@CrotchBurn
And you are exactly the sort of entitled, ignorant person who would be best to stay away from anything other than tarmac paths in your park or similar. If YOU don’t know the rules and countryside codes it is YOUR job to find out. The countryside should not be littered with signs explaining every last little detail of how to behave. People should find out before venturing into the countryside. Farms and estates are not play parks, they are places of work. They are peoples homes. Woodlands, moorlands, coastland etc are a precious resource, but are fragile environments which are easily damaged and it takes a long time and hard work to repair- sometimes once lost, they are lost forever. They should be respected.
We have a public right of way running along one field. My responsibilities are to keep it clear and unobstructed- which we do. It is not my role to make the path mud-free. There are signs, not ours (the green footpath signs) but they aren’t every few metres. The path is really very obvious though. But every year, and this more than most, we have people traipsing into the farmyard, into my garden, into the machinery shed, into the lambing pens and cattle sheds and into the stables. And horses fields. Some are actually stupid enough to put their small children into the pens with ewes and lambs. And on more than one occasion I’ve caught people in the fields with the horses trying to feed or otherwise mess around with them. These sorts of behaviours are any combination of stupid, dangerous, thoughtless and downright rude. Why on earth should I have to have signs instructing people not to do this? I do not walk into random people gardens when I go into town to go shopping. I don’t sit on their cars, or try to open the doors to plonk my children in then for photo opportunities. I don’t open their back door so that I can stroke their dog. Or feed it. Or feed lots of random children sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks “because they like them and there is no sign saying NOT to”. So then, why do people do the equivalent to us?
Fences are expensive, they limit field use and are not necessary. They also have to be maintained. Do we really want the edge of every field fenced off, just in case some ignoramous decides to trample all over the crops? I don’t.
Besides, in our experience, the public are very happy to ignore signs (some quite happy to remove them) and merrily damage fencing and property. Unless you make it painful- I.e. electric fencing. But then they come and complain about it. Despite the warning signs that electric fencing is in place. Which I should not need because you should not be tramping anywhere and everywhere you fancy.
I for one will be glad once lockdown is over for many reasons. A big one is that fewer people will be causing so much damage to the countryside that they supposedly “love” and “so enjoy exploring”.
Another example would be the machairs, mainly found in the islands and north/northwest coast. They are fairly unique environments to these areas and home to endangered species of plants and animals. During last lockdown many were very badly damaged- a particular problem was campers/campervans using them. Even when asked not to. Police patrols had to be instigated. Not to mention that nobody should have been holidaying in these rural places during lockdown. It is estimated that some will take over a decade to recover. I know some communities are trying to work out how on earth they do a better job of protecting them this year, just in case people can’t jet off to Spain etc, and they are inundated again.
Yet another example is an ancient woodland locally. Has a huge amount of bluebells and some rare plant species. There are some very obvious and perfectly adequate paths through the woods. They can indeed get muddy. Especially in winter. But as it’s in Scotland, it’s exactly what you’d expect. If you haven’t considered that when setting out to walk through the countryside in January (especially if there has been quite a lot of rain recently), then that’s entirely your stupidity to blame. There are some areas fenced off to protect some particularly vulnerable areas. Of which there multiple maps and explanations in the very well maintained car park. Along with instructions not to stray off the paths because it damages the bluebells and other rare flora, which takes years to recover from damage.
Over lockdown, there were huge numbers of people out in the wood. For some reason, many seemed incapable of parking in the car park. Instead, pulling off the (single track) road and into verges or, in some cases, into passing places or the edge of the wood. Or blocking road ends. In the process damaging verges, blocking roads. The damage to verges also damaged some of the land drains, causing problems with surface water on the road abd localised issues with water in land on the other side of the road (which had to be fixed, at a busy time in the farming calendar- some was actually councils responsibility to fix, but they were not going to be doing so due to lockdown). I presume that’s also ok because, you know, there aren’t specific signs saying not to park blocking roads/passing places etc?
The litter was terrible, barbecues, broken bottles and cans- you name it, it was there. The screaming children disturbing the wildlife. Many children were also allowed, if not encouraged, to rampage off the paths and trampling and picking the bluebells etc. Just so mummy could get a lovely photo of the kids in the flowers. But hey- the signs telling them to do that we’re not every few metres- so that’s not their fault. Some people were digging plants up to take home (which is actually illegal). The fences around the vulnerable area were damaged by people climbing them, trying to get into the protected areas. The woodland trust wardens were so angry and upset with all the damage caused. I was speaking to one recently who said that the amount of abuse, including a few cases of physical assault, that they have received for asking people to behave themselves is astounding. I understand that a lot of organisations like woodland trust, natural heritage etc are getting together to look at this issue.