Touch-free to touch-me crossings: how one Perth councillor jeopardised public health during the pandemic

Back to pushing the button during covid - avoidable and unsafe.

This is the second of a series of pieces forming a record of some of the issues I was engaged with as part of Perth Area Living Streets (PALS) during 2020, the year of the covid pandemic.

In early 2020 Perth & Kinross council successfully bid for money from Sustrans' Spaces for People fund.  The idea was to give people more space during the pandemic and to improve cycling as an alternative to the obvious risks of public transport.  In apparently, a UK first, Perth and Kinross council used some of the money to implement pedestrian crossings activated by sensor, meaning people didn’t have to touch the buttons. This was obviously important to avoid infection from covid-19.

Shoppers try to maintain social distance during the covid pandemic, South St, Perth, June 2020.  Note the excellent implementation of touch-free sensors on the pedestrian crossing.

"Councillor removes covid-safe pedestrian crossings during the pandemic". It sounds bizarre, doesn't it?  Why do that?  

 

He said it was to improve air pollution but nobody we spoke to believed that for a minute.  We later received the official reason via an FOI request.  The councillor wasn't known for his pedestrian-friendly initiatives.  He'd just voted against Spaces for People initiatives.  But why did he do it?  It was so that drivers weren't inconvenienced. He thought pedestrians should wait  - breathing in exhaust fumes  and carcinogenic particulate matter - for drivers, not the other way around.  This is Perth.  Drivers first, duh!  This councillor was at the time and still is convener of the Joint Integration Board, the lead body on health & social integration in Perth and Kinross. 

There had been a few teething problems at the beginning with some drivers claiming the green man would come on when no-one was there and the crossings had been duly adjusted.   But that happened before.  People pressed the button then crossed without waiting for the green man or changed their mind and went somewhere else.  What was this?  Driver revenge?

The local officer responsible for the Spaces for People implementation had previously told PALS, which campaigns for an improved pedestrian environment, that the implementation of Spaces for People measures had been delayed in part because of the difficulty in getting agreement on the proposed measure from so many councillors.  There were also procurement problems.  Perhaps he shouldn't have gone to the trouble because once permission was obtained, as with the Battle of Balhousie and the pedestrianisation of the High St, the councillors started caving in, backtracking.  

I lived in the city and the soon to be covid-unsafe crossings affected us a lot.  Every time the kids pressed the button we risked getting covid and carrying it to my parents or the boys risked getting hit by traffic because they were dodging the traffic and not pushing the button. Forty thousand people live in Perth.  A majority in the city centre don't own a car.  This issue affected a lot of people.  The selfishness behind the impulse to remove the sensors beggared belief. In a personal capacity I wrote to the Courier about why it mattered:

But the sensors were turned off or removed.  I asked the Sustrans representative who was embedded with the Traffic and Network (T&N) team:

He said it was made by “senior management”. So I wrote to the head of T&N asking:

The reply came that we should take it up with Cllr Angus Forbes and PKC’s Chief Exec. So I wrote to them.

We heard nothing.

I put in a complaint.

We heard back. By now it was December.

But we never did hear back.

I could have taken it to the ombudsman and on a straightforward failure of the LA to follow its own procedures, probably would have won but it was clear from the Balhousie incident that councillor Forbes couldn’t care less about us and the CEO was on her way to another job. For the wearisome effort of going to the ombudsman, it didn’t seem worth it - and that is what councils count on.  But we didn't need vindication.  We wanted information.

So I put in an FOI request asking the same questions and that did eventually elicit a response.

We put out a press release about the results.

What did we discover? That hardly anyone had complained about the crossings - far fewer than the 234 that had replied to a petition asking the council to consult before removing the crossings. The councillor in his tweet claimed "improve traffic flow" (speeding up the traffic) by not stopping at the crossings would “reduce air pollution”.  “Driver frustration” was the official reason given in the FOI.  

What about pedestrian frustration waiting for long minutes in pollution?  What about pedestrian health, breathing those fumes, pressing that inevitably covid-ridden button.  Why do I keep seeing avoidance of "driver stress" and "driver frustration" given as official reasons for doing things - in Perth and Kinross and across Scotland?  Why does nobody consider the green, clean, long-suffering (often poorer) pedestrian?  Why does the LA instigate and maintain inequality between drivers and pedestrian?

