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?!?

Wtf is wrong with cocoa?

I'm British and my partner is American. I'm going to show him this thread. He couldn't understand why I was so particular finding out about public footpaths etc when we were buying our house with land. 😅

We have a dropped kerb with about 10ft in length to park on. One day I saw a parent let their toddler wonder right down it. I had to charge out to stop her as she was v close to falling down our light well.

We live on a hill, just outside a town. Came home to find a man, on our drive, releasing his pigeons, as, he said, it was a convenient site for a race release and he'd done it before! After our conversation he didn't do it again!

I used to work at a heritage railway. We had a very famous train visiting for the first time since a major overhaul (made the national news) and platform tickets and photography spots were fully taken up. At one of the line end stations people went past the safety barrier, set up tripods etc on the slope at the end of the platform and refused to move, despite informing them that there was no way the loco would come into the station with them in place. It was only when they overheard station staff arranging to do a runaround at the preceding station they very grumpily moved. We arranged much bigger barriers for the next day… We also used to get photographers thinking that as long as they wore hiviz it was absolutely fine to be lineside (had to get the police involved a few times for trespassers).

To anyone suggesting waving your shotgun at trespassers.... If you're reported you'll lose your firearms licence, or at best have the guns seized while the police investigate.

The law is really tough around firearms, rightly so. The guidance and advice is tougher still.

If I was wandering around with a shotgun shooting pigeons and saw trespassers, I'd be extremely cautious about approaching them.

This has made me howl - cheeky so and so's indeed! I once had a boyfriend whose parents lived in a national park - while there was a public right of way all the way up the drive and past his parents' house, the looks we would get as we drove in and out to work etc were usually pure shock and hatred, as though how dare we sully their perfectly pastoral walk, forcing them to the side of the path with our dirty car and having the temerity of actually living there. We would drive slowly and carefully, smile and wave but rarely got anything back. It was hilarious!

The number who would wander up to the windows and peer in or mosey around the stables, all of which were very much off the footpath also shocked me when I first started staying over. I grew up in the countryside and was taught to stick to the damn route and not to tarry on other people's property, regardless of whether there was a right of way.

On an unrelated note, turns out Jack Russells are excellent at herding entitled sorts who think they can sit on your garden bench, by your front door, well through a gate clearly marked private...🙃

On my local FB page was a very entitled post by a dog walker who had encountered a landowner picking up other peoples dog poo from HER land and got an earful. She wanted to "start a petition" to be allowed to use this land.
Got her arse handed to her

I'm feeling a bit left out. My previous house had a pretty stream at the bottom of the garden with a field the otherside of the stream. We rented the field. I never saw anyone walking across it, no one ever went for a paddle in the stream, no one ever crossed the wooden bridge over the steam to have a picnic in our garden.

What was wrong with my field, stream, garden? I feel insulted.

How rude and entitled!
We have similar, as own a smallholding with a very old unusual building and have had people walk right past the Private Property, no public access, sign on our gates, wander through the fields, take photos of the front of the house from the drive which is 100m from the village and entrance..
I have found people camping in our fields, caught many emptying their car rubbish into our fields, letting dogs off into the fields ...it just beggars belief.
The incredible thing is when politely challenged they are often so rude!
Now l say,
how would you like it if l were to tramp over your front garden peer into your living room and take photos?
How would you it if l were to bring my dogs to defacate outside your front door?
Where do you live as l would like to do that?
We have padlocked the main drive now, and put electric fencing on our side of the boundary fence to discourage climbing over.
I am considering buying a bull.

they'd have a field day here as, because of the funny layouts, front gardens have the best view, most peace from the road and everyone takes out chairs and loungers at the first hint of sun.

I know it's not very mn not to stake one side or the other but I can see both sides of the acces argument.

People do need greater access to countryside, imo. One of the most depressing facts is the amount of common access land that is land locked by private land - meaning the public could walk on the common land, but only if they can get a lift in by helicopter. So the small % they do have access to, is greatly reduced because they would have to trespass over someone's else's land to get to it.

Public rights of way are brilliant and I've walked (or attempted to walk) many in my county and it's clear which farmers handle RoW across their land well, and which deliberately plant crops or do other things (eg park farm gear) to dissuade anyone using them. It used to be you could report it, but these days there isn't anyone who really cares anough to do anything about it - and so RoW are lost because then it can be argued they are never used.

Add to that the landowners are less and less farmers and more and more the likes of James Dyson who just buy chucks of land in a country he no longer lives in, having interferred with its politics and then buggered off. Or the Darwells who tried to stop an ancient right to wild camping in Dartmoor. It's feudal that massive landowners like this are able to lobby for less and less rights for the public.

However, many people are selfish idiots and they litter and cause problems with livestock etc and this is wrong. Dogs loose near sheep is a serious problem in my county and so I also empathise with farmers anger at seeing this happen time and time again or not wanting to keep having to pick up the mess than the public have left behind in their wake. And with horse owners when people insist on feeding them whatever crap they want to. It's plain wrong and it's expensive and heartbreaking. And anyone messing with a cow (let alone a bull) is almost too stupid for words.

