AIBU to be fed up with walkers trespassing on our land?

[Pricelessadvice]

We have a family farm that, unfortunately, has a footpath that runs through it.
The footpath turns and goes into some woods and off our property but many people ignore the turn and just carry on around our land. This is mostly dog walkers. They then let their dog crap on our fields and just leave it. We take a crop off the land- some years a hay crop, some years beans, others wheat- but people just don’t seem to care.
I am always polite when I see someone trespassing. I ask them if they know they have left the footpath and I point them back in the direction of it. 9 people out of 10 get really arsey about it. I get all the excuses in the book- “it’s just fields/I always walk here/I can do what I want/it’s just grass/other people do it”
Ive had off lead dogs chasing my liveries horses (who have permission to ride the headlands), sheep being worried, the list goes on.

There are plenty of signs telling people where the footpath is and where it isn’t, but they get ignored.

When I try to explain to people that they wouldn’t like it if I walked my dogs in their garden every day and let them poo everywhere, they just argue that it’s not the same coz “these are fields”
SIGH
The Covid year was a bloody nightmare with people wandering everywhere.
When did people get so entitled? AIBU to think that people just think they can do whatever the hell they want nowadays?

Well yes, obviously 🤣 I was commenting on how fortunate I feel to have right to roam in my beautiful local area 🙂

We lived on a small holding with a permissive footpath that ran alongside our garden. It was clearly signed along with a request to keep all dogs a leads.The majority of people who used it were respectful. However, a couple of times a year a family (usually tourists) would set up a picnic in the middle of our garden. Even had one group arguing about their right to do this-couldn’t believe their gall. Used to send out my large(but very friendly) dog to share their food. Some people are so entitled.

As a keen reader of this site it always amazes me how many people don’t read the OP properly before commenting.

This op clearly states they have plenty of signs making it obvious where the path goes.

maybe im being too naive

You really are. I walk at least once a week on my friend's farm, with her, and our dogs. It's well over 1,000 acres of arable and has more than one PROW crossing it - think all denoted as Public Footpaths. Their attitude is that, as they own such a huge amount if the countryside, it should still be accessible to the public where possible (not just the PROW). As such all their fields, and up to and around the two woodland areas, have wide 'tracks' mown and unplanted at the edges for people to walk on. There is only one small area, very close to their houses, that they have sign posted as private. All they ask is that people are respectful. They aren't. Every week we take litter picking gear and fill a bag each. Every week there's evidence of people who have walked across the crop. Often she is told by people, doing something she politely asks them not to 'I've got permission from the farmer' - who don't give a toss when told 'Er, I AM the farmer!'. She regularly has things like mattresses and other large waste chucked over the fences of the houses that back on to one particular area of the farm. If she's lucky they won't have also set fire to it. People on quad bikes and scramblers damaging vast areas of crop (large amounts of the farm butt against roads and lanes and it can't all be fenced/ditched or gated - but in any case, the gates that are there have been regularly vandalised to gain access anyway. Children 'baiting' the combine happens every year. We've both been aggressively verbally abused, she's been threatened with violence more than once, threatened with dogs and twice threatened with a gun. She has had to call the police out more than once when followed back to the farm buildings by aggressive men. These are not even isolated incidences, they happen often.

As a land manager I feel your pain. That said, exactly how plentiful are the signs? Are they really, really obvious and exactly placed where people need to change direction? Do they have words or pictorgrams? I've found that lots of people don't know what a blue or yellow arrow means any more.

It sounds like people have been heading the wrong way for a while now and a desire line has formed. Once that's happened you're going to need a lot of enforcement and ideally something physical to disrupt the habit - ditch, hedge, ploughed strip, herbal lay?

This is puzzling. I'd expect a few arseholes but in my experience the majority of walkers are not like this. Do you live near a town or major beauty spot so you get a lot of people who are not used to the countryside? If not, are the signs as clear as you think they are? I'd ask a friend to walk the path with you and check it's obvious which way to go. Is one of the apps giving mistaken instructions?

