AIBU to be fed up with walkers trespassing on our land?

The problem is that many people do not exercise this right "responsibly" in Scotland. I live in a small island Community where in spring and summer on any given day, the tourist population out numbers locals. Many of these tourists, often ironically English, behave in an appalling entitled manner, paying no heed to the outdoor access code you quote, and there is basically nothing anyone can do about this.

Fields, with baby livestock in them are fair game for dogs to run off the lead, shitting where they please and upsetting the animals, oh and actually that also applies to the humans too. I regularly have to bury shitty toilet paper left blowing about the beach beside my house by so called "wild campers". I wouldn't hold Scotland's right to roam up as any sort of example of a great system. For those of us who actually live in the Scottish countryside it is a fucking nightmare at times.

She got up, stuck 2 fingers in my face, turned her back and walked off! It's not 'just a few' it's the majority now and the rest of us are expected to stuff it.

While there has been an increase ignorant dog owners, I really don't think the majority are arseholes.

One thing op - have you thought about putting a couple of bins along the route people walk? I am not a dog fan myself & think far too many people have them these days, and I appreciate you shouldn't have to, but if you really do just want to limit people leaving mess, a lined bin might reduce poo left near your animals & crops.

If its a prow you might even be able to request a council bin.

I sympathise with your position, but in Scotland people are entitled to walk across fields if they don't contain crops. They have to exercise that right responsibly and landowners are required to facilitate that right. So perhaps you're betraying your ignorance in suggesting that something is absolutely outrageous and unworkable when it's been happening in Scotland for a long time. I've walked across many fields of sheep, never doing any damage or frightening the animals. And no, that's not the same as walking through someone's garden. Gardens are excluded from the right to roam, as are farmyards. The idea is that a small number of people (this is more the case in Scotland than in England) own most of the land, and that without a right to roam that deprives the majority of citizens of the right to enjoy their own country. The problem of course comes when rights are abused, and no doubt through people not being educated and brought up to behave responsibly. But I do think that land owners are unwilling to see things from the other perspective - the perspective of people who spend most of their lives shut in tiny houses and flats with a few square metres of overlooked garden.
Key points when managing land | Scottish Outdoor Access Code

The path turns to to the right 90degrees and there is a sign saying “footpath this way” with an arrow and then a sign pointing forwards (to the private land) saying “private land, please keep off”. Then about 100 yards further up this private land, there’s a sign saying “you are now trespassing” and an arrow showing where the footpath went.
There is a worn track onto the private land as my liveries are allowed to ride the headlands on their horses and I walk my own dogs that way daily.

Most of the walkers coming through aren’t ramblers who are here for the first time, they are local dog walkers. A lot of them are amazing and I am friendly with loads of them as they live in the village. They also try to help me and will remind people if they see them heading the wrong way.

For the poster who said that my use of the word ‘unfortunate’ is very telling, well sadly, that’s what the public do to you! I am fed up of my cats being chased by off lead dogs (despite signs saying please keep your dogs on leash around the farm house and yard), fed up of dog poo by my garden gate…
The footpath goes through one of our grazing fields aswell but to protect everyone, we fenced the horses off, effectively losing a huge strip of our grazing land. But I felt it was safer for walkers aswell as I know people can be wary of being in fields with horses.
I’m actually not a dragon and I’m quite a reasonable person! People seem to want to paint me as a grumpy farmer but I leave that to part to my uncle when he’s about 😂

Who's going to empty those bins?

We have a family farm that, unfortunately, has a footpath that runs through it.
The footpath turns and goes into some woods and off our property but many people ignore the turn and just carry on around our land. This is mostly dog walkers. They then let their dog crap on our fields and just leave it. We take a crop off the land- some years a hay crop, some years beans, others wheat- but people just don’t seem to care.
I am always polite when I see someone trespassing. I ask them if they know they have left the footpath and I point them back in the direction of it. 9 people out of 10 get really arsey about it. I get all the excuses in the book- “it’s just fields/I always walk here/I can do what I want/it’s just grass/other people do it”
Ive had off lead dogs chasing my liveries horses (who have permission to ride the headlands), sheep being worried, the list goes on.

There are plenty of signs telling people where the footpath is and where it isn’t, but they get ignored.

When I try to explain to people that they wouldn’t like it if I walked my dogs in their garden every day and let them poo everywhere, they just argue that it’s not the same coz “these are fields”
SIGH
The Covid year was a bloody nightmare with people wandering everywhere.
When did people get so entitled? AIBU to think that people just think they can do whatever the hell they want nowadays?

One thing op - have you thought about putting a couple of bins along the route people walk? I am not a dog fan myself & think far too many people have them these days, and I appreciate you shouldn't have to, but if you really do just want to limit people leaving mess, a lined bin might reduce poo left near your animals & crops.

If its a prow you might even be able to request a council bin.

*I obviously see things differently to you. If I
see rolling hills and countryside, I don’t automatically think I should have the right to walk across it. *

You have probably lost a lot of sympathy saying this. The vast majority of people walking in the countryside do little/no damage.

Vast swathes of countryside being in the private ownership of a small number of extremely rich families for centuries is what leads to revolution, or in this case to the Right to Roam. In Scotland there are still very strong feelings about the clearances.
It isn't right, or sustainable, for the huge majority of the population to be forced to live in tiny spaces in the cities, with no right to access the countryside, because a few mega rich people have bought the countryside up.
How would you feel in England if there were no public footpaths? No national parks? Nowhere to go to see grass and trees, other than your local town park? Nowhere to exercise other than your local gym? Well, those public footpaths and national parks didn't come about by accident. The government created them. Access to the countryside is a public good, and sometimes a public good takes precedence over the right of a billionaire to boot people off his land because it's his.

If you stick to the perimeter of all the fields, it loops back to the other side of the farm, so some local people see it as a great dog walk because their dog is basically off lead the whole way, there’s no traffic and it takes them back to the starting point at the other end of the footpath. It’s around a 25 minute walk to do the loop. We have a few residential roads nearby and it seems people seem the farm as their own private dog walking route.
I’m now wondering whether I could make some money out of this - an annual fee for dog walking rights!😅 (that’s a joke by the way!)

But I obviously do see things differently. I regularly see rubbish stuffed in our hedgerows and dog poo bags hanging up on trees. Ever pulled in at a country lay-by and seen litter just dumped, despite there beings bins? Have you never seen people tossing rubbish out of car windows? There’s a motorway junction by us and on the verges by the traffic lights to the junction roundabout, it’s like a rubbish tip. Sadly a lot of people cannot respect our planet.

I apologise to the decent people out there who do respect nature and just want to walk in the countryside, but when every day you are confronted with what humans do to our environment (I’m not just talking about my farm now, I’m talking about the footpaths I walk when I’m out with my dogs, and the beaches), it’s hard to imagine that these places of natural beauty won’t be in some way tainted by humans.

That got a bit deep, sorry 😅