Lord above some people are just... unbelievable!

[DuIcieDomum]

There's an Apache MK1 final flypast today [yawn] which DP and DS (autistic, this comes under one of his special interests) have been banging on about for days. They made flasks of cocoa and set up deckchairs in one of our fields (we live on a farm) to sit and watch it. Anyway it was delayed by 45 mins so they came in to eat lunch and then went back out...to find two men sitting on the deckchairs eating sandwiches waiting for the flypast . There was a third man with a dog with them, who actually asked DP to put our dog on a lead because his dog is nervous of other dogs!!

Now, this was in our field which is private land. The field is visible from a footpath but the footpath just goes past the gate and doesn't enter the field. They just saw our deckchairs and though it looked like a nice place to go and sit.

DP said sorry but no, they'd have to take the dog out of the field if it wasn't ok with other dogs, and that he and DS wanted their deckchairs back. A bit of harrumphing and the men left but... WTF?!?

Do you think there’s any point in complaining to your MPs
Is there any chance of a reversal of the ‘right to roam’ because what you and others from Scotland on here have said is truly horrendous.

As an aside, could you really be sued if someone roams onto your land and gets injured ?

Especially if they were Ukrainian.

No, there is point complaining to MPs and I do not think there would a reversal of Right to Roam, nor would I want there to be. Tbh, plenty of people down South complain of similar problems and some are miles from public rights of way. I would like amendments to right to roam, such as not being able to bring dogs into fields with any kind of livestock in them, so I would at least have the right to tell someone to leave my field. I would also like to see an amendment that bars people from going through fields with brood mares and foals. It is a nightmare keeping people away from foals, which has resulted in injuries and deaths of very young foals and I don't think people realise just how dangerous a mare with a foal at foot can be. We would love to breed as we own a very rare breed and I would hate to seem them die out but I just can't take the stress and anxiety of trying to protect a foal. We already bring our herd in during the day in the summer to keep them away from people (I once caught someone trying to give them ham sandwiches!), I don't think it would be fair to restrict a foal. They need to be out in the fresh air, with plenty of room to run and play and be ponies, no matter how old they are. People just lose their minds a bit when they see ponies and horses. They would never mither sheep or cows in the same way and sheep run away!

And yes, as a landowner, I am responsible for the health and safety of people accessing my land. It is quite infuriating that I seem to have lots of responsibilities but the general public get away with trashing my home and abusing my animals and I have to pick up the bill and deal with the stress and upset of sick and injured animals. My anxiety goes through the roof on warm, sunny days. Hence the reason why I have put in a fenced walkway, so people can walk through my land and not interact with the ponies. They either fill them with food they should not have and that could possibly kill them, or get scared when greedy, pushy natives surround them, biting at their clothes and hands, because other people have taught them they will be fed. They never hassle me, because I only treat them when they are working as rewards.

Is it still legal to shoot dogs that are worrying livestock / ponies etc? I’m not suggesting you should do so, but if you’re legally entitled to, you could point that out! We always, always kept our dogs on leads if we were anywhere near fields with livestock, in part because my grandparents were concerned that the dogs would be shot if they were caught worrying anything. And in part because they knew the countryside code, and werent massive knobs.

Although, I do think people in the islands have been asking for Right to Roam to be abolished. They are overwhelmed with the huge number of visitors they get every year, wandering across crofts, with all the behaviour others have complained about on this thread happening hourly. I have even heard that crofters have found wild campers knocking down their fencing and using the posts for firewood! Some people really do not give a shit how much damage they do, as long as they are getting their own way. And as I said, they seem to be getting more numerous.

@krustykittens , there's a FFS DONT feed horses in fields !! thread. I'd post your post on there, if you haven't already.

We once rented a holiday flat in Norfolk - quite a functional place, but with a large front window that suggested it might once have been a shop - on a busy road for pedestrians in the town centre.

The owner had festooned the whole window with the most ghastly tacky 'ornaments', which of course meant that everybody passing by stopped to look in - only to see a family doing ordinary family things, rather than the interior of a shop that's open to the public.

In hindsight, we should have just cleared all the tat into a big box and replaced it before we left, but as we also had a very young baby at the time and were already sleep-deprived and not in our most sparkling minds, in the end we just left the curtains closed.

