Lord above some people are just... unbelievable!

No, it's like it is all staged for their benefit. But do tell about the influencer!

Many do it for Instagram. I’m so very sick of the “influencers”. A very famous one was sent packing a few weeks ago.

I don’t think people realise this is our day to day lives.

And Lord fucking save me from holiday makers who think we are all extras in a national park, paid for with their taxes, there to make sure they and their offspring just have the best holiday ever!

@FoxyLoxyLoo I hear you. I am so sorry, you seem to be getting it far worse than me. Like you, I dread Easter approaching, as every fuckwit seems to descend on the countryside. I am very tired of people having a go at me for not letting their kids do whatever they want and I have been threatened in the past (South London council estate girl, very bad idea). I have put big driveway gates up that cannot be climbed and put barbed wire around the gates into my yard as well as geese, to try and keep the ponies safe when they are corralled during the day in the summer. I am very tired of people thinking Right to Roam means ' access all areas'. We also have an old lady who is probably going to have her last summer this year and I want her to be left in peace to enjoy it with her herd. We even had to put locks on a stable door last year as we adopted a pregnant feral and we found a family had let themselves in so their kids could play with her new born kittens. She was terrified! Our farmer neighbour has also had to give up the field next to us for lambing as people keep letting their kids pick up lambs so they can take a cute picture!

But dealing with this shit when you are exhausted from lambing is just the last straw. And people who ignore weather warnings should be charged what it costs to rescue them! They are putting volunteer lives at risk.

I hear you and relate to everything you’ve said. It’s infuriating and some days I look out of my window and see full families in the yard. Last week we had a family who “came to see the lambs”, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, we’re exhausted with lambing, they were in a yard where we had machinery moving hay bales (not the little square bales, the large round bales). We’re working, we’re not doing this for a laugh. Yet there they were wanting to see the lambs. We’re not a petting zoo, we have sheepdogs who aren’t people friendly, we have geese who wander and are like guard dogs, my DH is short tempered due to tiredness and I’m hanging by a thread trying not to lose my shit. I never smiled at those people, instead I asked them to leave reiterating we’re not a petting zoo. Was I grumpy? Yes I was. Was I rude? Yes I was. Did I care that their children wanted to see lambs? No I didn’t.

As I said earlier in the thread I have senior retired horses and I’m sick of people thinking they can feed them or amble through their fields. I’m dreading this weekend where camper vans will descend on us, children will be feral and I’ll feel invaded. There will be toilets emptied in our lochs, rubbish discarded (I mean full bags of rubbish, not just an empty wrapper), we’ll most likely have bloody camper vans at the end of our drive and people getting lost in the hills who are ill equipped and MR will be called out. DH is MR and I’ll sit and curse the silly buggars that choose to go “hill walking” without checking the forecast while putting others at risk.

@BridgeOverTheRiverWye I have been on it and now I have to walk around the house to calm down! The usual bullshit, but I especially love the 'keep horses away from the public if you don't like it'. What the FUCK do they think fencing is for?!

There was a recent case round my way (Fife) where a farmer shot a dog that had worried his sheep. The dog owner complained to the local press. The police told the owner that there was no case to answer, so yes - it's still legal to shoot dogs under those circumstances.

ETA This is how the local paper reported it. (Thought it was more recent than that. Old age!) I recall seeing various angry comments (from both sides) on FB. https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/19184125.fife-police-issue-warning-dog-shot-killed-ballingry-farm/

I would have asked them if they wished to hire the deckchairs for half a day or a full day and told them your fees, including a hefty damage deposit.

Ah my husband often gets annoyed when people use our fields to sledge during snow, he's asked many a person for their address so he can sunbathe in their garden in the summer

I'm not sure that is legal. Equines are not classed as agricultural live stock but I think under the dangerous dog act they are specifically mentioned as it being an offense to worry them. I would never shoot a dog, but I am considering a Llama as a guard animal!

I think what we really need is to more manners, like your grandparents, so people behave even when no one is watching. My granny taught me that only, filthy, disgusting people litter so I never do it, even when I am alone. Leaving other people's pets in peace and not feeding them, has to be something most people would simply never dream of doing. Unfortunately, feeding ponies apples and bringing them carrots etc, seems to be ingrained in the public psych as a nice thing to do and utterly harmless. Although why letting your dog cause another animal distress or even attack it is OK, is beyond me. But we now have a breed of dog owners that seem to think that as long as their dog is having fun, any objection to their behaviour is unreasonable.

We once rented a holiday flat in Norfolk - quite a functional place, but with a large front window that suggested it might once have been a shop - on a busy road for pedestrians in the town centre.

The owner had festooned the whole window with the most ghastly tacky 'ornaments', which of course meant that everybody passing by stopped to look in - only to see a family doing ordinary family things, rather than the interior of a shop that's open to the public.

In hindsight, we should have just cleared all the tat into a big box and replaced it before we left, but as we also had a very young baby at the time and were already sleep-deprived and not in our most sparkling minds, in the end we just left the curtains closed.

@krustykittens , there's a FFS DONT feed horses in fields !! thread. I'd post your post on there, if you haven't already.

Although, I do think people in the islands have been asking for Right to Roam to be abolished. They are overwhelmed with the huge number of visitors they get every year, wandering across crofts, with all the behaviour others have complained about on this thread happening hourly. I have even heard that crofters have found wild campers knocking down their fencing and using the posts for firewood! Some people really do not give a shit how much damage they do, as long as they are getting their own way. And as I said, they seem to be getting more numerous.

Is it still legal to shoot dogs that are worrying livestock / ponies etc? I’m not suggesting you should do so, but if you’re legally entitled to, you could point that out! We always, always kept our dogs on leads if we were anywhere near fields with livestock, in part because my grandparents were concerned that the dogs would be shot if they were caught worrying anything. And in part because they knew the countryside code, and werent massive knobs.