No, they wouldn’t tell us which "senior managers" in the council made the decision. Why wasn't PALS, representing pedestrians, consulted? They consulted the Centre for Inclusive Living (disabled group) instead because they represented the group that would be impacted most. Wrong. Most affected would be the people who caught covid from the crossings, disabled or not. As it happens we now know that disabled people were more likely to be affected by covid, but this was not known at that time.  

For me this was one of the most clarifying moments of the year. We saw the true colours of the people making these decisions. We saw councillors and officials refusing to answer our questions or even our complaint. We saw a lack of consultation, contempt for democratic process, a reluctance to share information until forced to. We saw a councillor responsible for public health putting driver frustration above public health during a global pandemic despite - and being backed on that by officials who were never named. 

In practical terms we saw that decisions were made on complaints, pressure from online petitions with no way of checking how local people were, or whether they were completing the petition multiple times. Nobody assessed how happy people were with the various changes. There was just a knee jerk response to complaints. We saw both how much power our councillors had and yet how morally feeble they could be.

"Madam", the councillor in question remonstrated one day, on Twitter, never a good place to play out your disagreements, though perhaps better than the press.  But I'd had it with the double-dealing, the weasel words, the grandstanding, the talk and no action.  No politician I.  Enough.  You're blocked, sir.  And that was that.  One thing it did feel though, was honest.

So much for getting politicians onside.  But I've never been a great believer in conversion, talking people round.  People come round to things on their own, slowly, when they see the benefits, when the issue is kept alive and when they start to have, personally, those inclinations.  You're either the type who couldn't care less about leaving an engine running, or you're not. It's not conversion that changes people.  It's realisation.

The battle of Balhousie & the "Spaces for People" saga

Mid June, 2020, South St, Perth never did get Space for People.  Shoppers were hemmed in by four lanes allocated to parking, buses and traffic. Typical of Perth:  drivers before pedestrians.

This post could be subtitled  "how traffic calming failed  in Perth and what it revealed about those involved."  

During 2020 I set up and co-convened (with Roger Humphry) Perth Area Living Streets (PALS), a local branch of the national charity for everyday walking. We campaign for a low traffic, greener, cleaner, safer pedestrian environment. We are also supportive of safe cycling infrastructure and sustainable travel generally.  This post and those immediately following are intended as a record of some of the issues over the things I was engaged in that year.  The view is from a personal perspective.

When Perth won £1.1m from Sustrans’ “Spaces for People” fund, it felt like a huge breakthrough. Here was PKC’s traffic and network team under new manager, Brian Cargill bidding for money, making proposals and getting agreement from councillors. It wasn’t a Groningen-style revolution, but then the council wasn’t left wing with a firebrand leader of roads and this wasn’t the seventies. Still, at PALS we could hardly believe it. Perth is a mecca for drive-through traffic:  drive across both bridges, drive-through restaurants, drive-in retail parks.  The driver is king here.  Nothing is done to inconvenience drivers.  Last Christmas PKC offered free parking.  The ordinarily fanatically pro-car businesses were too apathetic to respond to the relevant survey yet  PKC put the money into the scheme anway.   Perth is awash with parking and yet I recall an official saying that any parking space removed has to be justified and given back somewhere else. 

 Not all the council's "Spaces for People" ideas were great.  This was not surprising.  It was a new venture and there wasn't time to consult with communities ahead of time. Making the bridges and vennels one way for pedestrians actually reduced space for people and wasn't a measure that survived many months. People ignored signs in the vennels.  Arguments broke out on the narrow bridges especially at the beginning when it wasn't clear which side you were supposed to walk on, or when you got trapped by traffic on the "wrong" side. Matters weren't helped by the bollards Cllr Barrett had campaigned for that made the pavements even narrower.  Pedestrians, buggies and the many cyclists who chose to push their bikes across the bridge rather than chance their lives in the traffic were all cramped for space.  This was an issue not taken into account even before the pandemic.  But then if there is no-one in the council or among city councillors who cycles a lot locally and who makes infrastructure decisions, this is not suprising.

Smeaton's bridge, Perth

Smeaton's bridge, Perth

The unequal distribution of space between a person in a car and a person on the bridge was shocking.  This is not just tolerated but seen as normal here.   

Theobalds Road, London. Widely shared photo illustrating space taken up by drivers versus cyclists 

On St Leonard's Bank, Perth, making people cross the bridge on a bend in order to adhere to the one-way system was more dangerous than it had been before.  Your choice was to catch covid from someone on the narrow bridge (so we thought in early 2020) or risk being crashed into by a car as you crossed on the bend. I told my kids not to cross the road but they didn't have the nerve to disobey the pavement stickers.  It was so unsafe I ended up driving them the mile to tennis camp at Darnhall that ordinarily they would have walked.  

