Please use the countryside responsibly- so fed up

[jacks11]

On a rare day off from my day job, I have once again spent the day dealing with a series of thoughtless and/or completely entitled idiots behaving totally irresponsibly on our land. I had thought the one (very small) silver lining of this awful situation would be that this lambing season would see us free from so many problems from people out for a walk etc. But still having issues.

Today I stopped no fewer than 7 families traipsing through either the yard, our garden (one family stopping to have a seat on the picnic table/bench in our garden) or the lambing sheds to have a look. One family also stopped off to admire the lambs in one of the fields then preceded to take there youngish children (under 10) into said fields to see them closer. Several gates left open, people climbing over gates etc. I caught someone feeding our old pony apples and a doughnut! We’ve had rubbish being dropped. Dogs off leads etc.

What I cannot understand is how so many are getting to us- they must be breaching the guidance to only exercise locally or walking at least 7 miles from the nearest village. Which I doubt with the ages of some of the children.

When DH politely approached the family in our garden they were really rude, citing their “right to roam”- not even slightly apologetic when pointed out they were in our garden so they had no right to be there. Ditto several other people- don’t seem to realise right to roam does not apply to private gardens or land used for commercial reasons- I.e. yards/lambing sheds and you must behave responsibly (e.g. close gates, don’t let dogs off leads near livestock, don’t leave rubbish, don’t worry livestock, don’t walk across crops etc).

When you add in the situation with Covid, you’d think people would be careful about touching gates etc unnecessarily- but no. Lots of people have vulnerable family members and this is just an added headache- having to constantly be aware that people may have touched the gates/railings/doors etc.

Please use the countryside responsibly- some of us live on the land you are using as a playground. You are putting our livestock at risk- please don’t feed livestock/horses for that reason- and sometimes yourself in danger. There is no excuse for leaving rubbish.

Rant over!!

There are a different type of walkers around during this crisis. The type we usually see walk purposefully along the footpaths, clearly knowing where they are going, causing no problems. Since "lockdown" we've seen a different breed of walker. These wander and dawdle along, often in family groups, some appear to be lost, with dogs often not on leads, generally looking a bit clueless. Although the majority do no harm, we have had a couple of incidents with gates left open and stock moving into the wrong field. I'm thinking these cannot be truly local and are therefore breaching the guidelines by being out too long and too far from their homes. I don't understand why people would want to put their families at unnecessary risk in this way.

Today someone has fly tipped a mattress and a bookcase on our lane. What’s wrong with people ?

Previous posters have said it is sometimes locals. I wonder if it's a generational thing? Are they mainly younger? I'm city born and bred, as are my parents (and grandparents and so on) but we wouldn't dream of doing anything other than treating the countryside with respect. We do have parks with wildlife here you know. We know that just as you shouldn't let your dog off a lead in a park near swans, you shouldn't do it on farmland.

We are fed up too. We have a public footpath running alongside our property. Some people are using it responsibly but others, clearly not local, are wondering off track and coming close to our house. The new Defra guidelines say we can suggest diversions - there is a clear footpath not far from us - but I think this should be publicised and people reminded not to walk alongside houses/farm buildings or to walk routes they are unfamiliar with.

Not read full trail but in response to OP, I could have written this myself. We live on a farm and suddenly the whole world is traipsing through. We liver over a mile from the main road and further from the nearest village so some people are definitely driving to the area. Either that or the serious rambling community has massively increased its membership. What surprises me is the number of large family groups - of several generations... I didn't realise it was so common for extended families to remain living and thus exercising with their grandparents.... we have also had to shoo people out of our garden while they were having a picnic. They thought we were the arseholes and our garden is very obvously private property and does not have a footpath running through or alongside it. There is also a nobber who keeps letting his enormous angry dog roam free and it clearly wants to eat my terrier so we now have to be permanently on alert. People are absolute arseholes.

Even if they know they can use a footpath through a field they think they can wander anywhere and let their dogs run loose in that field. If the dogs poop in the field they don't pick it up because ' it's just a field' and not on a pathway or pavement. We had 4 cows abort their calves - one was expecting twins - we paid to have postmortoms on them and the vet confirmed that it was due to eating grass silage from a 'footpath field' that was contaminated by poop from dogs that had not been wormed. We have also lost lambs and sheep through abortions and attacks by dogs. One year they also killed our 19st ram who was probably defending his ewes.

I think it’s been a mistake to close the official tips and recycling centres. We always have fly tipping in my area (two wrecked caravans in a passing bay on our lane) and builders rubble and various items of furniture and electrical equipment are normal. It’s the land owners responsibility to move the rubbish. However it’s just been reported that fly tipping has greatly increased. I’m not remotely surprised. No tips open equals more rubbish dumped. Social distancing at tips is possible as if is in supermarkets.

I have raised the question of gates and stiles elsewhere, my DH is a farmer and has to open these gates to get through to do his work, wearing gloves is impractical and washing facilities unavailable. The only answer for would be for him to carry wet wipes in his cab. (We don't have any sanitising wipes).
BUT the thing that really get me is the number of bags of dog poo just left on the ground or even hung in hedges. The poo would disintegrate naturally (like horse and cow poo) if it was left unbagged, but surely the idea of bags, especially in a town environment, is for them to be taken home with you and disposed of?
And don't get me started on dogs 'playing' with the lambs.
Footpaths evolved over the centuries for workers to get from A to B before everyone had a car, they do not give free access to the whole of the field they run through.

