Or was this woman's behaviour towards me agressive and rude?

[Runny]

This afternoon I decided to go for a nice long walk by myself. Just down the road from my house there is a long main road lined with trees and a sloping bank, about half way down there is the entrance to some fields where horses and other livestock are kept. There is an out building there but no farm house or anything like that. I grew up around here and when I was little I can remember going up to gates and the horses would come up to us and we'd pet them. So for nostalgic reasons I went up to the gate to have a look.

There are no horses now, but there's a few sheep, some chickens in a coop and I also noticed a couple of cats. I watched them for a bit before carrying on my way. Literally as soon I stepped back onto the pavement a woman pulls up alongside me, winds the window down and without so much as an excuse me or a hello shouts 'what were YOU doing up there?!!'. I was a bit taken a back and said that I was just looking at the animals and she just huffed shook her head and turned her car in towards the gate.

Now obviously I'm assuming she was the land owner, but I'd not actually done anything wrong, I hadn't trespassed and don't look remotely shifty or dodgy. Yet her whole tone was really aggressive and a bit intimidating and now I'm questioning what the hell id done wrong to warrant being spoken like that?

I love going out walking and I'm sure there's a public footpath along there somewhere, but I must admit I'm a bit reluctant to go walking near there again in case she accuses me of being up to no good!

I would forget about it. Maybe she has had loads of people walking over her land and how just jas a low tolerance for people near her land... not saying she wasn't rude though.

If you stepped 'back onto the pavement,' had you stepped onto her land before that? Maybe she's irritated with people repeatedly doing that. She wasn't very polite, but I think it's fair to ask what you were doing if you weren't on the pavement.

Sadly there are too many incidents of rural crime, so people are naturally suspicious these days. People scout out sheds etc then someone comes back later with a truck to take the livestock, tools and so on. We've had things that we thought were immovable pinched. You might not have liked her tone, but she was probably genuinely concerned.

I definitely wasn't on her land. The gate is just slightly set back off the pavement, and surrounded by bushes, but the council cut these so I know she doesn't own this bit of land.

Well, you weren't doing anything wrong, but I expect it's as stick says, and she was wary. I grew up in the countryside and I wouldn't be too surprised by people being a bit sharp around livestock, because you never quite know what's going on.

She shouldn't have been aggressive but sadly I can understand it. Locally in the past few weeks there's been a handful of really horrific attacks on horses, dogs being stolen, gates being tampered with. If I was a landowner I'd probably be feeling worried all the time but she shouldn't have been rude to you. Try to forget about it, you didn't do it with ill intentions.