Speaker 1: And we're back with another episode. But we have got
Speaker 1: three of us, but we haven't got the loud, annoying one, so.
Speaker 2: We've traded him in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well he's a bit busy at the moment anyway,
Speaker 1: isn't he.
Speaker 2: He's really busy. I actually called him, this is Richard
Speaker 2: Nigas we're talking about. I called him, yes, work it out, yeah,
Speaker 2: just in case, And he said, oh, I can't be long.
Speaker 2: Chum always calls me chum. Weird. It can't be long, chum.
Speaker 2: I'm actually just waiting on a call from my agent,
Speaker 2: and I just I just said to him, do you
Speaker 2: hear yourself? Do you hear what you're saying? I said,
Speaker 2: I missed the old Hedge. Lad Niga's not the celebrity
Speaker 2: hedge lad Nigas, he's You're change man, You're a change man.
Speaker 2: I don't like it.
Speaker 1: You can tell it's after Hedge season because when you
Speaker 1: ring him, he's on the phone for an hour as well.
Speaker 1: If it's if he does speak to your he's not
Speaker 1: got his call from the celebrity celebrity afterwards. He's just
Speaker 1: on the phone for an hour, whereas when you're ring
Speaker 1: him from September through to the end of March, you'll go, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is it? Yeah? Yeah, fine, do it right, I've
Speaker 1: got to go. And that's it. And that's all we'll hear.
Speaker 2: Already give you half hour. Why you hear Richard Gold
Speaker 2: huffing and puffing for chainsaw in the background, carrying him
Speaker 2: through the hedge lane season.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we're being rude? Should we talk to our guest?
Speaker 1: I guess we should. Who's that? Who's that over there?
Speaker 3: Patrick gal Braise? I do what do I do? I
Speaker 3: do columns, I do all kinds of things. I write
Speaker 3: about food, I write about deer. I've just written a book,
Speaker 3: a book that is proving to be more controversial than
Speaker 3: I anticipated.
Speaker 4: I knew it was going to be fun.
Speaker 3: It's transpired to be even more enjoyable than I thought
Speaker 3: it would be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you wrote one of my favorite things ever, which
Speaker 1: was a very simple piece about trying to get a pond,
Speaker 1: made the dramas of trying to dig your own pond
Speaker 1: because you aren't your own flight pond?
Speaker 3: Was that when I was quite young?
Speaker 1: I think it was. Yeah, it was a it was
Speaker 1: a very simple piece, but it really resonated with me.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I do a lot of simple pieces,
Speaker 3: and I often forget the pieces that i've that i've
Speaker 3: that I've written. Country Life Magazines said they had a
Speaker 3: complaint from somebody yesterday who was mentioned in my book,
Speaker 3: and they said the detail with which they knew my
Speaker 3: sort of back catalog in the magazine of writing was
Speaker 3: really amazing. And I said, well, that's you know, that's
Speaker 3: fascinating because I sort of finished a piece and then
Speaker 3: it's and then it's then it's done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you never go back and look at your own stuff.
Speaker 1: That's I never we never listened to these. I have
Speaker 1: no idea what I've said afterwards in the podcast. The
Speaker 1: this is somebody that I've met you two or three times.
Speaker 1: It's only been sort of in very brief outside a
Speaker 1: talk or a ten or something going oh I like
Speaker 1: what you did there, Oh that's great again, and we
Speaker 1: moved on. But I think, callum, how long have you
Speaker 1: known Patrick?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: We we done shoots several time times in various different
Speaker 2: places across the across the length and breadth of the UK.
Speaker 2: I suppose shoots.
Speaker 3: With cameras, shoots with guns. What are we?
Speaker 4: What are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Him a bit of both, But I had the thought
Speaker 2: this morning. I don't think there's many people that I've
Speaker 2: spent such a long time in their company and never
Speaker 2: really spoken.
Speaker 5: To that much.
Speaker 3: We're either we're either.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we had a good chat on
Speaker 2: a way out with Mike Swan on the Medway where
Speaker 2: we were in the boat, and then after that we
Speaker 2: were hunkered down in a wild fowling so we were dead.
Speaker 3: God did he always like did he forget the keys
Speaker 3: for the lock or something? Is that right?
Speaker 2: We went out and then we had to come back.
Speaker 2: I think we went out twice. I've been out a
Speaker 2: few times with with Mike.
Speaker 3: Mike, Oh mad Mike. He's always kind of laughing, grabbing
Speaker 3: his balls. He's real.
Speaker 2: Love Mike.
Speaker 3: Mike's one came to my house on Christmas Eve and
Speaker 3: we just hung out for, you know, hours and hours.
Speaker 3: You were telling my family all about bumblebees, and my
Speaker 3: family like, who the fuck is this guy?
Speaker 4: And you know, yeah, wid.
Speaker 2: Mike refers to his dog as good bitch, and I
Speaker 2: have a video of him and that I had to
Speaker 2: cut all the sound out or he says good bitch,
Speaker 2: good bitch, good bitch over and over again because it
Speaker 2: just it really didn't fit the tempo. It just seems
Speaker 2: so odd. Bramble.
Speaker 3: That dog is great, very very clever guy, very interesting.
Speaker 3: He's one of those people who, you know, the thing
Speaker 3: I find so endearing about Mike Swanan for those of
Speaker 3: you who don't know him who are listening, he's a
Speaker 3: store at the GWCT, and he often says things to
Speaker 3: me like, well, you know, if we just make the
Speaker 3: case for shooting as part of conservation and so on,
Speaker 3: I think people will get it. And I go away,
Speaker 3: and I think I wish that was so, you know,
Speaker 3: I wish sensible p people with you know, qualifications and
Speaker 3: with the expertise that Mike has could just say sensible
Speaker 3: things and people will go, you know, that sounds sensible.
Speaker 3: Then he sort of he doesn't engage at all in
Speaker 3: the kind of culture wars stuff. It's not really a world.
Speaker 3: I think that that he kind of recognizes. He just
Speaker 3: talks sense and he really cares.
Speaker 1: I think it's a bit of a danger if you
Speaker 1: only ever speak to other sensible people who all agree
Speaker 1: to argue on first principles, then you sort of think
Speaker 1: the world works like that.
Speaker 5: If you can just get to people exactly and then
Speaker 5: and then and then the the you know, the the
Speaker 5: other thing you can do is you can spend your
Speaker 5: whole time on social media and you go, oh my god,
Speaker 5: everyone is a complete nut job, you know, And actually
Speaker 5: probably the truth is somewhere between the.
Speaker 2: Two of those, right it is you'd like to think so.
Speaker 3: Well exactly, yeah, yeah, it's the ninety ten split.
Speaker 1: I think probably it's But when you venture out into
Speaker 1: the world, you do wonder sometimes, you know, is.
Speaker 2: That how do people get dressed in the morning?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well sometimes they're not. I mean that our local
Speaker 1: supermarket is that to put a sign up saying please
Speaker 1: wear clothes when you come in sort of a cardigan
Speaker 1: or there's actually a dressing gown doesn't really count anymore.
Speaker 3: You wonder you wonder what went wrong there? Which particular
Speaker 3: incident inspired that one?
Speaker 2: So did you see the guy on I posted on
Speaker 2: on x that thought that was very disappointed that Hadrian's
Speaker 2: Wall wasn't on part with the Great Wall of China,
Speaker 2: And he said that no one seemed to care, and
Speaker 2: at one point he saw a sheep just simply hop
Speaker 2: over it. That's bad, accept it is.
Speaker 3: The Great Wall of China. I mean, I've never been
Speaker 3: to China. I don't know if either of you have,
Speaker 3: But is it a great Wall of China, an amazing
Speaker 3: feature along the whole length of it, or what's the
Speaker 3: deal with a Great Wall of China.
Speaker 2: I think it's great.
