Another locked gate! (Methven)

I wanted to try a circular walk around Methven via Dalcrue from the car park in Methven by the recreation ground. Setting off with the dog in an anticlockwise direction, we walked east along the busy A85, Crieff road.   The core paths - designated by the council, protected by law, and available on a clickable map. are shown in purple. My planned route is shown in green.  

 

It is noisy, dirty and not fun walking along an A road.  Still, we'd only have to do it once.  We turned off up the track to Methven Castle Farm, which I'd been to before from the other direction.  Previously, we'd come by accident. Walking from the east side of Methven woods, my son and I had been looking for the path through the woods immediately east of the farm.   Chatting, we'd missed it, overshot by quite a bit and found ourselves at the farm.  The reason we'd missed it was because the woodland was fenced and I hadn't noticed the tall stile that served as 'access'.  Accessible to some, but not others, and not accessible to my dog.  Yes, the waymarkers indicate another route. I'd already done that route.  And it doesn't mean we have to do what they suggest.  

This time, as I approached this woodland from the farm I noticed a gate in the fence on the woodland's west side.  Oh joy, it was only closed with wire!  It wasn't a normal gate certainly not a 'welcoming' one  - even once open you had to duck under fencing.  Indeed, it looked as though somebody might have tried sabotaging the entrance.  Apart from the loose barbed wire on the ground there was a dump of many rusty, poky rods. 

Still, it was a gate not a stile and Max managed to pass through without being speared.  We walked through the woodland along what had probably been a substantial track at one time.  You can tell from the channels on either side and the raised aspect of the route.  I'd seen the same thing on the old and now very overgrown Lynedoch carriageway not far away.

A map of 1864 shows there were in fact two tracks running through this woodland. Methven Castle Farm was called Home Farm at that time.

Of course, I could have gone on a route I'd done before and knew to be open, through Methven wood further east.  But it was longer, I didn't have much time, I like the road less travelled and besides, I was curious.  Below - green:  the route I wanted to go; yellow:  the route I could have gone.

In law, I don't actually need a reason for choosing a particular route.  You're not obliged to follow core paths, in fact the yellow route isn't even a core path.  Happily, you just have a right of responsible access.   

At the end of the woodland there was a gate.  It was high and locked with a chain. So much for access.  It had chicken wire all around the base.  I could have climbed over, at a push, but the dog couldn't get through.  I looked along the fence for holes but as with so many fences nowadays, it was efficacious.  

Location of the padlocked gate

There is nothing to steal here.  There is no livestock, no expensive equipment.  It is just trees. There was no obvious reason why this gate should be locked.

Regretting that no-one braver than me had been along before, with wire cutters, I gave up on yet another walk and we retraced our steps.  There wasn't time to do the other route now.  After a difficult day you look forward to a walk. Walking in the country is indeed a miracle pill.  But locked gates, intimidating signs and shouty landowners change all that and you can wish you hadn't gone out at all - which is what some of them want. Along the road, the dog flinched and cowered flat at every passing, thundering vehicle bigger than a car. It took a while.  

The 2003 Land Reform Act gave us seemingly enormous freedoms.  But on the ground, it is often hard to see them. If landowners don't want you on their land, they will simply lock the gates and many do.  I probably encounter at least as many gates locked as unlocked.  I know, because of the relief I feel when I find one I can get through.  You don't feel relief when it's more normal to find gates unlocked.  

What council or voluntary group has the resources to chase every landowner even if they had the will?  In a country community where a lot of people know one another, few have the will to take on belligerent, very possibly well-connected landowners who think they're above the law.    If you have a proactive council and if you're lucky they might write a letter.  But a landowner can easily ignore letters, knowing, fairly safely, that no or little more pressure will be brought to bear upon them.  The public may have rights in theory, but when it comes to walking, it's what happens on the ground, that counts.

Moreover, when there is an alternative it is all too easy to get fobbed off or ignored:  "Oh, just leave it she can learn to go the long way and stop making a fuss".  I haven't raised this as a complaint with the council because an email asking questions on another matter was ignored and I thought "what's the point?"  (I subsequently made an FOI which was answered).  Since then though I have heard that, with the support of the Access Forum, a group elected to represent access issues, the council will sometimes write letters to intransigent landowners or ones that harass walkers so I might try.  It is important that gates are not locked when there is not good reason for it, otherwise what is the point of land reform laws?

This is not the end of the story of this walk.  On the way back I was ordered about and witnessed another walker interrogated and harassed.  More to come soon.