Ramblers can give the gift of vigilance

Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Defra Secretary Steve Barclay why he is asking his constituents to keep their eyes open when they are out and about this Christmas

DEAR Steve, I was asked a few days ago to pen a Christmas/New Year message for my constituents and aside from passing on the usual seasonal salutations, I implored them to keep their eyes and ears open when they are out and about over the next few days.

Family walks are a firmly rooted tradition in many households and in my constituency there is an ample choice of locations where one can indulge in some gentle exercise to counterbalance the additional calorie intake.

Unfortunately walking is not enough for some people, which is why the Quantock Hills, which rise pretty much directly from my home, have come in for some unwanted attention from off-road joy riders recently. And I don’t have to underline what that implies in terms of damage, given the heavy rainfall over the last few weeks.

The upshot is that one of the commons in particular has been left scarred with dozens of deep tyre tracks by drivers for whom the fact that it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest has mattered not a tittle nor jot. It has been easily accessible from one of the metalled roads leading across the top of the ridge.

Measures are now being put in place to prevent a repeat of such behaviour. Boulders are being installed to prevent cars leaving the road even though they will be highly intrusive and will hardly make a positive contribution to the quality of the landscape. A landscape which, I might add, will take some years to recover from the damage.

The Quantocks were an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – but for a rebellion by local landowners and farmers they would have found themselves encompassed by the Exmoor National Park boundary when the lines were being drawn up

nearly 70 years ago. Because we have for some reason decided to adopt snappier titles for such areas they are now classed as a ‘National Landscape’ and thus remain within the second tier of protected areas.

The problem is, Steve, no matter what we decide to call these places, it all becomes pretty meaningless if we cannot defend their natural beauty from the activities of those who view every unfenced area of open countryside as a rally track.

The wardening service is severely overstretched and although all kinds of muttering is happening about the jail terms the motorised vandals will face if caught, the chances of that happening are as remote as those of me having a vegan lunch on Christmas Day.

You might be asking what the police are doing about this. To which my response is, ‘what police?’. You can scan the horizon for 360 degrees from the highest point of the Quantocks (1261 feet – or 384 metres if you prefer) and you will be hard-pressed to detect any evidence of a police officer.

Policing has been steadily wound down in rural areas for the last 40 years and is now pretty well nonexistent. When a couple of officers needed back-up dealing with an incident at one end of my constituency recently, they had to wait for 40 minutes for reinforcements to arrive from the next nearest nick 26 miles away.

Which suggests to me that someone has been working out the bare minimum of policing they can get away with while still having a token visible ‘presence’ and doing the strategic planning using the map in the back of their Police Federation diary.

If you want to know how rural crime has flourished in the absence of effective police cover in rural areas then just ask any one of the dozens of farmers on my patch.

Hence my request for Christmas vigilance on the part of the rambling classes and my appeal to them to note the numbers of any vehicles either driving where they shouldn’t or being used for observing the fine old rural Christmas tradition of flytipping.

Happy Christmas otherwise.

Yours ever,

Ian

People walk their dogs on the Quantock Hills in Somerset