Rambling on....

The country we live in is riddled with the remnants of ancient communication. No I don't mean the remains of the medieval postage system I mean the remains of the routes our ancestors used to get from point A to point B.

This network is graded by status and here at Penole we have, outside the back door a footpath that leads to the top of the mountain, except of course we don't.

Back sometime before 1800 someone decided to build Penole on a road that joined a series of small hamlets. It's likely, even then that the road was old, part of a ridgeway route that ran across the roof of the country at about the time that people decided it might be a hoot to shift a few bits of rock to Salisbury plain.

The result of this is a rights of way network that is completely unplanned and almost random.

There is no logic to who gets to use which bits either. At one end you get the macho chaps and chapeses with the cut down defender with the big winch and beefy tyres and at the other end you get the people with boots, cagoules and an unfortunate taste in headgear.

On the other side you have the likes of me, the country land owner; the last time we were left to our own devices there were toll gates everyhere and my great great grandad ended up having to dress up as a woman and burn a lot of them down.

Now, the cagouling classes have for years been very organized, and increasingly argued that no one else should be allowed anywhere apart from them. They have successfully hijacked the ear of government and created a myth that all damage on the right of way network is down to defender drivers.

So much so that after thousands of years, the road at the front of my house is now only a road if you chose to walk it.

I have continued to use it as it was used up to 1960. As the road people drive to get to my house, but of course I can't any more.

The local cagoulies kicked up hell and money has been spent clearing the track and putting in bobble hat width gates so that no one other than them can come up here.

And yesterday the inevitable, past the back of the house came the ramblers, I didn't actually see them but I did see the plastic bags and wrappers they left behind.

Still it won't be for long, the track will soon overgrow without my 4x4 moving up and down it. Then it will be closed to everyone and as one of the landowning classes I will be happy.....

R