My husband is in his seventies so every lunchtime we set off with our three dogs to walk across the fields - we’re lucky that woods and fields are literally across the road. We come out on a main road up the hill from where we live and then walk along, turn right down another road and then right again to get home - so basically a big circle walk which takes us just about an hour. It’s our only exercise for the day and we go at that time because normally our dogs are used to a couple of big walks every day or being out on the moors - which clearly we can’t do just now. We can’t go any earlier because my husband has a bowel problem. He had a resection for Crohns a few years ago which means he needs a couple of hours minimum before he can go out. We avoid people as much as possible, crossing the road to keep away and we are finding most people round here are brilliant and doing the same. We all zig zag across the tracks and roads to keep the distance.
About half way down the hill on our way home, it seems there’s an old person, not sure if it’s man or woman, who sits outside their house in a deckchair and their family is now visiting them every day. Usually between three to five people clustered on the footpath, laughing and joking and shouting across to the old person.
It’s right on the brow of the hill so we have to drag our dogs, one is 15 years old and he is very slow, across the road to get round them. Yesterday, my husband couldn’t cross quickly enough because a car was coming up the hill so he had to walk in the middle of the road and the car driver had to go round him.
Today, this family were there again and they’d parked two cars literally on the footpath as well and the whole group of them were there, as usual, laughing and joking and shouting over the wall to their relative. So, yet again we had to drag the dogs across the road where it’s blind to traffic coming up the hill. I was so angry I just called across the road to them and said, ‘Do you realise you’re completely blocking the footpath?’’
The largest, loudest woman shouted, ‘yeah we know it’s for social distancing’.
I said, ‘but you’re here every day and forcing us to cross the road.’
She then charged across the road, came about three feet - not two metres! up to my husband and started going on about she has to come every day and something about her father(so I’m guessing the old person is a man- it’s impossible to tell). My husband is deaf so he doesn’t really know what she was saying and I was too far away to hear with cars going past.
We were so upset when we got home. We’re going to take a longer route along the main road tomorrow to avoid coming down the hill - which is the most direct way home - and it means our old dog will need to walk a bit further than is really fair for him and I’m so bloody angry! We’ve lived here for forty years and walk up and down that hill virtually every day. I’ve never seen these people until the last three or four days and I’m really not sure they should be turning up en masse like this.
I’m praying for rain to be honest because I can’t see them having a family gathering on the footpath if it’s pissing it down!