"You can't walk here!" (CIty wood)

I have just had my first on-the-ground challenge regarding access to land.  As a fan of the woods I've been trying to get into a small, local wood since last year. It is ancient woodland of semi-natural origin, which is not common. Most ancient woodland is of plantation origin. 

I had tried on other occasions to reach it from two different directions.  I knew from the map there was a single building, possibly a house at the end of the track. Provided I wasn't going to infringe privacy, the plan was to turn sharp right at the end along another track or alternatively go past the house and into the wood depending on the lie of the land when I got there.  Recently, in the woods opposite, I had turned and walked back the same way for several miles rather than walk past a rural cottage in search of a circular walk.  

Near the road were the usual, welcoming signs:  No Parking.  Private road.  Warning: you are being filmed.  The No Parking is what had put me off before but I parked further along the verge.  Tyre tracks showed I was not the first.  At least there were no signs about snares and shooting your dog.  I guess they thought most people would be sufficiently put off not to need these as well.  

I set off up the track:

I had what might now, after the events that followed, be described as a premonition, but at the time I just found myself realising in a general way that it was probably going to be when rather than if that I would be challenged face to face about access to the land.   I didn't realise it would quite so soon.

The reality is not quite as it shows on the map.  It was a relief that the right turn is somewhat before not after the house.  The track forks.  One side goes left up to the garden and cottage.  The other fork turns right into the wood.  

One would be hard-pressed to argue that walking along the track and turning right into the wood was an invasion of anyone's privacy.   Before the dwelling came in view through the trees I had already hesitated because I could hear a lot of dogs barking.  Max had had to be coaxed up the track with treats, he was so nervous. Having had a recent, scary experience with dogs outside a farm, I was cautious.  Then I saw an enclosure some way ahead, which appeared to be an outdoor kennel in which I thought I saw animal movement.  Thinking the dogs were penned I felt safer and continued to head towards the wood.  Suddenly, somebody shouted.  I turned and saw a man between the house and the kennel looking in my direction.  I looked about in case he meant someone else. He shouted again and started to walk towards me.  I waited.  He was older than me, ruddy looking.  He wore country clothes, a deerstalker and had a local accent.

Then the aggressive, angry questioning began.  What was I doing?  

I indicated the dog.  "Er, going for walk."  

"Where?"

"Into this wood."

"Why?"

I began to feel irritated.  "I think that's my business". 

"Well, you can't.  You can't just walk up people's drives. This is my drive."  

"I'm not walking up your drive.  I'm walking up this track into this wood.  I have every right to do that" 

But he stuck to his guns, which luckily he didn't have literally:  "I don't go about walking up people's drives in Perth!  You can't come past my house like this".  It struck me that in town people walk past houses that are metres away.  This house was some distance away along a drive.

"I'm not coming past your house.  I can't even see your house." This wasn't strictly true, but then his claim was excessive.  Besides, in summer, with more foliage, you probably wouldn't see the house at all.

"You can't see my house? It's right there!" 

"I can see a wall, set back, not nearby, behind trees.  I'm not invading your privacy.  I'm not in your garden.   I'm not walking past your windows.  I'm not even looking in the direction of your windows.  Actually, though, I am going to take a  photograph so that if necessary I can show anyone I need to how far away I am."   So, standing at the fork I took a photo towards the house and of the other direction towards the wood.  

But he wouldn't let up.   "You don't have a right to roam", he said, rather redundantly, as I hadn't claimed this. "You have a right to responsible access" he lectured, patronisingly.  I began to wonder how many people who might come up here would be clear on the distinction.  Not many I thought, in which case it was just an effort at bamboozlement.  

I'm not even sure what "right to roam" means and I think that's the point.  It doesn't really mean anything, legally.  I think it's sometimes taken to mean by some, that you can go anywhere you like, which isn't true.  What you can't do is common sense really.  You can't disturb livestock or crops or go through gardens.  You have to close gates, not cause damage or danger or leave a mess. You don't have a right to go through farmyards either which I find confusing because many tracks lead through farmyards.  We tend to avoid them anyway as Max is too scared of them and I avoid houses and farms as far as possible.  If we have to, we walk around farmyards or I ask permission or if there's no-one about and it is on a marked track I walk through quickly usually carrying the dog by that stage. I have never been challenged.   What I should have started talking about to the angry man was my right to go about my business without harassment, rather than putting up with feeling like I was being hammered. 

