Free Walking to Camelot by John A. Cherrington

greedy landowners to close public paths, and referred in her novel
Emma
to conscientious nobles doing the right thing by not prejudicing access to the common folk. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of the hypocrisy of landowners — what we might call the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) syndrome today — in the speech of Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall in
The Hound of the Baskervilles:
“It is a great day for me, sir . . . I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton’s park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We’ll teach those magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I’ve closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk use to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property.”
    There are still problems with farmers ploughing over their fields and failing to demarcate the walking path — which by law they are supposed to do. We are experiencing this problem in some of the rapeseed fields in particular. Thanks to the Ramblers, this issue has been kept in the spotlight. Not that landowners like Madonna and others won’t keep trying to fend off walkers. But most owners accept public footpaths running through their estates as an embedded country tradition and an integral part of rural life.
    Villagers are confronted today by many newcomers who dream of quiet but sanitized country living. These newcomers complain about everything from the smell of manure to cattle-truck dust to cocks crowing — even the loudness of church bells. One wealthy car dealer, Frank Sytner, recently retired with his wife to the nearby village of Ridlington in search of the quiet life. But the couple did not care for the sheep, the smells, or the mud associated with a farming community. Mr. Sytner sued a neighbouring farmer for in-advertently spilling some mud on a lane leading to Sytner’s prize horses. Mrs. Sytner also complained in court of the annoying sound of cows in the field. When the judge pointed out that perhaps the cow ruckus was normal for the countryside, she responded: “Yes, it’s unfortunate, isn’t it.” The judge threw out the case.
    Ian Johnson of the National Farmers Union opines that tolerance between the wave of newcomers to the countryside and the existing hierarchy of farmers and squires is badly needed. Although many townies adapt well, others, like the Sytners, move to the country, asserts Johnson, “but they don’t want to be near the nasty niffs and noises . . . They don’t want any movement in the country. They want to ossify it, crystallize it, or preserve it in aspic. They want their picture postcard there for immortality.” So put on those designer wellies and get muck on them!
    What Canadians would call Red Toryism is described by author Raymond Williams, in his
The Country and the City:
“In Britain, identifiably, there is a persistent rural-intellectual radicalism: genuinely and actively hostile to industrialization and capitalism; opposed to commercialism and the exploitation of environment; attached to country ways and country feelings, the literature and the lore.” Prince Charles epitomizes this mould.
    The squires and the radicals with Tory tastes are now at one with socialists who wish to preserve the countryside. Perhaps this unusual political alliance began in the nineteenth century, when the austere Duke of Wellington joined with the poet William Wordsworth in denouncing the carnage wrought by the ubiquitous railway lines upon England’s “green and pleasant land.” Wordsworth abhorred the intrusion of the smoky, dirty trains into the countryside and declaimed in a sonnet, “Is there no nook of English ground secure / From rash assault?” The Red Tories and socialists, alas, part company on issues like fox hunting.
    A mile beyond Brooke we say hello