You could try putting up extra signs about some kind of danger as well as it being private e.g. beware of the bull or even 'private shooting range' 😉

I would put up signs saying “Private property “ and “Beware of the bull” There aren’t many people who would chance it.

Signs, fences and gates are the way to stop this. Some people will have been walking these routes for years, decades, many farmers don’t mind as long as you stick to the edges and one local farm I know actively encourages it during the seasons they have just planted seeds as people with (well behaved) dogs are more effective than scarecrows. It’s often very difficult to follow public footpaths and I’ve ended up climbing over gates having got lost many times

In Scotland we have Access Officers who can help with guidance on such issues, is there not an equivalent in England?

PS the only time I have ever walked across crops is when the path is totally unclear. It leaves me feeling 'if you can't be arsed to co-operate, I can't be arsed to be reasonable either'. This probably isn't the case but I'd check clarity is still good for someone unused to maps & walking directions.

There is no boundary. The footpath is a public right of way to cross land they own.

That is awful, OP. People are arseholes

The trouble is that the small minority are entrenched in the idea that they can do whatever they want to do. I don't think it is just people not used to the countryside. We also live near a very popular walking / cycling path. There is a gate at one point which people often use as a break point. Throughout the year, we pick up litter left there by people who clearly can't be bothered to carry stuff home. Looking at their gear, some of these are clearly regular walkers and cyclists.

Could you talk to a solicitor about putting up a legal notice by the bend, warning people not to trespass?

Is there a local paper that could run a story for you, so that the local dog walkers are made aware? I believe there is a new law around owners of dogs that cause damage to livestock; make it clear that you will be vigilant and prosecuting anyone who breaks the law.

All those saying fence or hedge it off obviously have no concept of how incredibly expensive this would be to do and maintain on a farm.

We have a farm, OP. I agree, it’s incredibly annoying, especially those with dogs who are not trained to be around sheep. Sometimes people just wander around and even try to engage me in conversation when I am in my own bloody garden.

We do have several of working dogs on the farm so we will occasionally let them run around and the non farm dogs are terrified of them and we never see those owners again…

ETA: I think PP’s suggestion of putting up signs re: pesticides being used is an excellent one.

Yes, people today are incredibly entitled. In the last 10 years, the amount of people I've had to ask to please leave my private garden - over two houses, one in London and then we sold and moved to the north east. I was told 'Ohh it's the north, you'll get no problems there, unlike that awful London!' But it's just as bad here!

The times I've said something, I have met with vicious verbal abuse, things thrown at my door, etc. Instead of just saying "ooops, sorry!"

I am also a dog walker and live by lots of fields and I am VERY careful about not straying off to the private bits. I'd be mortified if I ever did. I know plenty here do stray and don't care. I don't know why, and it's not young people, it's mostly old!

I had a nice chat with a local farmer recently, who was forced to put 6 private signs up around his fields, as people were just taking the piss. I told him I despise trespassers, too, and he was just lovely.

Sorry op, people are shit. I sympathise massively.

The OP is speaking about one specific point on the path. Stick a section of heras fencing across it.

There is a public footpath near me which I’ve walked a few times and they have the sign below.
My dog is always on her lead and I pick up the dog poo. Unfortunately there are always the entitled CFs who seem to think they can roam all over the place.

Unfortunately for this landowner, the footpath runs across their horse paddock and across their drive so they have put these signs up.
I wish I could afford to buy my own land but sadly that is a lottery win!

My friends have a similar situation. Except part of there land is woods. The area is all fenced off and people just climb over the fence!!! They have their dogs out, offload of course because it is their garden. And people just have their dogs with them. The kids rides their motor bikes in the area so it’s very dangerous. People just don’t care at all.

Reading all these replies with interest. We have stock fenced the PROW that crosses our land and have also invested in smart, clear signage denoting private land.

