads panting Rhodesian ridgebacks which, as they’re genetically programmed to do, terrorise the smaller breeds accompanying little old lady dog-walkers, and the Shetland ponies on which local toddlers are learning to ride.
More cortisol, however, is released by those who walk the length of our right of way, often deviating off it and disturbing ground-nesting birds, then turn round again like the grand old Duke of York and retrace their steps with the oft-heard lament ‘But this path doesn’t go anywhere’.
Of course it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a redundant medieval right of way for the sort of agricultural workers who used digging sticks and antler picks.
But, unlike celebrity landowners such as Madonna and Griff Rhys Jones, I will not be seeking permission to divert this intrusive right of way, nor erecting bossy signs. Mary has reminded me how much
I myself dislike bossy signs and restricted access to other people’s land.
We hear of eco-subsidies for farmers and large landowners (ie not me) which will offer them, post-brexit, taxpayers’ cash in exchange for access across a whole new network of footpaths going nowhere over farmland, under the slogan of public money for public goods.
It came as no surprise to me to find that the present, clodhopping, unconservative administration, in a characteristic example of muddled thinking, is trying simultaneously to criminalise trespass on private land. A consultation held earlier this year provoked a predictable backlash from civil-liberties activists and the bill has been ‘tabled’, ie put on the back boiler.
Just as well – because I am a serial trespasser myself. In order to gain a vantage point to witness the magisterial construction of a giant lake with an island studded with trees on private pastures owned by one of our ‘Croesusrich’ neighbours, I have to enter the inner sanctum. I would not fancy being thrown in a lock-up for the sin of ‘Just looking, guv – is that a crime?’
I would vote to leave the current law on trespassing exactly as it is. The ambiguity inherent in it could be regarded as something of a national treasure. As Geoffrey Grigson wrote in The Shell Country Book of 1962, ‘The threat on the noticeboard – trespassers will be prosecuted – is a wooden lie, for trespass is not a crime.’
My cottage library has very little on the subject of trespass but I can always rely on Richard Jefferies to come to my aid. Leafing through The Gamekeeper at Home, a volume I confess I have not yet read, I struck gold:
‘Many fields are traversed by a perfect network of footpaths… Nothing causes so much ill-will in rural districts as the attempt to divert or shut up a track like this. Cottagers are most tenacious of these “rights”, and will rarely change them for any advantage. “There always wur a path athwert thuck mead in the ould volk’s time” is their one reply, endlessly reiterated…’
Cometh the hour, cometh the book. The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes is billed as a radical manifesto, hailed by the Morning Star as a book ‘to relish and learn from’.
The sad truth is that, radical manifesto by Nick Hayes regardless, landowners fearing trespass have little to worry about.
Very few individuals in this country want to waddle more than 100 yards from their vehicles – especially in the absence of public toilets.