to wish that people would stick to footpaths and treat the countryside a little better?

[BCBG]

I am probably going to get a flaming but I don't care, I am just so fed up! I appreciate just how lucky we are to live where we do, and part of that is a beautiful wooded hill with footpaths, one on the boundary, and one that dissects the wood - neither path comes anywhere near my garden or drive. When we bought the hill/wood, it was so overgrown and choked with brambles and elder that the nightingales that used to nest each Spring had long gone, and DH and I have spent what would have been my new kitchen on clearing the brambles and crap and generally restoring it. Now instead of inching through bramble walls, walkers can spread out a bit, the hill is beautiful again (although it takes a bit of maintenance, and best of all, the nightingales are back this Spring (as of this week ). Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind the walkers who tread lightly and wander a bit, but what gets my goat is the following:

• walkers who wander the quarter of a mile down to my house through a gate marked clearly as private and ask to be let through my garden 'because its quicker that way'
• walkers who cut a hole in the sheep fencing to let their dogs through - yes, regularly walkers who literally tread the old fences down to cross our drive rather than follow the footpaths which the council has clearly signed everywhere the plastic bottles, crisp bags and drinks cans which I have to collect and bin every week - we took 86 off the hill on our last big cleanup
• the family out to enjoy the countryside last Sunday whose bloody labradors and two little DCs quite literally trashed an entire bluebell slope by playing in them endlessly in circles
• anyone who gives me a mouthful when I politely suggest that they might head back up to the footpath *the post GCSE kids who light fires, drink lots of vodka, and then burn their tents and sleeping bags, leaving broken glass and shit for me to collect at my leisure.

I love the hill, I love that others love it, but is it too much to ask that people treat it better? My best comment this week was 'didn't know it belonged to nobody' - that was from a 12 year old trying to chop down a silver birch with a wood axe.

AIBU?

My father had a farm and had the same problems. Lots of abuse when he asked pony trecking businesses not to use footpaths over his land. He put up a fence and style in the end to stop them. He also eventually got legal permission to redirect a footpath round the edge of a field to stop people trampling crops but had to fight the Ramblers Association all the way.

Unfortunately you are going to have to get hard, put up fences, styles, gates, and signs and get legal with people if necessary.

People just think no one owns the countryside and that it is just a big theme park you dont have to pay to go in.

YANBU at all. The hill sounds lovely and you sound as if you're doing a great job at conservation. You have made me think though: we have a footpath up the side of our much smaller garden. It doesn't look as though its in our garden so we don't get wanderers, and it's not much used as there is a much nicer and more accessible bridle way virtually next to it. . I haven't thought about insurance!!!!