It is a shame they ruin it for the responsible among us, because there is actually quite a nice unspoken agreement that could be struck otherwise. Responsible walkers do not cause damage and leave no trace they were there (apart from maybe the well trodden grass) and can help reduce crimes such as hare coarsing or fly tipping by being extra eyes on the more remote locations. Both of which are issues where I live.

Greater access also helps create affection and means there will be greater voices to help protect the countryside we have. If people are not allowed to engage with nature, they stop caring so much about it. People are shallow like that, but we care more about what we are familier with.

That said, some on here joking about threatening people with firearms also doesn't sit right with me. A gun is a tool and should only be used as such, imo - not a threat of violence towards other people. Even idiots. But maybe they are typing what they are sometimes tempted to do when especially frustrated, rather than something they actually do.

Did they move when he asked them? On that one I would hope it was just a mistake, although how they think the chairs appeared IDK.

The biggest issue around here is people dumping rubbish on farms, luckily enough most of our land is far enough away from the road/ not convenient but I have been videos of farmers catching people in the act and they just shrug it off and stay stuff like what does it matter out here, it's not bothering anyone.

I've been awful videos of people destroying fields on scrambler bikes etc. And I know of a farmer who killed a teenager on a bike like that - he came out of forest the and straight under the back of a trailer, that was very sad 😓. Farms are not play areas

You should have put some picnic benches out

Your paragraph 1

The point has nothing to do with no one using the field and no one using the land at that point in time
The point is….it isn’t there’s.
We don’t all sit in our gardens all day, is it therefore ok to use other people gardens just because no one’s in them at the time!

When the owner of property is constantly having to remove dog poo and constantly having to put up with other people, their children and their dogs leaving crap everywhere and chasing farm animals and acting so entitled I’m sure you can appreciate that owners have every right to get peed off.

Thats not to mention the energy and cost of clearing up other peoples crap or in my case having to hose down a child’s wee off my barn.

If you owned land I think your kindness would be very short lived

I envy you @Iwasafool
My neighbour culverted mine ( a large well known brewery company ) with no permission!
Now it’s just a muddy ditch

My DH also used to live in a village that was part of a country estate in an AONB. Their house was one of the biggest in the little hamlet and had a front garden. The amount of tourists that would park carelessly before going off on their hike, sit on the garden wall to eat their sandwiches and dump their rubbish in the front garden was mind blowing. DH told me he'd had knocks on the door from tourists asking if he could fill their water bottles multiple times, and on one memorable occasion a man started berating my FIL for not keeping the front garden nicer "we've come for a day out and it's a state"

@ThePlumsOfWilfred has summarized the situation very well. Despite the existence of CFs like in the original post, there should be more access to the countryside. I spent 10 years traipsing round the public rights of way of Bedfordshire and hardly ever met a soul. Unfortunately I encountered lots of public footpaths that were overgrown and neglected, or where the farmer had presumably deliberately knocked the signpost into the ditch and left it there. I did tresspass once full of righteous anger when after completing a 10 mile circuit on public footpaths only to find the last field before the starting point to be full of young boisterous calves. Rather than face them with my child, we took a short cut on a private road.

So to cut a long ramble short, we need more and better paths for everyone to encourage more movement and engagement with the countryside. And not just footpaths, bicycle paths too! For example, often villages are not joined together by footpaths because traditionally the footpaths led to the local manor or were replaced by a road with no pavement. If the only alternative option is walking along the edge of a hedge-lined road, you can see why people drive everywhere.

Areas popular with tourists are another matter altogether. I've no idea how you can stop people being so bloody entitled and selfish. You only need to look at what has happened in Scotland with wild camping, and the rubbish and dirt left everywhere to realise that people in the UK are not public spirited enough to be allowed unlimited free access to the countryside!

What does your son being autistic have to do with anything? Confused.

@potato57 , it was of more significant to the son because it's his special fixation.

Sorry to derail but aren't cocoa and hot chocolate the same thing?

You understand that a field of grass is a crop? So people walking over it squashes it down, and can and does damage said crop. Not to mention the inevitable litter and dog mess. Not to mention it’s private land.

Let me out it in teaching terms - it’s akin to me walking into your classroom, taking all your pencils and snapping them in half. My taxes pay for those classrooms and pencils. I’ll never own a classroom of my own, you really should share. Why can’t I do that?

Thank you for this post. It's what I was, very clumsily, trying to say last night. I just couldn't find the words.

Strange that you used to be a teacher yet are so lacking in common sense. Maybe your previous pupils are the ones now trespassing and insisting they're doing nothing wrong.

The lady we bought our house from once told me how she’d pulled back the bedroom curtains one morning to find a man, sat on the drive, fishing the private pond in the garden.
He argued the toss about moving too.