The Wansdyke & District Forums

I dont quite know where to put this but here will do. Roy and I have started seeing men out on the estate, up the Ramsbury end. Always two, always a big clean vehicle, nothing of the farm about them. They dont threaten you. They just sit, or walk the field, and look at you until you would rather not be there, and I suppose that is the whole point of them. I have stopped going that way. I hate that I have stopped going that way.

thats my top ground theyre sat on half the time anne. the firm i wouldnt sell to, theyve got men on it now regardless, range rover at the gate, walking the field. cant move em on, its their land or near enough. tell you the path's closed when it aint. i dont know what theyre guarding up there, theres nowt but grass and a sarsen and a tumbledown barn, but theyre guarding it like the crown jewels.

Same men, or the same sort, on the eastern paths I lost. So there it is. Where the diversions dont keep you out, the men do. Between the two of them you cannot get within half a mile of the middle of that estate any more. Thirty years I have walked this country and I have never known the like.

security firm. big landowner thinks hes got trespassers or coursers or just wants his privacy, he hires lads to sit about and look heavy, its legal and its common as muck. dont engage with em, dont give em the satisfaction, and dont let it stop you using a right of way thats yours. thats exactly what theyre banking on, you giving it up.

theyre winning then mech, cos anne's stopped, frans funnelled, and i keep off my own top ground half the time to save the aggravation. clever, that. nobody lays a finger on you and theyve got the whole down to theirselves.