[EDIT: you can read the stories from my progress across my map here.]
My hopes were high. It was a perfect high summer day and the grid square looked enticing, on paper at least. It was marked as mostly woodland with a hill, a small lake and a Roman villa thrown in for luck. A Roman road, now a motorway, sliced across the square next to a railway line. A third of the square was a popular country park and the rest of it was pure countryside with only a single building marked on the square. I was very much looking forward to a summer sunshine meander through idyllic ancient parkland dotted with enormous old oak trees.
And yet.
And yet it turned out that the solitary building was a historic manor house that owned most of the grid square and resolutely refused to share it with me. The lake was fenced off with forbidding signs from a fishing club. So I found myself being shunted away from the estate of the Elizabethan mansion down a noisy footpath squashed between the motorway and a chain link fence. I hoped to explore a small patch of woodland but that turned out to belong to a golf course and so too was off limits.
The lake? I have no idea.
The Roman villa and ancient earthworks? Nada.
The most enjoyable part of the foray so far was standing on the motorway bridge watching the noisy traffic hurtle beneath me.
Away at last from the empty expanses of private land, I could now enjoy stretching my legs in the woodland of the country park. It was a really nice park, with footpaths and running trails weaving around the woodland. But with this being the school summer holidays the park was really busy. There were so many of us squashed into this small sector of public countryside and I was irritated and in no mood to enjoy the park.
As is to exacerbate my mood I cycled over the trimmings of a strimmed hedge and got the first puncture of my year exploring this map. Taking this as a sign from the gods I conceded defeat on the day and limped to the nearest pub to fix my puncture and stew over the repeated frustrations of land access issues that have reared their head time and again across this map.
That does sound very frustrating. Last summer, I was boasting to a cycling friend that I hadn’t had a puncture in years. As you could probably guess, I had 2 the following week! I am interested in the Run England signs in your photos. Being from the US, I am not familiar with them, but it sound intriguing. Off to Google for research…
Have you read trespass by nick hayes? A great treatise on the sorry state of land ownership in England
Yes – really good. There’s also an excellent interview with Nick on The Adventure Podcast that is worth a listen.
Here’s an extract from “Three Men in a Boat” about trespassing and how to deal with it. I love this book. Nothing has changed since 1899!
We stopped under the willows by Kempton Park, and lunched. It is a pretty little spot there: a pleasant grass plateau, running along by the water’s edge, and overhung by willows. We had just commenced the third course—the bread and jam—when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn’t given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it. He gave us the required assurance, and we thanked him, but he still hung about, and seemed to be dissatisfied, so we asked him if there was anything further that we could do for him; and Harris, who is of a chummy disposition, offered him a bit of bread and jam. I fancy he must have belonged to some society sworn to abstain from bread and jam; for he declined it quite gruffly, as if he were vexed at being tempted with it, and he added that it was his duty to turn us off. Harris said that if it was a duty it ought to be done, and asked the man what was his idea with regard to the best means for accomplishing it. Harris is what you would call a well-made man of about number one size, and looks hard and bony, and the man measured him up and down, and said he would go and consult his master, and then come back and chuck us both into the river. Of course, we never saw him any more, and, of course, all he really wanted was a shilling. There are a certain number of riverside roughs who make quite an income, during the summer, by slouching about the banks and blackmailing weak-minded noodles in this way. They represent themselves as sent by the proprietor. The proper course to pursue is to offer your name and address, and leave the owner, if he really has anything to do with the matter, to summon you, and prove what damage you have done to his land by sitting down on a bit of it. But the majority of people are so intensely lazy and timid, that they prefer to encourage the imposition by giving in to it rather than put an end to it by the exertion of a little firmness. Where it is really the owners that are to blame, they ought to be shown up. The selfishness of the riparian proprietor grows with every year. If these men had their way they would close the river Thames altogether. They actually do this along the minor tributary streams and in the backwaters. They drive posts into the bed of the stream, and draw chains across from bank to bank, and nail huge notice-boards on every tree. The sight of those notice-boards rouses every evil instinct in my nature. I feel I want to tear each one down, and hammer it over the head of the man who put it up, until I have killed him, and then I would bury him, and put the board up over the grave as a tombstone. I mentioned these feelings of mine to Harris, and he said he had them worse than that. He said he not only felt he wanted to kill the man who caused the board to be put up, but that he should like to slaughter the whole of his family and all his friends and relations, and then burn down his house. This seemed to me to be going too far, and I said so to Harris; but he answered: “Not a bit of it. Serve ’em all jolly well right, and I’d go and sing comic songs on the ruins.” I was vexed to hear Harris go on in this blood-thirsty strain. We never ought to allow our instincts of justice to degenerate into mere vindictiveness. It was a long while before I could get Harris to take a more Christian view of the subject, but I succeeded at last, and he promised me that he would spare the friends and relations at all events, and would not sing comic songs on the ruins.
I love it!
A lot of red tape there my man :D, thankfully you can rely on a pint of Peroni to fix a puncture of the mind ha!