Speaker 4: Well, you'd be disappointed if it was. You boil the
Speaker 4: money back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a bit like Hadrian's Wall. It's got
Speaker 1: some really good bits, and then it's got some bits
Speaker 1: where it's just not there at all, and then it
Speaker 1: sort of peters out into the desert at one end
Speaker 1: of the sea. At the other it sort of have
Speaker 1: you been, I've done bits in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Great Wall of China. I used to work for a
Speaker 1: company that did you know those horrible corporate charity things
Speaker 1: where somebody's going to go and climb kill a Maanjaro
Speaker 1: or or do ever's base camp, but they come around
Speaker 1: the office trying to get sponsored to pay for that, right.
Speaker 1: I was on the other end of that where you
Speaker 1: take them out up and do kill a Maanjarro or
Speaker 1: ever his base camp. And we did Great Wall of
Speaker 1: China one year, and it was weird because you stayed
Speaker 1: in the same hotel for ten days and every day
Speaker 1: you just got the coach back and forth out to
Speaker 1: wherever you finish the walk the day before, and you
Speaker 1: just have to take a slight longer coach journey every
Speaker 1: day to get to the end. And you were staying
Speaker 1: in the same hotel, so the sense of travel was
Speaker 1: completely overshadowed by the fact you're just in the same
Speaker 1: monkey hotel room.
Speaker 3: I always think, I always think how it would be
Speaker 3: deeply ashamed to be one of those people who goes
Speaker 3: around an office and ask for people to give you
Speaker 3: a quid for whatever. But almost every day I go
Speaker 3: around the office and ask people if they want to
Speaker 3: go for lunch with me, and it's usually a note
Speaker 3: as well. And actually, you know, thinking about it, that's
Speaker 3: kind of just just a shameful.
Speaker 1: Really, are you trying to get them to pay for
Speaker 1: lunch as well?
Speaker 3: Well, No, I'd happily pay for them to have lunch.
Speaker 3: But actually even that, even that doesn't get them to
Speaker 3: come out, so, you know, so it goes.
Speaker 1: So you've written a book, this is this is your second.
Speaker 3: I've written two books. Yeah, not all chat GPT you
Speaker 3: know some of it. I even myself have you know,
Speaker 3: did a little bits in the star Not true by
Speaker 3: the way, that's not listening and my policy.
Speaker 4: That's not true.
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 1: I think soon it's all going to be chat GPT anyway,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 4: It's a really interesting point.
Speaker 3: I mean I read the audio book for my book,
Speaker 3: which you know, if anybody listening likes audiobooks, get onto audible.
Speaker 3: But I think quite soon AI will be able to
Speaker 3: read audiobooks, which is amazing. You just you know, you
Speaker 3: just give a sample of your voice and then it
Speaker 3: will and then it will do it. And for all
Speaker 3: of those kind of slightly fourth rate out of work
Speaker 3: actors who you know, put bread on the table by
Speaker 3: reading audio books, it's quite frightening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I just finished listening to your audio book and in
Speaker 1: the very first section I've got something to bring up
Speaker 1: with you that you said Rowan rather than Rowan try.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's probably I mean my strong Scottish accent.
Speaker 4: I think that's probably where that comes from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think would they would say, yeah, a row
Speaker 3: and tree.
Speaker 1: I just it just took me out of it completely.
Speaker 1: I just had to get through the next ten hours
Speaker 1: that rattling along.
Speaker 3: No, that's interesting, isn't it. That probably is a sort
Speaker 3: of you know, I grew up in Scotland. I don't
Speaker 3: have a particularly Scottish accent, but it probably is a
Speaker 3: round tree, they would say.
Speaker 1: I think it's only the Welsh that call it rowan anyway,
Speaker 1: because yeah.
Speaker 3: In Wales do they think that row andry rowan trees
Speaker 3: keep witches away?
Speaker 1: It's witches, but it's also strongly related to churchyards and
Speaker 1: holy sites, and so it's sort of it's part of
Speaker 1: the I don't think it's a national tree, but it's
Speaker 1: like part of it. It's like the next one down from
Speaker 1: oak in terms of the world. People are going to
Speaker 1: write in and tell me I'm wrong, So let's get
Speaker 1: them to I direct that ire at you. What's this
Speaker 1: second book, what's it called and what's it about?
Speaker 3: So the book is called Uncommon Ground, Rethinking our relationship
Speaker 3: with the countryside, And the title that I was originally
Speaker 3: going to go with was their country the Places that
Speaker 3: divideas And I have to say I think that working
Speaker 3: title gets to the heart of what the book is about.
Speaker 3: It's about who gets to access the countryside, what they
Speaker 3: can do there, how connected we feel to the countryside,
Speaker 3: and the way that the countryside inspires senses of identity.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I let me just tell you a
Speaker 3: little story about the preface. So I went to go
Speaker 3: and see these two brothers in Hull who spent their
Speaker 3: working life in the shipyard there, and they have spent
Speaker 3: all the spare time they've they've got during the season
Speaker 3: out wild fouling, out shooting pink footed geese. And the
Speaker 3: guy who founded their wild fowling club, a guy called
Speaker 3: Stanley Duncan, who effectively found the basque. Actually they go
Speaker 3: to his grave when the pinkford of geese return in
Speaker 3: the autumn, with feathers that that are there on the
Speaker 3: marsh when the geese return, and they leave them at
Speaker 3: the side of the grave. And I realized when I
Speaker 3: was there that for them, the geese, they're not just
Speaker 3: like a quarry or something to eat or something to
Speaker 3: shoot out that almost like a kind of deity, you know,
Speaker 3: their sport, you know, they would call it. That is
Speaker 3: a kind of goose worship. And it's how they connect
Speaker 3: to this place and obviously places very far away in
Speaker 3: terms of the birds migration, and that kind of I
Speaker 3: think gets to the heart of the book. But I mean,
Speaker 3: you've read it, so you can tell me what it's about.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know whether I've got the right take
Speaker 1: on this, but it seems like you sort of did
Speaker 1: a Louis through on the on the Right to Rome.
Speaker 3: Campaign in part. In part, I mean it's not it's
Speaker 3: been kind of Right to Rome have definitely felt that,
Speaker 3: you know, lots of it is about them, and I
Speaker 3: would say they're there in part, and they're are kind
Speaker 3: of jumping off point in a way. But but yeah, no,
Speaker 3: certainly I got I got down and dirty with the
Speaker 3: right Jerome.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things you sort of repeat, well
Speaker 1: not repeat, but you you got back to towards the waight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get more words right because we were
Speaker 1: an actual writer and I'm somebody who struggles with the
Speaker 1: English language. That you say that it's the loudest voices
Speaker 1: are the ones that we listened to most within that
Speaker 1: that that world, And it does seemed that Right to
Speaker 1: Rome have been very good at making themselves that loudest
Speaker 1: voice of the voice that's listened to the most.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean one hundred percent. I mean the thing
Speaker 3: I would pick up on there, I had a really
Speaker 3: interesting I had a really interesting time on Radio four
Speaker 3: a couple of days ago now with a guy called
Speaker 3: Robert McFarlane, who lots of listeners will have heard of.
Speaker 3: He's he's one of the great nature writers of our time.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we were, we would. What I wanted to
Speaker 3: say to him is we were talking about rights. He
Speaker 3: was talking about the rights of rivers, and the rights
Speaker 3: of forests came up and so on, and I was
Speaker 3: talking about the right of people to be listened to.
Speaker 3: So I think we've heard an awful lot from Right
Speaker 3: to Rome campaigners. A lot of them have tremendous connections.
Speaker 3: They write for publications like the New Statesmen, like The Guardian.
Speaker 4: You know, they're not.
Speaker 3: Sort of you know, factory hands who are kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, oppressed. I don't believe. And what I wanted
Speaker 3: to go and do was to talk to people in
Speaker 3: the countryside, those who work and live in the countryside
Speaker 3: about their perception. So I went down to Dartmore and
Speaker 3: I spoke to a young guy, a farmer's son, and
Speaker 3: I said to him, what do you think of Right
Speaker 3: to Rome? A very shy young guy, and he always
Speaker 3: couldn't look at me, but he said, I think they're
Speaker 3: just a bunch of rich Londoners trying to tell us
Speaker 3: what to do. Now, you know, I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: that's absolutely correct. I'm not saying it's correct in every instance.