Then he went too far.  He began to talk about my walking up here and coming up to him.  I started to get annoyed because this was completely the opposite of what happened.  I had been minding my own business.  He had hailed me and stopped me and walked over to me while I had courteously waited for him.  I made that point.  I explained that I had previously tried to go up the track marked on the map opposite the entrance to Broxden wood but that it was overgrown with gorse.  We went round that a couple of times whereupon I thought he began to see I was being reasonable.  Quite suddenly he gave in, said "Fair enough" and turned on his heel.  

He had been so belligerent it occurred to me to wonder if he was hiding something.

His departure had been sudden and it crossed my mind that he might set his dogs on us.  The wood petered out in a clearing that had been felled so I turned back and spotted a track into more woodland.  There were a couple of non-evergreens, but that was it.  No sign of any semi-natural woods.  I wondered if they were a remnant.  

Not five minutes after we'd left the man, just as I entered the woodland, three sturdy black labradors came hurtling down towards us.  I was worried at first but they did not seem aggressive.  The man appeared and called off his dogs, which seemed obedient for the most part.  He could have gone various ways but started following me into the wood.  I now really did feel start to feel intimidated.  After a few minutes, I turned around and said so.  He denied this was his intention.  I said I thought I had a good case:  I'd been stopped, unreasonably challenged, at length, aggressively, while doing nothing wrong.  He had then let loose three dogs that had chased after us.  Then he'd followed me through the wood.  He said he was just following his 4pm routine: feed the dogs, walk down the track look at the footprints.  I'd seen him feeding the dogs, hadn't I? 

- "No", I said.  "I wasn't paying you any attention until you shouted at me". 

I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.  He didn't have a gun.  He didn't look like he was going to attack me although he had his dogs.  Still, I wanted the situation defused.  I explained that I was here to look at the wood but that it all looked like plantation and not as I'd hoped. 

"So you like trees?"  I could see myself being pigeonholed as harmless and decided to roll with that.   Besides, both things were true. 

After this he mellowed considerably and we walked down the track talking about the local woods, country things and old maps.  He became almost affable.  He said Gallowspark wood across the B9112 is to be felled for a biomass factory.  I asked where the track we were on led to and he said nowhere which made me think it wasn't much of a 4pm walk for his dogs if that was really what he did daily and wasn't in fact trying to intimidate me or check up on us.   

We parted on better terms.  He repeated that he hadn't been intimidating me and it was fair enough if I wanted to walk down the track.  He just seemed to have been worried I wanted to walk by the house.  I guess if you get into a routine of chasing people off perhaps it gets to be normal.  I am quite sure one gets better at it.  Most people I meet on tracks and talk about access issues with have been easily put off by "Private" signs.  I am sure even more are put off by angry men in deerstalkers with dogs.  What is it about angry men in the countryside? 

I walked around a field and back to the car.  I suppose he went back the way he'd come.  I would quite like to go back and explore the wood a bit more and see if there is any semi-natural part to it left but I'm not sure I'm brave enough.  Still, perhaps the worst is over.  I wondered if he'd've been like that if I'd've had a man with me.  Or been a man.

It shouldn't be like this.

How accessible is the countryside around Perth?

Methven circular via Tippermallo farm

How many are keen on walks on muddy tracks, along open windswept fields, especially on a sleety February afternoon in Scotland?  I take pains to avoid this sort of walk and yet here I was.  Why?  Because I couldn't get in to the woods.  This is a post about land access.

I had spent 45 minutes driving in the countryside trying to find a place to pull in and explore some of the less explored woods near me.  I enjoy the shelter, the diversity, the peace of the woods.  Woodland paths if not too popular, are often less icy and less waterlogged than on treeless land.   I go to the plaeces few people do, because of my dog.  To walk with a dog never off a lead I think is cruel and against my religion. Max has a low-key profile in my photos, always there, standing alert and waiting, or snuffling about ahead or just out of shot.  But he defines where I go, to quiet places, because he is inclined to bark at people which scares or annoys them.  If a cyclist arrives suddenly before I have time to leash the dog he will bark around them in an alarming though (to date, over a year) harmless way.  I am very grateful to the fearless and understanding cyclists who have, despite this, both stopped so that I can grab the dog and not taken umbrage at this interruption to their ride.  

