"Regrettably it has become necessary to close public access to these permissive routes.
This action has been taken in order to ensure the safety of horses and riders from Wong Livery, who as part of their livery subscription pay for the upkeep and ability to ride on the tracks as a safe route away from the busy roads.
Even from a distance horses are reactive to walkers and walkers with dogs (especially if off the leads); resulting in a serious risk of the horse spooking and potentially bolting in fear.
An alternative route has been provided and marked with arrows."
Below is a map of the Lombe Estate showing footpaths and permissive paths. You might need to save the photo and enlarge it.
There was a good response to my piece yesterday about a landowner closing the permissive path trails over the fields from the B1172 cyclepath to the Wymondham to Great Melton Road in an area around Wong Farm.
The more I found out about the situation the more I realised that there are two sides to this story and the reasons for shutting off the paths didn't surprise me.
You could say that once again it's a matter of the ignorant minority spoiling things for the law abiding majority (how many times in our modern world does this happen)? There are people quite prepared to break rules and guidance simply because they don't care. We are currently seeing this with the Covid restrictions where young people are happy to openly ignore the rules for their own gratification (e.g large numbered raves and parties).
I heard from the landowners who gave me the reasons for shutting the permissive paths. Not surprisingly the decision surrounds the behaviour of a minority of walkers and their dogs.
Back in 2018, the Government support for keeping permissive paths open ended. They were kept open, however, at the cost of the landowner. Unfortunately some local dog walkers ignored requests to keep their pets on leads and out of control dogs caused a number of incidents with horse riders who pay for the right to ride around certain fields. This reason was underlined by a horse owner who spoke about animals being "spooked" by dogs and the danger this can cause to the horses, the riders and the dogs.
In addition a number of walkers were abusive. This is all very sad. If we just followed the country code the paths could be kept open for everyone to enjoy.
With permissive paths, the landowner(s) can stipulate reasonable conditions and failure to follow these can lead to the closure of the paths and that seems to be what has happened in this situation. Land should be treated with respect and not abused.
In this case it looks like all the landowner was asking for was for dogs to be kept on leads and under control and for walkers to keep to paths. That surely is not unreasonable and something most of us would do as a matter of course.
I was told that path closure notices were put up at relevant entry points but were torn down. Permissive paths have been opened on the Wymondham side of Wong Farm along with signs asking people to keep dogs on leads. It is also hoped to get the permissive paths clearly marked to save an future confusion.
I have been supplied with the map at the top of the page by the Loome Estate which owns much of the land in question. It was pointed out to me that an area of permissive paths still link up with footpaths for the use of local communities and these can be seen on the map.
As for the B1172 permissive paths situation, well I don't see that being resolved anytime soon and my feeling is the paths will stay shut to the public. As far as the landowners are concerned the saying "once bitten twice shy" seems appropriate.
There are other areas in Hethersett (around Cedar Grange for instance) where landowners have spread a large area of winter feed for farmland birds which isn't Government funded.
"The purpose of that field is for the benefit of wildlife and for people to enjoy the wildlife. It is not unreasonable for the farm to request no littering and for dogs to be kept on leads," a spokesman for the landowners told me.
On the south side of that field is a public footpath along which the landowners have no control but which brought the following comment "you would like to think that common sense will prevail."
I will have more on this whole countryside subject at a later date.
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Meanwhile there is a shining example of how all this can work at Caistor St Edmund just outside Norwich where farmer Chris Skinner has kept High Ash Farm open to the public for rambling by cutting wide pathways through his land. I spoke with Chris on our last visit to the area and he too was bemoaning the lack of Government support but had decided to keep the paths open with the help of public subscriptions. Chris admitted that he had also been subjected to abuse when he tried to stop a "party" having a barbecue on his land on a field close to wildlife. Sometimes the rudeness and ignorance of people staggers me.
I know it's totally different but with all this going on I couldn't help but muse again on Kett's Rebellion. Of course the present situation is very different as this in effect is just landowners enclosing and protecting their own land whereas the rebellion was all about tearing down fences used to enclose common land - much of which was owned by Sir John Flowerdew of Hethersett!
My musings did lead me to take a number of new photographs of Kett's Oak which are included below along with a few others from our relatively short walk cut short by the no entry signs across the fields. Kett's Oak seems to have an ability to look different according to the skies and background. Yesterday it was relatively blue skies. I have also in the past taken the oak with storm clouds in the background - making it look very different.
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Yesterday I mentioned new articles on Hethersett appearing in the EDP/Evening News. I omitted a nice one on the re-start of cycle speedway in the village.
The club is holding this year's Norfolk Championships over four successive Sundays. To read more go to:
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/lifted-coronavirus-restrictions-allow-norfolk-cycle-speedway-competition-to-go-ahead-1-6825844
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As an irrelevant aside I decided in an aimless minute to work out roughly how many words I have written in these blogs since I started at the beginning of lockdown.
I have now been going for 186 days. Today's blog runs to well over 1,000 words. So assuming my average wordage is somewhere around 600 per day (admittedly today's entry is a particularly long one). That would give me a total to date of approximately 111,600 words or something approaching the size of a novel! Now tell me I'm not obsessed by writing. Sometimes I think I spend too much time writing and I should do more useful things with my life, but the feeling soon passes.