Speaker 3: I mean, Right to Rome is a mass movement. There
Speaker 3: are lots of them. They're not all rich Londoners. But
Speaker 3: it's fascinating why he said that, you know, why does
Speaker 3: he think that? And the other moment that is sort
Speaker 3: of related to that is we were there on Dartmore
Speaker 3: and Guy Shrubsol was dressing the crowd and there was
Speaker 3: a farmer who was just trying to get through, just
Speaker 3: a farmer smoking a rolled up cigarette, and it was
Speaker 3: the most terrific image. And his wife, I assume, was
Speaker 3: quite agitated and people were being slightly unpleasant to her
Speaker 3: in quite a superior way. And I just thought, this
Speaker 3: is fascinating because you've got people who are kind of
Speaker 3: purporting to be peasants. I mean, that's a word that
Speaker 3: guy shrubs All uses again and again. You know, we're
Speaker 3: the peasants. And actually you've got some you know, probably
Speaker 3: tenant farmer just trying to make you know, enough money
Speaker 3: to kind of feed his family, who can't get through
Speaker 3: to do his job. Because all of these you know,
Speaker 3: sort of Oxbridge grows are here, and that's a really
Speaker 3: fascinating dynamic, and it's been a dynamic that they have
Speaker 3: absolutely hated in terms of the way that the book
Speaker 3: has come together.
Speaker 2: But those tenant farmers are probably the people that they're
Speaker 2: taking out on them, but they're not really the ones
Speaker 2: that are. They're just kind of against them in a way,
Speaker 2: the people that are on the estate enforcing potential cut
Speaker 2: off zones right to where people can't go. So it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily they're against the tenant farmer. But what they
Speaker 2: stand for and the sort of the organization they're in
Speaker 2: is that not well.
Speaker 3: I think the point is is that is that they're
Speaker 3: not against the tenant farmer. They don't see the tenant farmer.
Speaker 3: So when they look at a piece of land, they
Speaker 3: see somebody in a big house who they've got to
Speaker 3: scrap with. They don't see the person who actually works
Speaker 3: on the land.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: And there is a thing and I write about this,
Speaker 3: I mean, landowners get a lot of as Mark Avery,
Speaker 3: the Campaigner and Conservation has put it in his review,
Speaker 3: a lot of brick bats. There are landowners in this country.
Speaker 3: They don't even know what they own, you know, to them,
Speaker 3: it's just a way to sort of store wealth in
Speaker 3: quite a tax efficient ways. Still, you know, I've worked
Speaker 3: with landowners along fields and they've said to me, do
Speaker 3: I own that bit next door? Because I stalk there
Speaker 3: or whatever. So I don't know, mate, it's your it's
Speaker 3: your land. But there are people on the land eking out,
Speaker 3: you know, a really really meager existence. And those are
Speaker 3: the people who land access campaigners don't see. And I
Speaker 3: think that that's a fascinating thing, right, the kind of
Speaker 3: rural working class are not seen, and when they're imagine,
Speaker 3: they're just seen as kind of lackeys in a feudal way.
Speaker 3: So it's yeah, so it's so interesting, so wrong on
Speaker 3: so many counts.
Speaker 1: So you open the book with the the kinder trespass,
Speaker 1: not what recreation, but the meeting in Hayfield and the
Speaker 1: the discussion there with about was it Benny Rathbone, Benny Rothman.
Speaker 3: Bennie Roman, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And who was the almost sort of held up
Speaker 1: as this deified figure of access and this is.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and I mean, and I suspect and I
Speaker 3: think he's a fascinating guy. A very important part of
Speaker 3: working class history was he a member of the Young
Speaker 3: Communist Party.
Speaker 4: I think he was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what's the can you sort of lay out
Speaker 1: for the audience, because I'm very conscious that it's that
Speaker 1: difficult thing because I know this subject quite well. I'm
Speaker 1: trying not to just say.
Speaker 3: What the hell are you jogging about? Well, everybody will
Speaker 3: know I'm a rambler. I'm a rambler from Manchester where
Speaker 3: you know. And if they don't, they should so so
Speaker 3: you and McCole was the I'm going to use the
Speaker 3: wrong title, but it was something like the head of propaganda, right,
Speaker 3: and he wrote that song. He was considered to be
Speaker 3: a particularly dangerous person. But they went out there the
Speaker 3: the that land was it was it was a grouse
Speaker 3: shooting estate, right, And they went up into the hills
Speaker 3: and they fought it out with the gamekeepers there. There's
Speaker 3: a guy called Wolfy, really interesting guy. Lots of them
Speaker 3: went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. So
Speaker 3: when I was there in Hayfield, there were people dressed
Speaker 3: up as though they were going to fight in the
Speaker 3: Spanish Civil War. And they're quite kind of comic figures,
Speaker 3: some of these people in a way. It's kind of yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, they get very upset, but it is cosplay
Speaker 3: to a degree, and you know, it's kind of terrific.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a wonderful part of British heritage. But
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the things I think is interesting
Speaker 3: to dwell On is that, like, if you grew up
Speaker 3: around kinder Scout, then you couldn't go up into the hills, right,
Speaker 3: if you grow up around Winter Hill, you couldn't really
Speaker 3: go up into the hills either, And these people really
Speaker 3: wanted to be able to do that, and their lives
Speaker 3: were hard, their lives were miserable, and there's a there's
Speaker 3: a kind of One reader pointed something out to me
Speaker 3: the other day which I thought was fascinating. He'd really
Speaker 3: like the book. He said that the land access movement
Speaker 3: now goes to places they almost go on like trespass
Speaker 3: day trips. Right, so like, let's go to the anglefield
Speaker 3: of state life, let's go to the arrund of the
Speaker 3: state life. Let's go stick it to Alexander Dharwah kind
Speaker 3: of thing. Where was somebody like Benny Rothman, he was
Speaker 3: going to go up there. He'd be there the next weekend,
Speaker 3: the next weekend, the next weekend, the next weekend. So
Speaker 3: it's it's interesting this kind of idea that they there's
Speaker 3: like this lineage and exploring that lineage is quite an
Speaker 3: interesting thing.
Speaker 2: So a lot of these people, these trespassed straight day trips.
Speaker 2: Is it like a tug of a tug of war
Speaker 2: against the establishment that we we think it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: that they want to go up on the heel that
Speaker 2: that someone's telling them they can't. It's that they're just
Speaker 2: trying to exercise the right to prove the point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean I almost think it's I
Speaker 3: almost think it's just best as a like journalist and
Speaker 3: writer to take it from them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So I spoke to a person who was very active
Speaker 3: and right to Rome and she said to me, so,
Speaker 3: let me tell you that the way that this happened.
Speaker 3: I don't know how well you guys remember this, but
Speaker 3: Guy Shaubzol, co founder of the Right to Rome campaign,
Speaker 3: went to the Arundela state and let a COVID out
Speaker 3: of a trap. Right, that's confirmed, we know that, okay,
Speaker 3: And he said, I will always take the opportunity to
Speaker 3: do so. He was on the Arundella state, he thought
Speaker 3: he was, and he ended up having an argument with
Speaker 3: the gamekeeper online who's a terrific guy, you know, And
Speaker 3: it ran and ran, and it was sort of quite
Speaker 3: embarrassing in a way because he'd been somewhere and he
Speaker 3: thought he was somewhere else, it seemed. And anyway, and
Speaker 3: long after that, the Right to Rome campaign went there
Speaker 3: to trespass and I was talking to a girl who said, oh,
Speaker 3: you must come on my trespass. And I'd been down
Speaker 3: there to see this gamekeeper not long before that. She
Speaker 3: said you must come on my trespass to Aarondalden and
Speaker 3: I said, I don't know whether Arundall's the one. And
Speaker 3: I showed her all of these videos of kind of
Speaker 3: conservation efforts at Arundall. I was showing her Curlew chicks,
Speaker 3: I was showing her whatever, and she looked at them
Speaker 3: and then said, oh yeah, but we're we're not going there.
Speaker 3: We're going somewhere else on the estate. And said, you
Speaker 3: don't know, you don't know the estate, this is like whatever,
Speaker 3: and she asked me to come along. I couldn't make it.
