My son and his partner went rambling over many of the places described in your blog (have to ask him if he saw the sink!) a few years ago and they talked about a Welsh farmer they could not understand who was asking or telling them about walking over a stye (is that the spelling?) and tresspassing though it was public access. Another farmer, I think somewhere up in the North of England, they woke up on one of their walks to tell him a lamb was caught in a tree root and they could not tell if he was grumpy, grateful or maybe both – or neither! It was funny to us back home when they told us about it anyway. I think he would live there if he could. We call him the honourary Englishman.

Meanwhile, I am no closer to finding a reasonably priced belfast (or similar) sink way down in the depths of another world called Tasmania, but i am glad to have found this great site all about walking and talking. When I am walking or reading about it, I sometimes think how much people miss here by not being allowed to walk over land that is apparently private – the rivers, trees, wildlife that is missed because it is ‘owned’ by one person. I like to imagine a places like you describe where the land is still viewed as essentially everyones and at the same time no ones, kind of like many Australian Indigenous people might view land. But it seems like a self-centred or insular way of thinking is catching up everywhere as is described in your blog’s entries.

We are lucky our farmer is friendly though he never says much, and in his own farmer-like way is community minded enough not to mind us walking over his land and telling the neighbours to take potatoes from the plot he put in alongside the public access to his place for everyone to use…Time for me to stop talking and take myself and our dog for our walk through the farmer’s land, up and on to the road and over gumtree and wattle filled hills…

I’ll peak in to this blog now and then as I have found it so enjoyable and I promise not to ramble quite so much if i do add anything else!

There does seem to be a lot of conflict between landowners in rural areas wanting to reroute footpaths and those who use them. It often seems to be people who buy land knowing the locals walk there and then ignoring the past history, simply begin fencing them out. Sometimes it is because there is nothing officially recorded on the maps. Jeremy Clarkson tried it when he bought a holiday cottage on the Isle of Man but he lost his case. He claimed it was against his human rights for the locals to walk on his land. Fortunately for walkers the ruling also said that all of the paths on this land should now be officially recorded.

It would be interesting to know why those you came across have been diverted as they look to be established rights of way.