I'm not sure that is legal. Equines are not classed as agricultural live stock but I think under the dangerous dog act they are specifically mentioned as it being an offense to worry them. I would never shoot a dog, but I am considering a Llama as a guard animal!

I think what we really need is to more manners, like your grandparents, so people behave even when no one is watching. My granny taught me that only, filthy, disgusting people litter so I never do it, even when I am alone. Leaving other people's pets in peace and not feeding them, has to be something most people would simply never dream of doing. Unfortunately, feeding ponies apples and bringing them carrots etc, seems to be ingrained in the public psych as a nice thing to do and utterly harmless. Although why letting your dog cause another animal distress or even attack it is OK, is beyond me. But we now have a breed of dog owners that seem to think that as long as their dog is having fun, any objection to their behaviour is unreasonable.

Ah my husband often gets annoyed when people use our fields to sledge during snow, he's asked many a person for their address so he can sunbathe in their garden in the summer

I would have asked them if they wished to hire the deckchairs for half a day or a full day and told them your fees, including a hefty damage deposit.

There was a recent case round my way (Fife) where a farmer shot a dog that had worried his sheep. The dog owner complained to the local press. The police told the owner that there was no case to answer, so yes - it's still legal to shoot dogs under those circumstances.

ETA This is how the local paper reported it. (Thought it was more recent than that. Old age!) I recall seeing various angry comments (from both sides) on FB. https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/19184125.fife-police-issue-warning-dog-shot-killed-ballingry-farm/

@BridgeOverTheRiverWye I have been on it and now I have to walk around the house to calm down! The usual bullshit, but I especially love the 'keep horses away from the public if you don't like it'. What the FUCK do they think fencing is for?!

I hear you and relate to everything you’ve said. It’s infuriating and some days I look out of my window and see full families in the yard. Last week we had a family who “came to see the lambs”, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, we’re exhausted with lambing, they were in a yard where we had machinery moving hay bales (not the little square bales, the large round bales). We’re working, we’re not doing this for a laugh. Yet there they were wanting to see the lambs. We’re not a petting zoo, we have sheepdogs who aren’t people friendly, we have geese who wander and are like guard dogs, my DH is short tempered due to tiredness and I’m hanging by a thread trying not to lose my shit. I never smiled at those people, instead I asked them to leave reiterating we’re not a petting zoo. Was I grumpy? Yes I was. Was I rude? Yes I was. Did I care that their children wanted to see lambs? No I didn’t.

As I said earlier in the thread I have senior retired horses and I’m sick of people thinking they can feed them or amble through their fields. I’m dreading this weekend where camper vans will descend on us, children will be feral and I’ll feel invaded. There will be toilets emptied in our lochs, rubbish discarded (I mean full bags of rubbish, not just an empty wrapper), we’ll most likely have bloody camper vans at the end of our drive and people getting lost in the hills who are ill equipped and MR will be called out. DH is MR and I’ll sit and curse the silly buggars that choose to go “hill walking” without checking the forecast while putting others at risk.

@FoxyLoxyLoo I hear you. I am so sorry, you seem to be getting it far worse than me. Like you, I dread Easter approaching, as every fuckwit seems to descend on the countryside. I am very tired of people having a go at me for not letting their kids do whatever they want and I have been threatened in the past (South London council estate girl, very bad idea). I have put big driveway gates up that cannot be climbed and put barbed wire around the gates into my yard as well as geese, to try and keep the ponies safe when they are corralled during the day in the summer. I am very tired of people thinking Right to Roam means ' access all areas'. We also have an old lady who is probably going to have her last summer this year and I want her to be left in peace to enjoy it with her herd. We even had to put locks on a stable door last year as we adopted a pregnant feral and we found a family had let themselves in so their kids could play with her new born kittens. She was terrified! Our farmer neighbour has also had to give up the field next to us for lambing as people keep letting their kids pick up lambs so they can take a cute picture!

But dealing with this shit when you are exhausted from lambing is just the last straw. And people who ignore weather warnings should be charged what it costs to rescue them! They are putting volunteer lives at risk.

And Lord fucking save me from holiday makers who think we are all extras in a national park, paid for with their taxes, there to make sure they and their offspring just have the best holiday ever!