Speaker 3: I had something else that I had to go to
Speaker 3: for writing this book. And I bumped into her again,
Speaker 3: like not long after that, and I said, how was arundall,
Speaker 3: like was it? You know? And she seemed to think
Speaker 3: it was pretty amazing. I mean, no one cared that
Speaker 3: they were there. There was a lot of wildlife. And
Speaker 3: she said to me, and this is verbatim, and they
Speaker 3: hate this, that right to Rome is a symbolic thing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: She'd gone there expecting no doubt that they were going
Speaker 3: to have a kind of Benny Rothman like experience and
Speaker 3: it wasn't that at all. And that to me is like,
Speaker 3: so I'm not telling you what you are. You were
Speaker 3: telling me what you are. It is a symbolic thing.
Speaker 3: And what is it symbolizing? That's what's so fascinating.
Speaker 1: So is it almost that they are creating a tribal
Speaker 1: group under this identity that they have to do it
Speaker 1: as a performative thing in order to maintain that identity.
Speaker 3: No, No, completely, And it's and it's and it's you know,
Speaker 3: I find it so extraordinary. I'm fascinated by it. I
Speaker 3: have to say, I'm truly fascinated by it. I Mean,
Speaker 3: one of the things that that Right to your Own
Speaker 3: fell out with fell out with each other on when
Speaker 3: I was kind of writing about them, was Palestine. So
Speaker 3: you know, so so some members of Right to Rome
Speaker 3: wanted Right to Rome to take a position on Palestine.
Speaker 3: The kind of head campaigners were like, we're not taking
Speaker 3: a position on Palestine, thinking that like your campaigning for
Speaker 3: access to more farmland in Britain. I mean, Palestine is
Speaker 3: tremendously important, but not only do I think that most
Speaker 3: of you probably don't know enough about it to really like,
Speaker 3: you know, speak about it, because it looks like you
Speaker 3: don't know that much about the conservation and farming either,
Speaker 3: but like what has that got to do with And
Speaker 3: it just and it just, you know, it was really
Speaker 3: interesting and I think symbolic the word that that girl
Speaker 3: used is absolutely right, and this whole thing of like,
Speaker 3: you know, we're the peasants. I mean, there are people
Speaker 3: in the world who live in very hard conditions agricultural
Speaker 3: labors and so on. There have been peasants in Britain,
Speaker 3: but it's a little distasteful for very successful authors, you know,
Speaker 3: Guardian columnists and so on, to purport to be you know, peasantry.
Speaker 2: I think there's a there's a line in the book
Speaker 2: that says is basically trying to stick it to the man,
Speaker 2: where somebody says to you that this person had made
Speaker 2: their money from pheasant shooting, and yeah, anyone that's got
Speaker 2: the actual knowledge of the countryside knows that that's.
Speaker 3: Not really He was reading my book being like, ship howl, if.
Speaker 2: I go, if I go, could I pay for the
Speaker 2: guys rubs course on to.
Speaker 3: Making millions out of that's a really good idea actually,
Speaker 3: I mean we're published by the same publisher.
Speaker 4: I'll text after this and say that you should do.
Speaker 1: This going to be Grouse after that as well, well.
Speaker 2: We'll make it. It'd be a country Country's live production
Speaker 2: and we'll retire on it exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But but it just shows that the fundamental h lack
Speaker 2: of knowledge on behalf of these people, and you kind
Speaker 2: of I don't want to say like this, it's like
Speaker 2: a big gotcha in the book, but you've got these
Speaker 2: moments that show huge cracks in the logic and the
Speaker 2: thinking throughout throughout the spending time with these people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah, And it's it's so
Speaker 3: there's there's two things there. I think it's really interesting
Speaker 3: to kind of when you're when you're trying to understand something,
Speaker 3: you don't just go and you know, if you want
Speaker 3: to understand the Republican Party. You don't just go and
Speaker 3: talk to jd Vance. You don't show whatever you know.
Speaker 3: You come in. You come in on an obliqu hangle.
Speaker 3: You'd talk to people in rural places at rallies and
Speaker 3: so on whatever. But I mean the stuff that I
Speaker 3: was hearing was just remarkable. So like driven grouse shooting
Speaker 3: on Dartmore. I mean that'll be news to you know,
Speaker 3: anybody who sort of really actually works on Dartmore. And
Speaker 3: Alexander Darwalf fascinating guy because I write this this line
Speaker 3: that on Dartmore that day he was kind of everywhere
Speaker 3: and nowhere, and he was whatever you wanted him to be.
Speaker 3: You know, he'd made millions doing this. He was actually
Speaker 3: really interested, apparently in the mineral rights. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: he'd made a lot of money from pheasant shooting. He'd
Speaker 3: bought all the land, he'd inherited all the land. He
Speaker 3: was this kind of like Gatsby figure. You could say
Speaker 3: anything about him and people will go, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 3: And I met the bloke.
Speaker 2: Very underwhelmed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I'm going to say it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say it, and there will be people
Speaker 3: who listen to this. My ops. He's a pretty ordinary
Speaker 3: bloke with an interest in conservation. You know, he's pretty conservative.
Speaker 3: He's clearly very good at what he does, you know.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, he literally he like the extent to
Speaker 3: which he's a bogey man. I mean there were people
Speaker 3: there with pictures of him with signs, you know, going
Speaker 3: onto somebody's land with pictures of them and with signs.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's it's I mean, so this whole
Speaker 3: thing about this campaign that they say they're about wondering goodness,
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel that kind of gooey and wonderful to
Speaker 3: me doing that.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, Yeah, that does sound a bit.
Speaker 2: Is he not? Like is he just like the figurehead
Speaker 2: for the man?
Speaker 3: I mean they call him comrade Darwall and they kind
Speaker 3: of you know, use him as this. You know, did
Speaker 3: he get the PR right? I don't think he believes
Speaker 3: in PR. I think he has a very specific way
Speaker 3: of thinking, quite a binary way of thinking, and he
Speaker 3: doesn't do PR in the way that other estates do.
Speaker 3: So I mean, you know, let's name some names, right,
Speaker 3: the Hulk estate terrific on PR.
Speaker 4: I think Aarondell are quite good.
Speaker 3: I actually think, funnily enough, that Darwall has been quite
Speaker 3: good for Right to Rome. I think Right to Rome
Speaker 3: have been quite good for Arundell because you know, they're
Speaker 3: letting the bird out of the trap is just you know, moronic.
Speaker 1: And the whole dart More wild camping thing was was
Speaker 1: a such a poor faith argument as well, because it
Speaker 1: was always made that now wild camping is banned, that's
Speaker 1: the last place you can wild camp. Well, no, it's
Speaker 1: just if you overturn the wild camping permission or that
Speaker 1: interpretation of the law, that you just return it to
Speaker 1: the same as the rest of the upland areas of
Speaker 1: England and Wales where wild camping is generally tolerated. There
Speaker 1: have not been any prosecutions for it, and it's actually
Speaker 1: embedded into most of the outdoor education syllabus, you know.
Speaker 1: To do my Mountain Leader award, I had to do
Speaker 1: a certain number of wild camps in England and Wales
Speaker 1: a altitude and it was the only way to achieve
Speaker 1: that qualification.
Speaker 3: So it's but surely that's impossible though, Richard, right, because
Speaker 3: you can only do it.
Speaker 1: And that was back in the back in the early
Speaker 1: and mid two thousands. A long time ago. And it's
Speaker 1: is that strange thing that I feel like we got
Speaker 1: this settled after the two thousand and four Land Reform Act,
Speaker 1: and we'd already had the two thousand countries, I had
Speaker 1: Right his Way Act. Then when I started working in
Speaker 1: the outdoors in the early two thousands or something, mid
Speaker 1: two thousands and then did it, got qualified and started
Speaker 1: running my own my own stuff, there was this general
Speaker 1: vibe of yeah, we have it great, We've got all
Speaker 1: this access, all this access to the land, to the
Speaker 1: mountains that wasn't there before, and that there was sort
Speaker 1: of you felt you like you were on the winning
Speaker 1: side there. That narrative changed background to you can't do
Speaker 1: anything anywhere and I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, this happened to me, right, and they and
Speaker 3: it's really amusing. There's a guy call John Moses who
Speaker 3: wrote that this was He wrote he feigned mock surprise,
Speaker 3: which doesn't really work as a sentence anyway, because quite
Speaker 3: how you would feign mock surprise. I was think, Jesus,
Speaker 3: you know whatever. But but you know, I went down
Speaker 3: to Richard Benz the State Anglefield, right, and I read
Speaker 3: the start of the book Wild Service, and I read
Speaker 3: it in good faith. It said that accept and I'm
Speaker 3: going to get slightly wrong with I'll do my best
Speaker 3: other than basically a few stunted footpaths. His vast dominion
Speaker 3: remains closed at all times.