St Leonard's bank:  note the stickers on the pavement telling pedestrians to cross on the bend

The cones just expand the pedestrian space but it wasn't really needed here and further down (out of shot) the cones disappear, right where you actually need them more.

But many of the ideas were good, pedestrianising the central section of the High Street and traffic calming the residential area around Balhousie St.  The latter would have tied in with North Inch and Muirton community council's (NIMCC) plans for a "Space for People" placemaking project, funded by Sustrans. However, the victory of the Sustrans bid was short-lived.  A young man from the north end of the NIMCC area got up a petition against the plans, gathering some 800 signatures, not all of them obviously local.  Ironically, having opposed the earlier scheme, by 2021 people in that area were talking on Facebook about getting traffic calming for their area.  Anyway, back in 2020 some people clearly wanted to keep  Balhousie St as a rat run between the Dunkeld Rd and Atholl St. PALS defended the council's decision but councillors sided with the protestors.  Nobody investigated to see how many were actually in favour of the plans nor how representative the protestors' petition had been

The tory councillor for the city ward, Chris Ahern had at least nailed his colours to the mast.  An F1 car used to be his Facebook banner photo and he had always been against traffic calming.  Putting bollards in the road would "split the community" he claimed.  I simply didn't understand this at first until I realised the logical extension of this claim was that the thing that united a community was a road.  I asked my kids whether, if someone was to put bollards down our road (bring it on!) it would "split" them from their friends on the other side.  They looked at me as if I was mad.  "Er, no.  We'd just walk to see them as usual."  And it would be safer, quieter, less polluted.  Maybe they could even bike!  But Mr Ahern and his colleagues didn't see or didn't care that the alternative to drive-through residential streets was a child-friendly neighbourhood.  

Two of us had been told by two of the councillors themselves that they intended to vote for the traffic calming but in the event both (from the same party) did the opposite.  PALS wanted to respond to the decision and, as it had been taken behind closed doors without involvement from NIMCC, we wanted to know who had voted which way.  So, we put out a press statement which resulted in the paper asking all the councillors for a statement.  As such, it was a very useful piece of journalism.  We found out who had voted which way without having to resort to an FOI. Of the four city councillors, only Peter Barrett stuck by the council. 

Recently, a councillor from Pontevedra in Spain gave a talk to Living Streets about their decision ten years ago to make their city people-friendly.  "We wanted a city that was good for children," they said.  "Because a city that is good for children is good for everyone."  Cllrs Ahern, Drysdale, Forbes, and Parrot had an opportunity to take a step in that direction but they chose not to.  In Pontevedra pedestrian fatalities have fallen to zero.  Their city is clean, quiet, people walk everywhere, the population has increased and they are proud of their city.  Their councillors are in demand for talks all over the world.  "We could never have paid for an advertising campaign like this," they said.  

Councillors had initially supported the council's Spaces for People proposals but all but Cllr Barrett then betrayed them at the first sign of trouble - the petition.

Quote from the Perthshire Advertiser's article on the episode 

The paper had asked the councillors to respond to our press release so there was no doubt Cllr Forbes was referring to PALS.  This was interesting.  Cllr Forbes is not a city councillor but the tory convenor of Perth and Kinross council's Environment and Infrastructure committee.  The councillor had earlier asked someone in the organisation how our membership stood.  This trusting person had shared that we were as yet small - obviously, being only a few months old.  Mr Forbes was this person's own councillor and that councillor betrayed the confidence of that person and used it against the individual and the organisation for sheer political expediency.  

Apart from which it was a mean-spirited and vicious thing to say about a new group fighting the good fight for vulnerable pedestrians.  PALS is an organisation representing pedestrians in Perth and the immediate vicinity.  Where it's membership lives is irrelevant.  Luckily, none of this did us any harm.  Not so for the councillor, judging by the reactions of people we spoke to about it.  "Weird," they said.  "Doesn't even add up".  "Mean".   He was to drop a further clanger.   

Erm, the councillor's own constituency is the Carse of Gowrie, nowhere near Perth city centre.  So, why was he canvassing opinion outwith his own ward while criticising us for representing the pedestrian voice? Not smart at all.  People made that point too.

Still it's useful to see who and what you are up against, who your friends are and who definitely isn't.  And, perhaps it got the councillor thinking because only two weeks later there he was in the paper on his bike, talking about 20mph roads in the Carse and seemingly in favour.  Politicians, eh. 

