Stiles.

It has been dry today and reasonably warm. After a little weeding in the garden, and being visited by Active who daintily stole some grass from my weeding bucket, I decided to take myself for a long walk up the hill.

Walking along a farm track an inquisitive group of cows rushed up to their gate to see who was passing. I think cows are so funny, they are great lumbering creatures that run up to see what is happening then when you say 'Boo' they run away. See the touch of brown at the back of these Holstein heifers?

That's their lord and master, a ferocious Devon Red bull who spent the whole time hiding at the back of the crowd so I wouldn't see him. (I climbed up on the gate to get this picture.) However I would think twice before walking across a field with this group in. Farmers are supposed to not put dangerous animals in fields with rights of way across them but you never know.

I had walked diagonally across the field behind this stile to the gate because previously the 'stile' was a ramshackle affair with barbed wire and brambles across it. Obviously the parish council has been keeping a check on the local footpaths. Farmers do have an obligation to maintain any stiles on their land. Having read on someone's blog that stiles are not known in the USA here's some information as to why so many are found dotted around the countryside. Up to the 1750's there were few fences or hedges in the countryside. Arable farming was done by the 'strip' system where each peasant farmer grew crops on strips of land in large open common areas. This enabled a fair sharing of the better sections of land. Livestock were grazed on open common ground and were tended by herders. In the 1750's the wealthy landowners (for whom the peasant were tenants and paid a tithe of their crops as rent), decided that it would be more profitable to enclose the land into fields where they could keep more livestock. The tenant farmers were offered very small plots which were not sufficient to live on and many left the land at this time and became the urban poor. Because the land had been open up to that time there were many 'rights-of-way' and even when the land was enclosed farmers still had to allow access. As these paths may not have been where the farmers wanted to put gates and probably because people have always had a tendency to leave gates open, stiles appeared making it possible for walkers but not stock to cross the fence. On National Trust land you often find fancy stiles with little lift up gates to let dogs through. Where fields are fenced by stone walls there may be a set of stones jutting out of the wall to use as steps.

Here are a few of the country lanes I walked along this afternoon.

This is actually a dirt track that leads to a field.

Ashelford Corner. In this part of the country none of the roads have names (they do have an official B Road number but nobody knows them). Every minor junction does have a sign post showing what lies in each direction and the junctions have names which are shown on the sign post. It's OK giving directions to locals because you identify places by who lives where or farm names but it is much harder to give directions to outsiders. You have to remember how many little farm tracks the poor delivery driver has to ignore before making the correct turns. One driver had to make 3 calls for instructions to find us and once I had to drive out and find the lost person. It doesn't help that there is no sign at the top of our drive. It isn't our land and the stable owner next door was convinced that putting a sign up for the stables would encourage opportune thieves.