Speaker 4: Okay. I got public transport down next my.
Speaker 3: Car was broken and for the book, and basically the
Speaker 3: point that I went down there to prove is that
Speaker 3: access is quite shit.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: I hadn't done my research on this at this point.
Speaker 3: You know, I read the book, right. This is the
Speaker 3: book published by Bloomsbury, biggest independent publisher.
Speaker 4: Great, you know, got there.
Speaker 3: Hang in a second. The gate's open, right, Okay, So
Speaker 3: go in. Meet a guy from Ghana. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: what are you doing here?
Speaker 4: Mate?
Speaker 3: And all he wanted to talk about was how brilliant
Speaker 3: the access is and how happy he is that you
Speaker 3: can go to places like this, because he said, in
Speaker 3: Ghana you would have nothing like this, you know. All right, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's a bit weird. Met someone from America a bit
Speaker 3: further down the drive and they just said this is incredible.
Speaker 3: They're like, you cannot do this in America.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: And then I got the garden center that I'm meeting
Speaker 3: this now the next person, there's all of these meadows.
Speaker 3: Find a thing about like seventeen hundred acres of access.
Speaker 3: There's a community woodland and you know, I would like
Speaker 3: to say the access is not signposted that well, in
Speaker 3: part because the estate is so big that quite a
Speaker 3: lot of it is in another place. But it was just,
Speaker 3: to use a technical term, fucking bullshit. You know there
Speaker 3: are seventeen hundred acres that you can access. Richard Benyon,
Speaker 3: who owns it, wants access to be better. He wants
Speaker 3: to communicate with the local community about how access can
Speaker 3: be better. They've gone mental saying, oh, you know, there
Speaker 3: was not actually not the next thing that fellas you've
Speaker 3: had to change your book. You have had to change
Speaker 3: your book. I wrote to Balloonsbury. I said, this is incorrect,
Speaker 3: and I believe that there might still be errors in there.
Speaker 3: But like, what's the point in just bullshitting about this, Like,
Speaker 3: le let's accept what we've got. It's not great everywhere
Speaker 3: you know it could be better. How could it be better?
Speaker 3: But let's not just pretend that we're locked out of
Speaker 3: the countryside because it is not true. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't see what the benefit is in that unless you're
Speaker 3: kind of it's this kind of cosplay thing that I
Speaker 3: don't really get.
Speaker 2: You must have encountered some places where you thought, well,
Speaker 2: surely you know, they could open this up and it
Speaker 2: could be was there any points we thought actually fair enough,
Speaker 2: they might be right in any way.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent? And this is and this is this
Speaker 3: is my thing kind of always is like it's like,
Speaker 3: you know when I meet a farmer or a landowner
Speaker 3: who says, oh, the public don't understand the countryside.
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 3: But what have you done to try to change that?
Speaker 3: And that's not just about throwing open access. So you know,
Speaker 3: you know how many states have lakes with pike in them?
Speaker 3: How many of them right to the local primary school
Speaker 3: and say can we do like a pike fishing workshop
Speaker 3: or whatever? You know, and the whole thing of we've
Speaker 3: not got time or make time, you know, make time,
Speaker 3: like you know, you you have to connect people with
Speaker 3: a land, you have to give them a respect for
Speaker 3: the land. And I genuinely believe this is a true I
Speaker 3: think if landowners and farmers and conservationists as well got
Speaker 3: on the front foot and tried to engage local communities
Speaker 3: and provide access, sorry engagement opportunities. I think Right to
Speaker 3: Run would have done the thing and everyone would have
Speaker 3: gone as bollocks, you know. But it's almost like flourished
Speaker 3: because of a lack of engagement and because of a
Speaker 3: lack of knowledge about how good access that's is. But
Speaker 3: but how you you change culture is through engagement.
Speaker 1: And they have quite a good pr campaign with the
Speaker 1: numbers because they say it was it eight percent of
Speaker 1: England is open access land.
Speaker 4: Everything else is off limits.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So obviously before before the crow at you couldn't go.
Speaker 1: Away, and they never mentioned whales, which is twenty percent exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the all the footpaths, I mean they say
Speaker 3: that if you, if you, if you put all the
Speaker 3: footpaths around and around and around around around in England,
Speaker 3: you could go around the globe six times.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well I'm in next September, I'm walking from Ivy
Speaker 1: Bridge and Dartmoor to Oxford on public footpaths.
Speaker 3: Well impossible though, because the countryside is off limits. And
Speaker 3: the question I would say to you is like, okay,
Speaker 3: so you're working on footpaths there when you look out
Speaker 3: across fields of wheat.
Speaker 4: Are you like these bastards?
Speaker 3: I want to be able to walk through that whek
Speaker 3: or are you like now I can see it and
Speaker 3: I can you know, because that's the thing that always
Speaker 3: interests me.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, is it that people look at
Speaker 1: those landscapes and they think, well, that's currently not doing something. Well,
Speaker 1: there's Lewis. Lewis Winks a couple of years ago got
Speaker 1: into an argument on Twitter before he left The Blue
Speaker 1: Sky saying, well, there's all these field margins. Why can't
Speaker 1: we just walk on the field.
Speaker 3: You're not allowed to talk about that though, because I've
Speaker 3: got a lot of trouble for talking about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's well, I've got screenshots as I wrote
Speaker 1: it for it, I put it into an article.
Speaker 4: But the that is that is you know, expecting to
Speaker 4: knock on the door in the night.
Speaker 1: I have to find me. That's is that? The thing though?
Speaker 1: Is it that you there's that we aren't good at
Speaker 1: connecting people with the landscapes because we don't say that
Speaker 1: thing that looks like it's just being a nice place
Speaker 1: and a nice view over there is actually hopefully a
Speaker 1: factory that turns out great partridge or wood carle well
Speaker 1: exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: And you've got two things there, right, You've got a field. Okay,
Speaker 3: the bit in the middle of that is generally growing
Speaker 3: food for us or growing food for things that we
Speaker 3: might eat, And that little tiny sliver that we leave
Speaker 3: at the side, right, it's the little time really at
Speaker 3: the side, that's the wildlife, you know, that the wildlife
Speaker 3: that still remains, you know, that's still hanging on. So
Speaker 3: the idea that we should just be able to use
Speaker 3: it as a footpath is that because we want the
Speaker 3: middle of the field for food production and we want
Speaker 3: the edge of the field for recreation. And it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's so anthropocentric.
Speaker 2: I don't think a regular being formally a regular person.
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 1: Before you got it indoctrinated by.
Speaker 2: Us being formally a regular person. I don't think people
Speaker 2: understand that even or even the extent that going just
Speaker 2: walking through a piece of wood affects the wildlife in
Speaker 2: the wood or through a field margin, the damage it
Speaker 2: does and the disturbance it has for wildlife. Even even
Speaker 2: even now, if I'm like deer stalking and something happens
Speaker 2: and there's like, you know, some kids riding their bike
Speaker 2: on the edge.
Speaker 4: Of the gay over yeah, yeah, it's like, yeah.
Speaker 2: You do. I would never expect that something so minor
Speaker 2: like forestry commission starting a chainsaw like a mile away
Speaker 2: has scared the entirety of a wood.
Speaker 4: Like yeah, yeah, yeah, how is that?
Speaker 2: I would never have expected that.
Speaker 3: So it's just on a practical level with deer s talking.
