Thanks to work I have to attend the Royal Show tomorrow and make a presentation at a seminar for large farmers (it's the diet and travelling by quad bikes). I would of course like to take the opportunity to thank them for their caring attitude to climbers (Vixen Tor anyone?), their respect for wildlife including foxes and the way they enhance our environment with agrichemicals.

Strangely enough I don't share your antipathy towards farmers, even though last night I was chased up a tree (twice ) by a bull and a dozen heifers on the very public footpath through the woods between Morpeth and Mitford. I even lost £20+ worth of kit from the camera and STILL I don't have a farmer-wide hatred. From what I've seen most are perfectly ok.

Gamekeepers and people involved in the game industry, on the other hand, are pretty universally disgusting and should be opposed at every turn. Some recent examples I know about are:- an illegal baited Buzzard trap at Heckley. Hen Harrier nests trampled. Spurious access bans at Simonside. Roads built across the wildest areas of the Cheviots. I could go on. This industry is appalling, and I think we are remiss in not tackling them and instead touching our forlocks and deferring to them.

I met the farmer who's cattle chased me up the tree. It was 11:am, I was looking for my missing camera gear. He and his aged uncle had been up since 6am getting the cattle back into the field and was mending the fence that they'd gotten through. We had a long chat, he reckoned the likliest reason the cattle would have forced their way into the wood was because they'd been spooked by a dog, the field had knee deep grass, so there was plenty feed for them. Yet he never slagged anyone off and even said that he was quite happy to have people walking over any of his land as they usually didn't do any harm. That kind of attitude has been my experience over the years.

So thats what that was I saw at Heckley! It was a few months ago and my first time there, so I was exploring a bit and I came across a big cage with a pile of stinking dead rabbits inside it, kind of spooked me a bit so I gave it a wide berth. It wasn't a nice sight (or smell)!


As for farmers/climbing access issues - In my time as a climber I've only been approched by one, and that was the farmer at Howlerhirst, and she was very nice and supportive of climbers using her land.

It was a great show - some of the sheep were very attractive, and there was even a breed called bleu du maine that have a face like a kangaroo. Honest. There were lots of possible get orff my land types around but of course many of the farmers I spoke to at the Biogas Seminar were very nice.