The previous day, unable to face a proper walk in the rain and sleet I had taken him around the park, where there still a few people trekking homeward. Max was deeply occupied in sniffing the ground.   Along the path, I saw a dark figure,  bundled up against the weather, approaching.  I decided to leash the dog just in case.  As though through telepathy he raised his head, stared at the bundle, took a few paces towards the path and started barking.  A woman's voice began shrieking and crying, probably past the border into hysteria.  She batted the air as if to fend off an invisible assailant, mauling her at shoulder height.  The dog seemed as taken aback as I.  Equally bundled I lumbered towards them in kind of crashing run, the huge umbrella catching the wind.  Max leashed, I turned to the woman to apologise for the noise, but she was scuttling away still crying a bit and batting.  "Sorry", she said, plaintively, "I just...". 

"No, no....Sorry," I said, feeling  dreadful, adding, needlessly," He's just very noisy..."   We walked on, miserably in the rain as darkness gathered in the sodden, largely barren park.  "This is ridiculous," I thought.  "A dog on a lead in an empty park."  I let him off, forgetting we were near the swans, who, inevitably, he likes to challenge with barks.  The swans are entirely unperturbed and while I try to avoid these confrontations they no longer fill me with the panic of a potential battle that they used to.  I have realised swans can easily take care of themselves.  They stand their own ground and hiss back, confidently, from the water.  But it wasn't the swans.  Max had seen two big, leashed husky type dogs.  Their owner, another woman, was shouting at them manically to "Come on, come away" as though my small, single dog who was neither approaching nor barking, was liable to attack her two, very imposing animals.  Wondering if I'd missed some new twist in world events that had turned everyone rather odd, we moved away.  It's probably just winter, lockdown and rain.  But tomorrow, I thought, we'll have to go somewhere remote again & hang the weather.  Thank goodness it's not the 'Lockdown 1' rules for travel this time.

So that is why we were driving through the countryside again, looking for pull-ins around Drumbuich wood some eight miles from Perth.  They were hard to come by.  Drumbuich is part of a sizeable stretch of woodland south of the river Almond, incorporating the woods of Stottleburn, Druveigh, Drumbuich, Pickston, the woodland around Keillour, Gorthy wood and Murray's Hill wood. It runs from the west side of Perth from the woodland fringing the Almond around Almondbank, to Methven wood, all the way to Fowlis Wester, with some small gaps.  There is no formal parking for any of it west of Methven.   

Since 2003 in Scotland there is public right of access to most of our land and water with responsibilities set out both for the public and for land managers.  As you travel through it the countryside looks vast and open.  We have a national network of local "core paths" now, often signposted or waymarked with arrow markers. This does not mean though that you can, in reality, walk anything like most of the countryside.  Locked gates, barbed wire, fencing around forests, intimidating signs and a near-total lack of anywhere to park send a clear message to anyone looking to walk that all the land is private, really private, law or no law.   

So where you can you walk?  There are usually walks, often of just a few miles, around settlements, even small villages.  They often require some road walking.  Many 'core paths' are actually not countryside paths at all but in fact are on or next to country roads but also A roads such as the A93 and long stretches of the A94 north of Scone and around Coupar Angus. 

You can also walk from designated car parks beside well known beauty spots.   There are larger car parks at Kinclaven for the bluebell wood, some twelve miles away and at Glen Sherup (21 miles), for walkers.  Two car parks at the Hermitage (15 miles) at Dunkeld reflecting the latter's regional, indeed national, popularity.  