Speaker 3: I mean, I do a lot of deer stalking. I'll
Speaker 3: be going down a wood and ride occasionally shoot them
Speaker 3: on jack. We've all done it. We all miss deer.
Speaker 3: What do you do if someone's coming around the corner
Speaker 3: with a dog like it's it's like, it's a very practical.
Speaker 3: It's not like a water boudery thing like it is
Speaker 3: exceptionally dangerous. Not only are they're not going to be
Speaker 3: I remember saying to a keeper a while ago, right,
Speaker 3: I was talking the edge of a village, and he
Speaker 3: said to me, he said to me, but don't worry
Speaker 3: too much about people, because if there are people anywhere,
Speaker 3: there won't be any deer.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: And that's like that is an interest because they're scared
Speaker 3: because we're predators, because they look at us and they think,
Speaker 3: you know, this whole notion that oh we're part of nature.
Speaker 3: You don't walk through a meadow and a lap wing
Speaker 3: goes fantastic, pal, great to see you know, see you
Speaker 3: again tomorrow. No, they see you and they go, fuck,
Speaker 3: you know this is going to try and kill me,
Speaker 3: right and trying to eat me because you know, there's
Speaker 3: what they've been doing for time immemorial.
Speaker 4: It's yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like that thing of invisible impact that people don't
Speaker 1: realize the impact they're having. And not nobody thinks they're
Speaker 1: the villain in their own story. They always think they're
Speaker 1: the heroes. They don't consider naturally that I wonder if
Speaker 1: my actions are having a negative content. Yeah, it's mean,
Speaker 1: it's like the skinner meme, is it. I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's me causing a problem for wildlife? No to blame.
Speaker 3: And you're like, no, I'm actually monitoring, I'm actually looking
Speaker 3: at the wildlife.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you have all these I was talking
Speaker 3: to Tom Cameron, Who's was it Tom Cameron?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a he's a great ecologist at.
Speaker 3: Essex, and he was saying, like, everywhere you go on
Speaker 3: the beach, just imagine the wildlife that would be there
Speaker 3: if it wasn't for all the people. And that's just
Speaker 3: and we're so weird as a species, Like it's almost
Speaker 3: a colonial thing. Like we see somewhere and we're like,
Speaker 3: we should go there, whereas you know, you see other
Speaker 3: species and other species will look at places and go
Speaker 3: that's not really for me, you know, and that's not
Speaker 3: really where I live. Like I just stay here, I
Speaker 3: stay in the marsh or stay up the tree or whatever.
Speaker 4: They're not like I want it all.
Speaker 1: I want it all. So what do you think the
Speaker 1: biggest myth then the public holds about sort of the
Speaker 1: either the land access or the way lands managed in
Speaker 1: the UK, what's the average across.
Speaker 3: The thing is there's not like a sort of there's
Speaker 3: not one thing. It's it's more sort of you know.
Speaker 3: I mean one of the most interesting things is and
Speaker 3: this is this is now moving on to a historical point,
Speaker 3: but the idea that everybody used to own the ground
Speaker 3: that they worked so a kind of misrepresentation of the
Speaker 3: commons and enclosure. I mean, people were treated very badly.
Speaker 3: We know that. But you know, I spent quite a
Speaker 3: lot of time talking to historians, I mean proper historians
Speaker 3: on this who would say that, you know, the notion
Speaker 3: of the commons as an egalitarian space a set of
Speaker 3: egalitarian free for all is not right. So there were
Speaker 3: court cases to do with people trespassing on the Commons. Now,
Speaker 3: the way that we understand the Commons today would mean
Speaker 3: that trespassing on the Commons wasn't possible surely because it
Speaker 3: was like a place where everyone did Morris dancing and
Speaker 3: like held hands and whatever danced around maples. That's not
Speaker 3: that is not what the Commons was. And yeah, so
Speaker 3: I think I think the language used is really interesting
Speaker 3: and the extent to which things are. But I mean
Speaker 3: that's a very old thing. Is that is that you know,
Speaker 3: after the Civil War, you had quite a lot of
Speaker 3: movements who would say we need to go back to
Speaker 3: you know, Anglo Saxon England when everything was wonderful, and
Speaker 3: you know, I was talking to historians and I hope
Speaker 3: I'm not going to garble this point, but you had
Speaker 3: a lot of slaves in Anglo Saxon England, the idea
Speaker 3: that everyone had their own little bit and it was
Speaker 3: like it was like you know, woodstock. You know, that's
Speaker 3: not that's not but it can kind of be whatever
Speaker 3: you want it to be because it was so long ago.
Speaker 3: So that I think is is And then also, I
Speaker 3: mean this is a more kind of a subtle point,
Speaker 3: but I think that lots of people think that landowners
Speaker 3: big landowners, so wake up in the morning and worry
Speaker 3: about people trespassing across their boundary, you know. And as
Speaker 3: I say, I think a lot of landowners don't really
Speaker 3: know what they own. And that's actually a darker thing, right,
Speaker 3: That's a darker thing, the idea of land as just
Speaker 3: being a kind of store of wealth, a kind of
Speaker 3: tax efficient store of wealth.
Speaker 1: I've got a friend who's got this this theory that
Speaker 1: Tolkien is to blame for some of this, because You've
Speaker 1: got this sort of this vision of being able to
Speaker 1: walk entirely across Middle Earth and just go off on
Speaker 1: your adventure and just set out from the.
Speaker 2: Door with your hairy feet, yeah.
Speaker 1: And just walk in a direction to a location, and
Speaker 1: it didn't really matter where you went to. That that's
Speaker 1: what life was like up until about seventeen fifty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I think that's I think
Speaker 3: that's that's that's probably very true. No, you're probably tru Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right. And I think though, I had a very
Speaker 3: interesting conversation with a guy who's very into pilgrimage, and
Speaker 3: he said that the right to own campaign, we're keen
Speaker 3: to do some kind of collab guys, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm up for it, but I can't tell you that
Speaker 3: anybody is trying to go on pilgrimage in this country
Speaker 3: and they can't actually get to where it is they're
Speaker 3: trying to go to. Now, I'm sure you're going to
Speaker 3: have all kinds of people who pick up on this
Speaker 3: and say, oh, well, you can't go here and you
Speaker 3: can't get there. But again, I'm just reporting what he
Speaker 3: was saying. And that's so that's really interesting. It's, as
Speaker 3: you say, that space between myth and reality, and it's
Speaker 3: that thing of like, if you can control historical narratives,
Speaker 3: you've got quite a good chance of controlling kind of
Speaker 3: where we're heading. And that's and that's what really this
Speaker 3: is all about. It's all about actually, you know, it's
Speaker 3: all about a fight for the past as much as
Speaker 3: it's about the future.
Speaker 1: There's something Calum and I were talking about this other
Speaker 1: day that because we're on different sides of the country,
Speaker 1: the view outside of his window and the sort of
Speaker 1: the five miles around his house looks very different to
Speaker 1: the five miles around my house. Because you've got that
Speaker 1: potentially very urban lead campaign for right to Rome and
Speaker 1: for that increased access, you know, very london centric or
Speaker 1: coming out of those urban areas, that perception is skewed
Speaker 1: because generally the access to the countryside is maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit poorer in the urban edges because the urban
Speaker 1: edges keep moving out into the countryside. Whereas that's so interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are where we are here. I mean, I'm I
Speaker 1: can't see a street light from here, and I can
Speaker 1: just look at a range of hills. It's all over
Speaker 1: and I can take anyone on any number of footpaths
Speaker 1: to get there. But that's because I chose to live here.
Speaker 1: I didn't choose to live where Calum lives. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that nothing. There's nothing wrong with your house, Calum. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's fine, but it's sort of this disproportionate access
Speaker 1: is something that keeps being brought up, but they never
Speaker 1: argue that the people of Birmingham or Leicester don't have
Speaker 1: walking distance to a nice beach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, that's really interesting. I mean, when I've
Speaker 3: felt access keenly, or rather a lack of access, I
Speaker 3: should say, is for country life magazine.
Speaker 4: A while ago.