Undeterred, by this defeat the beleaguered council pressed on. They met Roger and I (PALS co-convenors) to discuss the measures.  We went for a useful walk and talk with the head of traffic and network.  We discovered they were human, nice and really, really busy.   Spaces for People was a big project on top of their regular work.  They had a constant stream of requests and complaints from the public and from councillors.  On top of this, a river of cars was making its way across the region to enjoy the countryside under lockdown, resulting in even more complaints about overflowing carparks and blocked roads.  Their team seemed pretty small. How were they coping?  Well, they had also been called in to do other duties like help with the food bank.  How were consultations going on pedestrianising the High Street?  This was something PALS had pushed since before Spaces for People. Roger had been down in recent months to find out what businesses thought and they had thought he was from the council.  Little Bird and the Cally bar had been for it and Pizza Express had sounded encouraging before they closed permanently.  The old fashioned tea room had thought people begging across the road would put their clients off and were not in favour.  It didn't seem to be the roads team that was doing the consultations.  They were doing the implementation.  The consultation process was all a bit unclear.

The partially pedestrianised High St.  

With all the parking the High Street never did look that pedestrianised, but it was a bit better than before:


 

The legacy of Spaces for People on the High St today. Ironically, I think this may be the phone shop that complained about pedestrianised.

Back at the office Brian and Blair even took time to show us the bike lanes they wanted to put in.  No, Atholl St, the one we were pressing for wasn't looking likely.  There was too much traffic and bike lanes might slow that down.   But they were going to link the inches (parks) with a bike lane and put in another so that people from the south side of the city could get into town on some form of segregated bike lane, probably through removing some of the parking on the Edinburgh Road.  Since so little was getting in under the temporary measures they hoped to make the lanes permanent rather than spend all the money putting in temporary lanes for a short period and then removing then.   We left asking what we could do to help.  Try and get people onside and try to get them to get the councillors onside, they said. 

Whoever had been tasked with consultation of the businesses on the High Street had not done too well.  The tea room complained, the mobile phone shop complained, another business complained.  They scoffed at the planters, calling them tattie boxes.  They never had a chance. Councillors backtracked again. An exclusion zone for a school in St Madoes drew protests and the council beat a tactical withdrawal. 

The removal of planters all over the city made the few places where they remained look odd.  At Brewdog & at Casella & Polgato on George St people ate pizza or drink coffee behind a planter barricade with cars parked on all sides and traffic surging by. A single restaurant on South Street put up a raffia matting screen aginst two lanes of traffic, a bus lane and a lane for parking so people could eat their meals admittedly outside but amid the roar of traffic, the thunder of buses and the choking fumes.

Planters, George St

Perhaps most bizarre of all was the saga of the touch-free crossings. 

Diplomacy

View from above Kinfauns castle, July 2020

I was walking in the area and came upon a man, planting trees on the edge of an estate in which is situated a well-known, fine and historic private home. We passed the time of day while our dogs played. I asked him if there was a walk around the estate that might suit my parents, 81 this year. He kindly obliged with a route then shared some of the local history and a funny, interesting story. "You're a diplomat as much as a tree-planter", I said.

I'm actually a farmer, he said.

"It's nice to meet someone friendly on the land." I replied.  Given his first story, I thought he'd appreciate dad's confrontation-defusing tactics on my recent encounter with an angry man on the land.   I've mentioned before that the country world can be a small place.  Though we were twelve miles away and on the opposite side of Perth, he knew the place and the man.  Then, to my delight, he shared another tale of his own.

Around the time that the land reform laws were enacted, Ann Gloag, of Stagecoach fame, put, without planning permission, a fence around her twenty-three acres at Kinfauns castle, near Perth, for security and privacy.  As far as I am aware there is no similar fence around the Queen's Balmoral estate.  Ms Gloag's husband claimed, rather dramatically, that it would be "madness" to live at Kinfauns without a perimeter fence.  "Unless I had a gun you wouldn't want to be there," he said.  One view at the time was that, like the queen, and with their hundreds of million of pounds of personal wealth, Ms Gloag and her husband should, similarly, have employed their own security instead of erecting a fence. Ms Gloag was challenged by Perth and Kinross council and the Ramblers who wanted a section of the fence removed.  It was the first test case of the land reform laws.  Ms Gloag won. 