Poo bags hung in trees around here! Like Christmas decorations.

I'm surprised by the dumps being closed too. Ours is set up such that it would be very feasible to limit the number of vehicles in it, the staff always wear heavy gloves anyway and presumably pay attention to hygiene even in normal times with goodness knows what coming in.

Ours is very controllable regarding entry and spacing when you are in there. It’s new and huge! They control it at the weekends. It closed weeks ago and they must have known what would happen! It was inevitable.

The more things change the more they stay the same. People are ignorant the world over, and times like this bring out the worst. Seeing so many pairs of blue gloves just dropped in the street, and yesterday I found a face mask dumped into our recycling bin which we keep by our gate, So I now have to go and pick it up, risk myself, to dispose of it correctly. In general, people are selfish, thoughtless and uncaring. So many who think the rules don't apply to them, I'm certainly against a police run state but maybe some more power to the law enforcers is needed. Sheesh, some people, eh ? An extension of the SAnti-social rules seems to be in order.

Bloody hell I grew up in a city and would have had the common sense not to do any of these things. Surely it's bloody obvious not to leave a gate open or go roaming into a field of someone else's animals or feed a donut to a bloody donkey!

Unfortunately 'common sense' is an oxymoron.

Our dump is shut. It was obvious it would lead to rise in fly tipping and yet it's an easy one to control the numbers in and out.

Fly tipping is a complete blight here as the dumps are very restrictive anyway, and this is just setting up the habit in people who would previously have gone to the tip.

closing the tips only leads to fly tipping because people are shits. If the dump is closed or the bin is full, you have to keep your litter. Same if you chose 15 years with a dog - you signed up to carry bags of excrement until you find an empty bin or get home. You chose that. If you don't want to do it, have the dog shot.

Why end up saying a dog should be shot!? That’s a bit extreme. Are you offering to go around doing it? Education is better than extremes. I think the owners are to blame, not the dog!

@BubblesBuddy believe me, I'd be very supportive of having irresponsible owners shot. Litterers too.

two alternatives with dogs - train or shoot. (or whatever other method of euthanasia you like)

this house is on the receiving end of two separate crimes from dog owners so yes, I do hate the bloody things. And that's not counting all the shit that gets left on the front garden.

have a dog by all means, provided that you are prepared for 15 years of picking up shit and taking it your own bin, not letting it bark and keeping it under REAL control. Not 'he's only playing', not 'he's just being friendly' but control. Which at the moment means on a lead.

I have never seen so many people walking along the footpath through our field, you can see who are the locals because they walk along the path which runs along the wall side, and don't wander all over the field.
Others cross the field and let their children try to climb the electricity pylon (they can't get far because there's a built-in overhang covered with barbed wire) . I'm very pleased no one has had a picnic in my garden yet, they just walk along the top of the wall.

Why end up saying a dog should be shot!? That’s a bit extreme. Are you offering to go around doing it? Education is better than extremes. I think the owners are to blame, not the dog!

Sometimes a farmer has no option.
I know of a farmer who gave an idiot neighbour several chances with her dog that she let out every night. The first two times he brought the dog back to her telling her she was lucky he didn't shoot it. The third time he brought back the dog's body for burial. He certainly did not want to shoot the animal but he couldn't continue to let it savage his flock of sheep either.

In Ireland we have nothing like bridleways through people's land and I'm very grateful for that. The amount of idiots that are already impacting on the countryside due to covid is already on the rise but at least it's littering on our roads and paths and not endangering animals or children on farm machinery.

And there's now some company selling sky lanterns promoting using them to 'honour' the NHS.
No doubt some will do this, without any thoughts whatsoever as to where they'll land, if they've set fire to houses, buildings, animals, crops, hedges, undergrowth, woodland.... Or where the remnants of them will end up.
Stupid, stupid things at any time but to promote something dangerous like that in 'support' of the NHS to make a quick buck at the moment is disgusting.

Bloody hell. Is there no limit to people's stupidity?

I gather the NHS and emergency services weren't generally too impressed by people letting off fireworks to 'honour' them recently either.

YANBU of course. The field next to our garden has lambing sheep and today there were are least 3 groups with dogs and children running around away from the footpath. We of course know the farmers and it makes me so sad. And then someone posted on a local group about her horse being burned by a Chinese lantern that stupid people released last Thursday because clapping was not enough so now we do fireworks and bloody lanterns.
Humans 🙁

BubblesBuddy Tue 14-Apr-20 09:49:32
Poo bags hung in trees around here! Like Christmas decorations.

I doubt it's hung by 'dog walkers'. I (not a dog owner) make a point of picking up their s* bags off the ground, and hanging them on trees. My message to them ? 'Your litter is still here....that you habitually throw your poo bags on the ground doesn't make them disappear.' The good folk of Todmorden, did this at one popular dog-walking spot....there were literally hundreds of bags hanging from the bushes.
If dog owners can't be bothered to take the bags home with them, I'd rather they didn't use them.....flies and rain will dispose of it naturally; plastic bags will hang around for years.