We have also worked with the local council countryside officers and walkers group and have also taken on financial responsibility to maintain vegetation cutting and also footpath resurfacing with approx 30 tonnes of aggregate. It’s now utterly walkable and accessible at all times of the year whereas many years ago it was a quagmire and impassable in winter.

Yet, despite all this effort, we still have a minority of entitled and ignorant behaviour.

• piles of dog poo left along the path, despite there being bins at either wnd
• litter
• bicycles and now electric scooters being used along a footpath
• trwspassing onto land either side
• wrenching off of signage from gates and stock fencing

I dread the long Easter weekend as invariably it brings out a bunch of even more entitled, angry assholes whose only excuse is that we should put up with it because we own the land - and they don’t.
When I flagged up the trespassing issue on the local community Facebook last year, I had one person tell me ‘get a f&cking life’ , with lots of people liking that comment - even the ones we have very naively made donations and offered produce for local charity fundraising events.

I think there’s something dark and unpleasant going on: for a minority, this poor behaviour is viewed by them as being entirely justifiable because it’s privately owned. There is real resentment.
Whereas the reality is we have invested thousands into its upkeep and doing all the right things, certainly in a way that the Local Authority could not afford to do if uunder their ownership. I mean, they can’t even afford to fund their own statutory obligations with regards to PROWs - we do!

Those saying to fence if, it’s not actually that easy due to the layout of our land and needing access for tractors. I can’t really explain it very well but we would need a lot of fencing and it would make accessing some of the fields very difficult. I also don’t think it would work as people think as fencing really doesn’t stop people nowadays! On the other end of the property, where the footpath comes in from the other direction, we have a big locked gate with a No Entry sign that leads out to our crop fields. People pushed a hole in our hedge to get through.

I can promise you I’m not rude. I learnt years ago that you catch far more bees with honey, so I’m always polite and I even say things like “it’s a bit confusing if you don’t know the area, so don’t worry, but the path winds into the woods there…”
I think people might get a bit arsey because of embarrassment.
My liveries get the same reaction when they are out riding and try and re-route people to the footpath. They’ve had people telling them “well why are YOU riding on it then??” I even had a livery and her horse chased by an out of control dog a few years ago. Thankfully they didn’t fall off and managed to pull the horse up.

I love dogs and I would never harm a dog so I absolutely would never threaten to hurt one. It’s not the dogs fault, they are just being a dog.

We do have signs. A few got pulled down during Covid times (by walkers who got annoyed at being told they were trespassing) which we replaced, but I’m going to get some more done.
I know a lot of people don’t like farming folk, but we are nice, decent people just trying to make a living. The farm isn’t huge, but it’s a working farm and livelihoods depend on it.

I think I'm more frustrated at the amount of dog poo that people leave all over the place. They don’t even have to decency to clean up because they think “oh it’s just a farm”
😒

presumably you’ve signs saying this isn’t a public right of way. You are trespassing. Angry bull in situ etc ?
if so then add an electric fence if you can’t build a permanent fence along the footpath ?
walker here. I’d be mortified if I was trespassing on a path I thought was public

Surely it’s up to the walker to ensure they’re on permitted paths (as marked on Ordnance Survey maps) not farmers to pay for expensive fencing?

Extra signage and maybe fencing is the way to go I think. But as a pp has pointed out, fencing isn’t always practical when planting crops.

I am not a land owner but I do understand the frustration of people walking where they’re not supposed to and dogs fouling the land is not acceptable.

Observing signs and keeping to designated paths ain’t difficult! The entitlement of some people thinking they “can go where they like and do what they want” is bloody annoying.

Hope you find a resolution for this OP….perhaps a few signs claiming ‘beware bull loose’ or ‘crop planted likely to cause harm to dogs’ might get the message across?

I know of one bright young thing who genuinely thought that a farmer was being a bit unreasonable being annoyed when he was caught not just trespassing, but pissing, in his paddock.

They walk among us.