On the day the case went to court a dreadlocked hippy sat himself down on the lawn of a different private home, the one on the outskirts of which estate I was recently walking.  I had seen a man drive out of this estate on my walk, later confirmed as the owner.  A woman I had just met by chance had parked, albeit tucked very discreetly into a corner of bushes, near his gatehouse.  Unperturbed, the owner gave us both a cheery wave out of his car window and a hello before driving away.  Later, as I was leaving the farmer, I passed the owner again, this time on foot.  He remarked pleasantly upon the weather.  He seemed a jovial type but on that day of the hippy sitting on the lawn of his house, he was, understandably, disconcerted.  

"What can I do?  the owner said to my interlocutor.  "There's a hippy sitting on the lawn in front of the house."

"He'll just be testing you, over the Ann Gloag court case" replied the farmer, shrewdly.  Why don't you offer to show him around?" Out the owner went.  "Good afternoon!", he said.  Isn't it a lovely day?  May I have the pleasure of showing you the grounds?" And the problem disappeared and never returned.

It reminded me of another story in The Salt Path.  Hiking the South West coastal path Moth and Ray have been caught out one day with nowhere to camp.  In desperation, they hop over a fence and camp, late, on the green of the sixteenth hole of a golf course.  When I related this story dad sucked in his breath in horror:  "On the green!". Up with the dawn the couple have packed everything away immaculately and are just brewing some tea on a bench. 

"We'd mastered wild camping, turning 'leave no trace' into a fine art."  But across the course comes a man with his dog.  

"Hello.  Beautiful spot for a sunrise, isn't it?".  Moth as usual plunged straight in with his charm offensive."

The man looked at us and grunted, two dogs running around his feet as he walked around the green, clearly checking for damage to his grass.  But there was none; we'd carefully removed any loose earth as we'd withdrawn each tent peg. 

"You'll be off when you've had your breakfast then?"

"Yes of course, just came up for the sunrise"

He grunted and walked away.

Diplomacy's a gift of temperament and intelligence, maybe not even an innate one. Perhaps at its best there is a subtle sense of humour, which as Clive James said, famously, is common sense, dancing.

Confrontation-defusing tactics

I was telling dad about being interrogated at Aberdalgie wood. 

"Well, this man came shouting and striding towards me." 

"So you said:  'Good afternoon?'," said dad, beaming innocently.

"It's quite scary being accosted on your own by a cross man in the country!"

"Never underestimate the power of "good afternoon".

"Isn't it rather patrician?  Besides, I'm not sure I'm old enough to say that."

He grinned.   "It's very useful." 

"Then he said, "What are you doing?"  And I replied I thought that was my business."   

"No, no, no.  You say:  I'm going for walk."

"Justify myself?  Isn't that a slippery slope?"

"Avoid confrontation," said dad. 

"Alright then.  'Where to?", I replied, imitating the angry man.

"Into this wood," said dad.

"Why?"

"Perhaps, because it's there."

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

"It looks to me like a track up to this wood."

"I don't go about walking up people's drives in Perth!"  

"I should hope not!" said dad, with apparently genuine shock, yet a glint in his eye.

Then he said,  "Well, you can't come past my house"  

And I said  "I'm not coming past your house.  I can't even see your house."

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

"Ah yes," interjected dad.  "And," he continued, enjoying himself thoroughly, "a very fine house it is too!"  

"What are you doing on that path?" (Methven II)

This is the second part of a story that started here.

On the way past Methven Castle farm, going east, I hadn't seen a soul. Max was off the lead. If we approach farmyards with buildings on both sides, he is usually leashed because of chickens, dogs, people, machinery. More often than not he refuses to advance, apparently through fear of livestock & I have to carry him - a large, hairy, invariably muddy bundle. Despite being a rescue dog, over the last year he has developed better recall than I have seen in some farm dogs. He was near me as we approached the farm, the place seemed deserted.

On the return, approaching the same farm from the opposite direction, three or four dogs under no sort of control shot out from a field on the right, crossed the track at speed and disappeared into the farmyard. They were followed by a woman who glanced in my direction and shouted at me to put my dog on a lead. Max was standing on the path just ahead of me, ears pricked, staring at where the dogs had disappeared. He returned when called and I did put him on the lead in case he decided to exercise his good judgement on bad characters and start barking at her aggressively. With hindsight it would have been unlikely given the number of dogs and his fear of farmyards.  Most people in my experience, unfortunately do as ordered by controlling types whether the martinet is right or wrong.  Controlling types are inevitably wrong yet, doubly misdirected, are convinced by their rightness.  Most people I have met say they obey the many signs that abound, put up as a deterrent, unaware they are deterrents and illegal.