Near Perth we have a small car park at the Jubillee car park, for the woodland parks of Kinnoull and Deuchny and nearby the even smaller Quarry car park with room for just a few cars. These walks are ever more popular and since 2020, especially at weekends and holidays the Jubilee can be like the Marks and Spencer's car park in town, with drivers queueing in the middle of it for spaces.  It is not really possible to take the dog off-lead to Kinnoull at the weekends, there are just so many people. There is another fairly small and very popular car park for the short, accessible and buggy friendly walk at Quarrymill,  

St Magdalene's hill has a small car park but in icy conditions it is treacherous or inaccessible. Again the walks around St Magdalene's, being short and on quite accessible paths are very popular.  Moncreiffe hill is a large park though marred by the ever-present roar of the motorway.  It has two carparks, both icy and treacherous in winter.  I slithered and nearly crashed leaving the north side one one winter.  The approach to the southern one is long and badly potholed. The end of it is on a slope which again can be very icy.  All of these carparks are popular and as some of them become less accessible, those like the Jubilee, become even more overcrowded.  Bike, bus and rail access is poor, nationally, compared to Germany and the Netherlands.  Realistically, access to the countryside for many is by car, especially during the pandemic.  But seeing how overcrowded the car parks have been especially over 2020 and no doubt probably more so during the expected 2021 staycations, their size and number are inadequate to meet public demand.  And then there are the more solitary of us who just want a pull-in near a wood to avoid the crowds.  

So that's how we ended up parking outside the shop in Methven instead and following the core path sign past Tippermallo farm on a barren, depressing, mostly treeless walk.  There is actually a fetching beechwood copse on Methven's south eastern side, behind the rec.  It is small. 

A Dying Dog?

View towards Crieff from the old railway line by Auchterarder

By the time I'd stuck a meal in the slow cooker, driven to Auchterarder & cleared & gritted the folks' drive it was after 4pm, below freezing with just an hour of light left for a short walk along the old railway line to Crieff. Much of it was spent as shown, which might account for what ocurred later.

The short walk over we returned to the car. Last week I'd moved Max from the boot because, increasingly, he was barking at people & bikes making it difficult to drive. Tied in the front he lay on the passenger seat and had been fine. But now, almost as soon as we started the return to Perth, sitting with ears cocked he began staring up & left as though he was seeing a ghost.

Then he crawled his front half onto my knees whining all the while. In the year since we had rescued him he had never whined. I pulled into a layby to see if he would be sick but he just sniffed for food among the rubbish & cowered, terrified by any large vehicle passing but this had been characteristic since we got him aged approx 2.5 years.

But back in the car the craning & whining intensified. He seemed in terrible pain. He crawled right across my knee, panting & whining & seemed hot. I phoned Miguel asking him to find an emergency vet & drove home with the dog in this terrible state. I was convinced he was dying.

A couple of minutes from home Max returned to his own side, stopped whining & sat up. I had expected him to be unable to move from the car or to collapse on the ground but he jumped out & ran to the house. Not wanting him to be ill indoors Miguel grabbed his collar & dragged him outside as I berated his callous treatment of an animal clearly in his final moments. Miguel looked at me askance. The poor, dumb creature ran away, scared, to the end of the yard, though surprisingly swiftly for one in such desperate straits. I coaxed him in. He spent the rest of the evening snuffling for spilt popcorn & dozing contentedly on my feet. In anxiety, I waited for the paroxysms to recommence and was relievef when they did not.

And the squiggles? Those were made as I chased him round and round after he snaffled a dead pigeon under a tree. He danced his way, snowy feathers stuck to his nose, through the woodland as I pursued him, cursing and cajoling through bracken and snow. In the brief intervals before I caught up he cracked through bone and stuck a bloody muzzle insolently inside the cavity of the bird. As the pigeon fell apart he chewed upon a vile, green and stringy looking innard. We both dived for the last wing on the ground. My hiking pole speared it first. Tugging long feathers from his mouth I clipped on his lead. "A whole bird?", said dad. "Feathers and all? Get away!" And went on to tell me about his dog and the wild duck with at least three lives.

Update: it seems Max's experience in the car may not have been related to the bird. A day or two later we drove ten minutes to a nearby wood and he demonstrated the same symptoms though nothing like as dramatically. He whined a little, stared at at the dots at the top of the windscreen, licked his chops a lot, yawned abnormally often and on the return journey tried to stand on my knees. So he will have to back in the boot and perhaps wear a barking collar while there. We surmise something is scaring him terribly in the front of the car.

That's not to say the pigeon has had no effect. There has been two days of diahorrea & barking at night to be let out...