No, there is point complaining to MPs and I do not think there would a reversal of Right to Roam, nor would I want there to be. Tbh, plenty of people down South complain of similar problems and some are miles from public rights of way. I would like amendments to right to roam, such as not being able to bring dogs into fields with any kind of livestock in them, so I would at least have the right to tell someone to leave my field. I would also like to see an amendment that bars people from going through fields with brood mares and foals. It is a nightmare keeping people away from foals, which has resulted in injuries and deaths of very young foals and I don't think people realise just how dangerous a mare with a foal at foot can be. We would love to breed as we own a very rare breed and I would hate to seem them die out but I just can't take the stress and anxiety of trying to protect a foal. We already bring our herd in during the day in the summer to keep them away from people (I once caught someone trying to give them ham sandwiches!), I don't think it would be fair to restrict a foal. They need to be out in the fresh air, with plenty of room to run and play and be ponies, no matter how old they are. People just lose their minds a bit when they see ponies and horses. They would never mither sheep or cows in the same way and sheep run away!

And yes, as a landowner, I am responsible for the health and safety of people accessing my land. It is quite infuriating that I seem to have lots of responsibilities but the general public get away with trashing my home and abusing my animals and I have to pick up the bill and deal with the stress and upset of sick and injured animals. My anxiety goes through the roof on warm, sunny days. Hence the reason why I have put in a fenced walkway, so people can walk through my land and not interact with the ponies. They either fill them with food they should not have and that could possibly kill them, or get scared when greedy, pushy natives surround them, biting at their clothes and hands, because other people have taught them they will be fed. They never hassle me, because I only treat them when they are working as rewards.

Especially if they were Ukrainian.

Do you think there’s any point in complaining to your MPs
Is there any chance of a reversal of the ‘right to roam’ because what you and others from Scotland on here have said is truly horrendous.

As an aside, could you really be sued if someone roams onto your land and gets injured ?

@ThePlumsOfWilfred Thank you for seeing things from our point of view. I don't have a problem with people using my land and I love right to roam. I agree with you, because I think it is what makes Scottish people so passionate about their own country. I love to roam about myself. But I also dearly love my ponies - is it really so much to ask that people just walk through and enjoy the land and the scenery without interfering with livestock or leaving litter? The attitudes of dog owners has also become ridiculous. Last year, I caught a woman looking at her phone and ignoring her dog, who was chasing my ponies. My gelding was about to lose his rag and turn on the dog and I shouted at her to call him back and put him on the lead. She shrugged and said, "He's having fun being a dog." I said (yelled) he is worrying my ponies. She told me it was part and parcel of living in the countryside and I should "chill out". Unfortunately, she seems to be part of a growing minority.

We also live in Scotland and have seen entitled behaviour soar since the end of lockdown. We keep ponies and the amount of dog worrying and attacks that have occurred on our land have one through the roof and I have caught people trying to put babies up on their backs. Actual babies, too small to hold their heads up. What really infuriates me is that if anyone got hurt due to their stupid behaviour, we could be sued! There are lots of restrictions to right to roam but people, including one of my bloody neighbours, seem to think it means they can go where they like and do what they want. We had £2000 in damages last year between August and April, including an emergency vet bill when our small herd of ponies were poisoned by holiday makers staying at a local cottage, who gave them grass clippings, despite being told not to and why! One of the ponies nearly died of colic, we were very lucky he was showing symptoms when we went to check on him one evening - had he become ill overnight we could have lost him. I have spent a fortune on fencing to create walkways that keep the public away from the ponies and vice versa. I have also had complaints that they are scaring the shit out of people by following them and crowding them. But if people didn't approach them and feed them, as the country side code advises. the ponies would not follow them looking for treats! It is beyond infuriating. Farmers around here have started to lamb earlier and indoors to avoid tourist season and to keep flocks safe from dogs. It has become too stressful. And this is in an area with a low population density!

I live in a Yorkshire Dales village , in a terrace up a quiet track that’s hidden from the road. At the end of lockdown the friends of the village group made a treasure trail thing for visitors, and one of the treasure points is near my house.
I have a stable type door, if it’s left open people on the trail walk into the garden and stick their heads through and usually say “ooh just having a look! Don’t mind me!!”
The first summer out of lockdown I started playing loud sweary music at weekends to keep them away.

Great post @ThePlumsOfWilfred

This reminds me of something I once did.
Went to Howarth with my mum. It’s a beautiful quaint town.
It was years ago and and there were lots of little shops selling bespoke items. Most of them were terraced premises with old fashioned windows and a door in the middle, just like a house.
Anyhow, as we were ambling along we came across one shop, with lovely pottery in the window all along the windowsill. There were items I knew mum would love, very similar to ornaments she collected.
We were having a good look through the window, pointing to things and admiring them. It had net curtains at the window so we had our faces pressed right up to the window to get a better view.
I said to mum ‘should we go inside?’ Then as I made my way to open the door I noticed people inside the shop, sat around a table. They were staring back at us. Strange I thought.
Then it dawned on me, it was someone’s house, not a shop!
Lord knows what they thought of us.
Good job I saw them or I would have been trying the door and going inside!

Agreed, some people are ridiculously entitled. We live rurally too and often have people walking off the footpaths and onto our land. I can only imagine how they would react if I brought my kids down to their gardens and just let them run around without permission.

That is hilarious.

Off the point but reminds me a bit of the poster from a few years ago who wanted to get a lock for her garden water tap. She was told she was being v unreasonable because a homeless person might be thirsty and need a drink....