Many do it for Instagram. I’m so very sick of the “influencers”. A very famous one was sent packing a few weeks ago.

I don’t think people realise this is our day to day lives.

No, it's like it is all staged for their benefit. But do tell about the influencer!

Why do people think fences and gates exist in the first place??? I know it’s ugly, but I’ve had CF intrusive neighbours that have infuriated me to the point that became obsessed with razor wire and land mines…. (And no, I wasn’t serious… I just have an active imagination and resent waking up to their kids helping themselves to the contents of our refrigerator after finding our spare key with harridan mother shouting instructions over the fence.) **It is gratifying to know that there are many fast growing and very pretty climbing and bushing flowering plants with prickles though.

WTF? They are in your HOUSE?!

They were… (this is years ago and the absolute gall of this family still makes me grind my teeth.) Interestingly, this was in another country and we lived in a wee cul-de-sac, and they were one of two families native to the country we were living in. It was like a mini United Nations. Because we all had little kids and no family support, the rest of us got on really well, and like all women, bonded over the important things, even if we had no language in common - like food. 😋. The people next to us were very racist and antisocial as well as entitled and intrusive. (And thieving bastards)… and the country we lived in had very strict anti-racism laws. We all used have street parties to celebrate every tradition that was important for the street - Dewali, Eid, Passover, Hanukkah, etc… We used to contribute by throwing an Aussie Day BBQ in the cold! Meanwhile, the horrid family decided to call the police on us all for “excluding them” because we told them they couldn’t come and stuff their faces if they didn’t contribute culturally appropriate food & drink - because we were being “racist”…. The police came around and it was the absolute final straw for them. They had been called to deal with these guys by virtually everyone in the street, so the police came with extra food and drink and joined in with our evening and we had a lovely time, and the neighbours clammed up for quite some time. (Not forever, but we had some respite!)

The picking up lambs story reminds me... Tourists locally coming up BEHIND cows so that little Johnny (aged 2) could 'stroke the nice moo-cow'. On the lower hind leg. They were bloody lucky little Johnny didn't end up in A&E.

We have had all sorts.

We had one woman letting her dog into our (fenced) garden every morning around 6 am so it could do a shit. We'd been away for about a month and when we came back our neighbour told us so we lay in wait. That was fun.

We are on a private road that is monitored by a parking company because we also live near a train line for a direct commute to London. We have had people park across our actual driveways and piss off for the day then get shitty when they come back to a parking ticket. Last week one woman parked on my actual land and when I told her it was private land told me to fuck off and walked off. She came back 3 days later to 3 parking tickets and banged on my door and shouted abuse about how she had been at such and such hospital (5 miles away) holding her dying mother's hand and what horrible people we were. I pointed out that when I had spoken to her on Friday she was wearing a sparkly floral headpiece and carrying a weekend bag heading for the station so clearly was on a hen do or the like. I also pointed out there was parking at the hospital.

It was someone who decided to visit Scotland in a motorhome with her husband and children a few weeks ago then plastered the adventure all over Instagram. Traipsing through a field with newborn lambs was part of the issue.

We have badgers living in our woodland. Many times we have moved people along who have been harassing them. I once got told by men with Jack Russell's, that it's legal to kill vermin.
Not in my garden it's not 🤨

Not sure if this fits here,but one day I was coming home after a long,hot and shitty day at work (this was the second day of the heatwave last year)

If I say retail,most will know what I mean

I was also in agony from the arthritis in my knee-im on my feet all day and had to walk to and from work that day so wasn't in the best of moods

I live in a normal,very quiet street-nothing happens here,and my front garden has a fence round it-my house couldn't be more normal or clear it's private

I turned the corner,just in time to see someone (no idea if it was male or female) stand up and walk out of my gate

I've never moved so fast,I honestly thought they where scoping out my house

Nope,they'd done the biggest shit I've ever seen on the gravel that is my front garden-this turd was just there-no attempt to clean it up

And then had the nerve to try to tell me they 'had every right as I suffer from ibs and 'had' to go'

They actually got very angry with me (not as angry as I was!) and you could tell they thought they had every right to do this!

They ended up stomping off,muttering about how unreasonable I was!