Why can walkers trample over our rights?
My husband and I have worked hard, lived frugally and tried to be sensible but generous to others less fortunate with the money we’ve earned. We consider ourselves blessed to have a lovely cottage with a beautiful garden of half an acre. We started from scratch, renovating the cottage ourselves, clearing our garden of old sheds, barbed wire and scrap metal, planting 100 trees and a wild flower meadow, plus a play area for our grandchildren. We can access the fields beyond from our garden and, not to be mean-spirited, allowed our friends and neighbours in the village to do the same. We knew that our solicitor’s search in 1998 had revealed no right of way on the property. all was well for 17 years: we never stopped anyone enjoying what we felt privileged to have. We felt we had given our permission for people to enjoy the fields around us. Then, just before Christmas, we learned that our parish council had collected 17 ‘evidence forms’ and put in a modification order to have a right of way through our garden added to the definitive map. It had discovered that a footpath was mentioned and decided it must have been left off the map in error. Overnight, my husband and I found that instead of being generous and welcoming to our neighbours, we were now objectors, owning property over which we were somehow depriving ‘the public’ of their ‘rights’. We asked ourselves: are we in the wrong not to want the public to have the right to complain about our chickens or our dogs or the width of our path or worry about the health and safety of people on our property? What about the safety of our own grandchildren and property? but norfolk County Council says it can’t take anything like that into its considerations. I feel very lucky to have found lots of other lovely people who are fighting against ‘intrusive footpaths’. I admire their fortitude and determination to fight injustice. This is not a militant stand for victory, just a plea for fairness, common sense and justice.
ANN SCOTT, Thetford, Norfolk.