Country life
Public versus
people
Leanda de Lisle
There aren't any public footpaths near our house, but a local paper used a photo- graph of it to encourage people to make a detour from their country walks to have a look at it from the village road. I should have been pleased. It was one of the most romantic photographs I've ever seen of the house and what could be nicer than sharing our good fortune with passers-by? But I wasn't pleased. I was afraid that every bur- glar in town would now know exactly where we are. I rang the paper and begged them, please, not to use that photograph again.
When it comes to having strangers on our turf I welcome people, but the public is another matter. People are decent, curious and thoughtful. The public is decadent, crooked and thoughtless. Typical of the former are the two retired miners whom I see every day, walking through the field on the other side of the ornamental lakes. I don't know how long they've been walking that route, but I'd guess at between half and three quarters of a century. As chil- dren, they'd earn tip money holding the field hedges apart for riders out with the Atherstone hunt. Our groundsman says they're 'real Old Labour' in tones that sug- Ready go! . . . steady.' gest they'd put us up against a wall as soon as look at us. But whatever they may feel about the gently, they obviously love this spot and we welcome them here. In return they keep an eye on things for us, telling us rubbish has been dumped or gates left open.
It would be nice if landowners could build up such a mutually beneficial rela- tionship with ramblers. A Spectator reader wrote to me the other day asking why I have it in for them. 'Is your problem the use of the word "rambler"?' he asked. Per- haps it is. I think only positive thoughts about 'walkers'. Walkers are people. But when I hear 'rambler' I think 'them and us'. They want to open our gates to the public and they don't care what happens to us, or our land. The author of the letter was defi- nitely a walker as much as a rambler. He talked about 'proper consideration' towards the countryside and wondered why European landowners made him feel so much more welcome than British ones. The answer to that is in the countries he men- tioned: Spain, France and Italy are much more rural than this one.
There's a 75-acre wood near here which has a footpath running through it. The public used the path as access to the wood and then rambled all over it. As a result the wood was destroyed. The wood next door, which has no footpath, is now a Site of Spe- cial Scientific Interest. But the problem isn't just the weight of numbers. There is also the ignorance and bulldog brutishness of so many British visitors to the country- side. We all love dogs, but those belonging to the public are a particularly sore point with landowners. They kill stock, of course, but it can be more frightening than that. I've seen rottweilers running off the lead where my children play and my middle son's best friend was bitten by a dog some- one brought into the garden of his parents' house.
I couldn't believe it when the Ramblers' Association complained that Scottish landowners would probably want to keep them off the hills when the grouse were nesting. If the leaders of the Ramblers had any tact or feeling for others their first thought would have been, 'How can we ensure that the public don't kill grouse with their clodhopping feet or their dogs?' not `Let us at 'em'. I don't believe the answer is to shut people out of private land or give the public the right to roam. The answer is a better relationship between the public and the landowner. The government believes the Country Landowners' Associa- tion and the Ramblers' Association are the groups to foster this. But, unfortunately, while sensible people such as the president of the Norfolk Ramblers' Association, Jean le Surf, work to build up goodwill with landowners and farmers, those at the apex of the organisation are more interested in class war. It doesn't bother them if I'm afraid of strangers. They want me to be afraid. The more afraid the better.
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