Speaker 3: I recreated that journey and Three Men in a Boat
Speaker 3: if you know the Jerome Cage your Own books, very
Speaker 3: famous book, and everywhere we went like there would be
Speaker 3: signs like no camping here, no camping here.
Speaker 4: I mean these were people's gardens.
Speaker 3: But I was like, ah, this is pretty shit, these
Speaker 3: people in these massive houses. And then I think actually
Speaker 3: in the original that's also the same thing that they
Speaker 3: come up against. And I could totally imagine if you
Speaker 3: lived in like Walton on Thames or something, you would
Speaker 3: be like, the access is terrible. It's like, but that's
Speaker 3: because you know, we're in almost suburban zone. I had
Speaker 3: a very interesting conversation in the book with with a
Speaker 3: hunt master, Home County's hunt master, and he was saying
Speaker 3: that the big problem that they have is rich Londoners
Speaker 3: buying one hundred acres and just saying you can't hunt
Speaker 3: across here anymore, closing down their country. And as I
Speaker 3: was saying on the radio the other day, that's like
Speaker 3: what I hear from the Right to Rome guys as well.
Speaker 4: So you have these kind of you know.
Speaker 3: Dual things going on that Right to Rome think that
Speaker 3: like they're anti hunting and hunting is sort of anti
Speaker 3: what they're doing, but actually they both got a kind
Speaker 3: of common enemy, although they would never see it like that,
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I had a look at bridle paths once to see
Speaker 2: where we could go with the horses, and the logistics
Speaker 2: of it were just terrible, Like you couldn't You'd get
Speaker 2: one bridle path that you could go for like, you know,
Speaker 2: a quarter of a mile and it would end there's
Speaker 2: no way to get to another part unless you had
Speaker 2: a horse box and put it on. So it became
Speaker 2: like these areas of permission that were fundamentally useless because
Speaker 2: you who wants to go on a quarter mile hack?
Speaker 1: Is it? Because the bits that used to be bridle
Speaker 1: paths are now tarmacked and just called the B five
Speaker 1: four three nine.
Speaker 2: Yes, so there wasn't an access to it. And then
Speaker 2: there's like a footpath down that's obviously public are walking
Speaker 2: cross on the foot path, and then there's and then
Speaker 2: there's a bit more bridle path, but unfortunately you can't
Speaker 2: take I think that's a really valid horses along a
Speaker 2: river with people walking dogs.
Speaker 3: You know, every guy the other day whose thing is
Speaker 3: about trying to like connect paths up and things, and
Speaker 3: that's and that's really quite interesting, you know.
Speaker 4: And it's about like the other thing.
Speaker 3: I spoke to a farmer actually not far from here,
Speaker 3: chicken farmer, and he was saying he's got a right
Speaker 3: of way that goes through his yard or up to
Speaker 3: his yard. He said, now, this right away used to
Speaker 3: be for people to come to the farm who were
Speaker 3: working here. He now has a problem with it because
Speaker 3: of Avian influenza. He doesn't really want people walking up it,
Speaker 3: along it, through it. And his point is that like,
Speaker 3: maybe we should rethink paths and create paths that work
Speaker 3: for us now, rather than being like, oh, we need
Speaker 3: to maintain everything and so on. I think that's a
Speaker 3: really interesting point, is what works for us now.
Speaker 1: Well, the lot of the tracks around here are sort
Speaker 1: of old postman paths, yes, link farms that way. But
Speaker 1: the north of the border up in that they're Scotland
Speaker 1: that sort of often painted as this utopia where there
Speaker 1: was absolutely no problems with access whatsoever. No one has
Speaker 1: ever had a problem at all, particularly in the central belt.
Speaker 1: How did that sort of come across in new conversations?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was really interesting. So I was
Speaker 3: watching a video and there's all that. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 3: it's almost like land access bingo. They've got the eight
Speaker 3: percent thing in there, They've got the peasants in there,
Speaker 3: the pheasants get mentioned in there. And then there's this
Speaker 3: guy who's just like chewing a piece of grass. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: works pretty well in Scotland, doesn't it. And it's like
Speaker 3: he doesn't. He doesn't seem to know. And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I'll get on the road. You know, I've
Speaker 3: only spent whatever, like most of my life that I
Speaker 3: got on the road up, get up and see how
Speaker 3: it's going. Pouring rain, driving alongside Loch Loman, and these
Speaker 3: two hitchhikers were there and I couldn't see them until
Speaker 3: last minute. I reversed back, raining so much and they
Speaker 3: got in the car and I was like, oh, how
Speaker 3: have you been getting on? They're both minking.
Speaker 4: They were like it's rubbish.
Speaker 3: We thought like Scotland was just like this promised land
Speaker 3: in terms of you could go wherever you want, but
Speaker 3: like all the way up lock Loman there's just these
Speaker 3: no camping signs.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, it's really unfortunate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, we did find a boat that
Speaker 3: we just like took out onto the loch and just
Speaker 3: like took it for a spin. And this guy was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't really think it belonged to anyone it And
Speaker 3: this girl he was with was like, I think it
Speaker 3: actually might have done. It could have been like someone.
Speaker 3: She was like, I was really shocking myself that we
Speaker 3: were going to get back and there's going to be
Speaker 3: a shepherd there or something like. I wonder why they've
Speaker 3: got the no camping sign between Yes, you know, but yeah,
Speaker 3: totally right. I mean Loch Loman lock Un big big
Speaker 3: problems and in other parts of Scotland they don't.
Speaker 2: But why is that a no camping all around? It's
Speaker 2: the what's the reason for.
Speaker 1: It as a by law? It was an exception to
Speaker 1: the line reformat it. It was added in afterwards as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was added afterwards.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know in terms of lock Loan
Speaker 3: and I suspect it was added afterwards Lockerun. They fought
Speaker 3: quite hard to have it changed, I believe. I mean
Speaker 3: there are things like sectarian violence is quite an issue there.
Speaker 3: So you can get the train and then you get
Speaker 3: the bus. It's not that far from Glasgow. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of drinking and you know, look like
Speaker 3: so it's where these things start to fall down because
Speaker 3: I've heard the Write your Own campaign say things like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: if people were just able to access the countryside, they
Speaker 3: would learn to love it. And you're like, what about
Speaker 3: the guys in Lockern That doesn't make any sense, Like
Speaker 3: why are they you know, kicking off and literally stabbing
Speaker 3: each other. You know they've been for a very violent instance.
Speaker 3: And then you go to Harris right way up one
Speaker 3: of the islands, and I was talking to farmers there
Speaker 3: and they were saying, oh, they don't have too much
Speaker 3: of a problem with access. But it's not like because
Speaker 3: they opened the whole thing up, like everyone's just spread
Speaker 3: the equidistance across the country. And that's one of the
Speaker 3: arguments that So, so my point really is like let's
Speaker 3: not just say, oh, look how well it works in Scotland.
Speaker 3: Let's actually understand Scotland and then say, you know, what
Speaker 3: could we do better given the differences.
Speaker 1: I used to work on a project with Natural Resources
Speaker 1: Whales years ago and one of the women working on it,
Speaker 1: who was she was coming up to the end to
Speaker 1: her retirement at that time with Natural Resources Whales, but
Speaker 1: before they formed that quango and it was still part
Speaker 1: of the Countryside Council for Whales, so a bit like
Speaker 1: sort of Natural England sort of DEPHA. They were responsible
Speaker 1: for mapping out the right to rome areas under the
Speaker 1: Countryside Right of Way Act, and the whole idea was
Speaker 1: that they would they would look at someone like Mrtha
Speaker 1: Tidville and say, well, these hills around them, they can't
Speaker 1: access these people, so we're going to make all the
Speaker 1: hill area around here open access land then they can
Speaker 1: access it. She was talking to me about how idealistic
Speaker 1: she was in the late nineties that this was going
Speaker 1: to happen. This was such a fantastic opportunity, and now
Speaker 1: in about twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, with the rise of
Speaker 1: social media.
Speaker 3: She.
Speaker 1: Massively regrets it did because of the effect it had
Speaker 1: on the landscape.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what effect did it happen?