But on reflection, why should this woman, a stranger to me, issue orders to people? Why should she demand my dog already under control be leashed, particularly when several of her own were neither leashed nor controlled. The track is a well-used core path. The farm buildings are to one side of it. What jurisdiction do the people here have to issue orders to others quietly going about their business? A minority of dogs may chase sheep, but then a minority of people steal, fight and cheat. Do we, without knowing anything about them, order everyone about just because we expect them to behave that way, because we don't trust them?  Not normally, but in the country, some landowners do, despite having no right to do so.

A few steps ahead an older man in country clothes had just pulled up in a large black vehicle. He said to me, certainly not in apology, "There's sheep in that field and the next one". Why say so? My dog was already leashed. I began to wonder if they were bullies.

If we have to go through a field of sheep, Max, a fearful soul through and through, tugs at the lead desperate to get away from them. I looked at where the man was pointing. There were indeed sheep, - two fields and two fences distant. If you zoom in you'll see them.

The second lot of sheep he'd meant were a good quarter of a mile away, down by the road, behind substantial fencing. If some landowners had it their way, dogs would never be off the lead in the country. Other people's dogs that is.

But I simply asked if he knew who the woodland mentioned in the last post belonged to. Quite civilly, he gave me the name of the man and the farm which he said was on the Crieff Rd. I thanked him."  You're welcome," he said in a tone of continued civility.  I went on my way.

He got into his vehicle and drove probably less than a hundred yards towards the sheep he'd just indicated.

I thought perhaps he was going to feed them. But he got out again and hailed a tall man with a ginger beard and a boy coming up the path, next to the field. I'd met them earlier coming the other way earlier. We'd said hello.

The vehicle track on the left and what looks like a path on the right.

In a dramatic change of tone the country man said, "What are you doing on that path?"   Earlier, I had noticed a sign on the main track near where I am standing saying "Please stay on the path", which I thought potentially confusing, not to mention probably illegal.

There is also a sign just up from the actual path by the field (not the track on the left) saying Private House. I had thought the latter was quite sensibly informative rather than e.g. Keep Out.

The tall man looked at his phone and replied, with heavy sarcasm, "Oh, I'm so sorry".

Country Man: "This is a private drive to a private house. How did you get on to it anyway?"

The tall man muttered: "Walked up, walked back."

I wished he was a bit more forthright but then he hadn't seen, as I had, that there seemed to be a pattern of harassment. 

I said to the country man: "It's not obvious that path is a private drive. It looks like path."

Country Man: "It is private and there's a sign at the bottom there."

"Did you see any sign?" I asked tall man.

He shrugged and said:  "He can say what he likes, he doesn't own Scotland."

The country man, possibly feeling more challenged than he had expected then said, rather lamely: "It's not my drive. It belongs to the man at the bottom."  But the tall man had moved on in apparent disgust.

I was tempted to say "Don't you have enough problems of your own?" but what was the point? Perhaps what I might have asked was: "How many people have you harassed on this track, today?" More usefully, in the future I might ask: "What exactly is it that upsets you so much about people using this track?"  They must have a reason.

The country man got back in his car and drove the hundred yards back again to the farm.

I heard later that the landowner here is trying to get this core path closed.  I don't know if there are any grounds on which he can do this. So far he has been unsuccessful.

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.

Accessible walks and pathways (Stormontfield)

Dad on the Fishpond's circular, Stormontfield

I haven't met my folks inside for about a year now. On the other hand, we've walked together more than ever before and that has been a joy. I am keenly aware they cannot do all the walks that I still can. Dad's type 2 diabetic. He has come through two cancers and a brain tumour successfully and with a stoicism admired not only by his family. His maximum distance at the moment is around five or six miles. Depending on how he's feeling some days he can only do short walks.

Today we did the Fishponds circular walk at Stormontfield. At nearly 81 dad's not quite as balanced as he was so it was with relief that we got down the steep, uneven & somewhat rickety steps & across the bridge with no railing.

Countryside access is not just about there being paths it's about paths that are suitable for everyone. People with less than perfect balance, less than perfect hearing of approaching bikes and people who can't climb over stiles, or locked gates. It means river banks reinforced from erosion or diverting paths away from them and paths without holes liable to cause falls. Roughly 65% of the UK population is overweight and that population is ageing. We should be anticipating making life easier for older people and facilitating things that keep them healthy. One way to do that is investing in improving and extending a good, safe, accessible local path network that people on foot of all ages can use with confidence.