Speaker 1: So it was you ended up with the quarry areas
Speaker 1: that were previously inaccessible now just became somewhere that was
Speaker 1: almost impossible to police because you ended up with anti
Speaker 1: social behavior as the papers would call it, but just fires,
Speaker 1: people getting drunk, smashing stuff, all those human behavior, but
Speaker 1: it was spreading out then into the natural areas and
Speaker 1: areas that had to be in effectively de facto nature
Speaker 1: reserves because it were crap for grazing and people didn't
Speaker 1: go there. They had become areas then just where people
Speaker 1: go to for mountain biking. Now yeah, yeah, push, and
Speaker 1: then that leisure push just gets further and further out,
Speaker 1: And it was we were talking. The thing that led
Speaker 1: to that conversation for memory was there's something that became
Speaker 1: famous on Facebook at the time called the Snowdonia Infinity Pool,
Speaker 1: which is actually just some poor sod's water supply hard
Speaker 1: that it had sort of this damn thing that meant
Speaker 1: it looks like an infinity pool. So people started going
Speaker 1: doing while swimming there because it got them a great
Speaker 1: photo overlooking this overlooking the Nampeis Valley. But they then
Speaker 1: just ended up with one person one after another, and
Speaker 1: they ended up with literally a queue of people waiting
Speaker 1: to get the photo taken in some poor sod's water supplies.
Speaker 1: And it's the social media element of it was I
Speaker 1: think that was a missing element for the people who
Speaker 1: drew up these policies in the first place. And I
Speaker 1: think if you were doing the Land Reform Act or
Speaker 1: the Countryside right Away Act now, it would be less permissive,
Speaker 1: is my sincere belief. I don't think as much land
Speaker 1: would get added on to.
Speaker 2: I think we get less access to and including camping
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: I don't think you would. You wouldn't get were camping.
Speaker 1: You might get more camping maybe in some areas, but
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of the access land that
Speaker 1: was included would be included.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Smaller number.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean one of the things I keep sort
Speaker 3: of thinking. And actually, you know, this is something that
Speaker 3: guy said to me a gamekeeper on Dartmore. He said
Speaker 3: that he was really terrified when when the protest happened
Speaker 3: there and he thought his Phasant pens were going to
Speaker 3: get smashed up. And then he went up at the
Speaker 3: end of the day on his mule, in his mule
Speaker 3: and he said there wasn't a bad person among them,
Speaker 3: and that was really interesting. But he said, he said,
Speaker 3: but it's not. I mean, I sort of disagree with
Speaker 3: that because there were quit a lot of people there
Speaker 3: with signs protesting against Phasant shooting someone, which is the
Speaker 3: only reason this.
Speaker 4: Guy was there.
Speaker 3: And I spoke to people who were really poorly informed.
Speaker 3: But at the same time you get these kind of
Speaker 3: tremendously idealistic land access campaigners who think that everybody else
Speaker 3: in this country is like a really nice guardian reading knitting,
Speaker 3: you know, vegetable growing whatever. And you're like, that is
Speaker 3: you are not representative of the entirety of the country,
Speaker 3: I'm afraid. And you know, most people just want to
Speaker 3: walk their dog. Most people just want to go mountain biking.
Speaker 3: Lots of people just want to have cans of beer
Speaker 3: and make a fire.
Speaker 1: So is it like the free speech argument that if
Speaker 1: you argue for free speech, you must be willing to
Speaker 1: defend the things you do not want to hear, that
Speaker 1: if you argue for freedom of access, you must be
Speaker 1: willing to defend the things you don't want to happen
Speaker 1: in that place.
Speaker 3: Well, exactly, I mean that's a really good argument, and
Speaker 3: you're saying all kinds of things, and I'm thinking, shit,
Speaker 3: why do I not include in.
Speaker 1: My book second edition? Makee second edition?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, paperback, yeah, I mean it's selling well, hopefully
Speaker 3: we'll be another hardback edition. But but no, no, I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean that is totally true. Yeah, yeah, and then
Speaker 3: you get these things well, as I say, you know,
Speaker 3: if you could just see these things, you would learn
Speaker 3: to love them. I mean that doesn't carry And also, okay,
Speaker 3: so if normal people could just see wildlife, they would
Speaker 3: learn to love it. But what about the landowners who
Speaker 3: get to see these things all the time but don't
Speaker 3: And you're like they different sorts of people, because that
Speaker 3: doesn't really make sense to me.
Speaker 4: So it's just it's just.
Speaker 3: These logical arguments really and this idealism.
Speaker 1: So steel Man, under the argument for right to rooma,
Speaker 1: then what would be the best argument for increasing access?
Speaker 1: What wou the best benefit to the nation to increase
Speaker 1: that access?
Speaker 3: Again, I would come back to I don't think it's
Speaker 3: about access. I think it's about opportunities for engagement, and
Speaker 3: I think those are two different things. And I think
Speaker 3: that I think as long as we kind of pursue
Speaker 3: I mean, I tell you who would really benefit, right,
Speaker 3: I tell you who would really benefit from more access
Speaker 3: would be people who want to let their dogs off
Speaker 3: the lead for a good run. They would absolutely love it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I mean that's true. They would love it.
Speaker 3: The coursing boys would love it.
Speaker 4: But you know.
Speaker 3: But but but the thing is is, yeah, it'd be
Speaker 3: great for people who want I mean, I said on
Speaker 3: the radio the other day, I said, oh, they quoted me. Rather,
Speaker 3: they said, and we're going to speak to a guy
Speaker 3: who believes that dogs should never be off the lead
Speaker 3: on the beach in spring.
Speaker 4: And everyone's like, huh huh, what an idiot?
Speaker 3: Right, and no, like like that that is where going wrong?
Speaker 4: Okay, that is that is the problem.
Speaker 3: Like people just don't understand that there dogs are predators
Speaker 3: that they have seen as predators, not in the kind
Speaker 3: of a devious way, but you know, you know what
Speaker 3: I you know what I mean, And that's and that's
Speaker 3: just it's just crazy.
Speaker 4: It's just crazy.
Speaker 3: It's it's yeah, humans are just so arrogant and and
Speaker 3: we kind of can't see it.
Speaker 2: I've got a cho hour, so he's not much of
Speaker 2: a predator. He's never chased a bird off its nest.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you some serious damage to a chicken nugget.
Speaker 2: I don't eve mean, he's not got that many teeth.
Speaker 3: Twenty four hours with a chicken nugget, and he would
Speaker 3: have mostly destroyed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would have taken a batter off at I
Speaker 2: also have never under did not know actually saying this right.
Speaker 2: So I've had a variety of dogs, and it does
Speaker 2: depend on your dog breed. But now I have a cocker,
Speaker 2: which is a mental thing bread to put birds into
Speaker 2: the air. That's that's what she does. So to now
Speaker 2: I see the severity of it. I mean, I only
Speaker 2: have to let her off for two seconds and like
Speaker 2: the would be in the trees or gone. So so
Speaker 2: I sort of I do think that that does make
Speaker 2: a difference in the breed of what would what would
Speaker 2: most people do if they got their way, What would
Speaker 2: most people do with their access? They would potentially go
Speaker 2: to places that are dense with wildlife and disturb it.
Speaker 2: So I was reading the book and I was listening
Speaker 2: to all the points about the counter argument, but then
Speaker 2: just the the why you want access, other than just
Speaker 2: that the right has been taken away from me and
Speaker 2: I don't like it. It's like loss a version when
Speaker 2: something gets like it's much more painful when you lose
Speaker 2: some money than it is when you gain some money.
Speaker 2: You take pay far more attention to it. And it's
Speaker 2: just the fact that the right of not being able
Speaker 2: to go to a place seems to wind a lot
Speaker 2: of people up, which.
Speaker 3: Although access has got better, which is which is really important.
Speaker 3: So this whole notion of loss is really interesting. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, I spoke to a guy who'd known Benny rothmanwell,
Speaker 3: who helped organize I think they're like, was it like
Speaker 3: the fifty years later March or something, and it was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: access is so much better now than it used to be.
Speaker 3: But that's not the narrative that a lot of people
Speaker 3: are spinning now. So I hear your point completely, and
Speaker 3: I think I think the places people want to go
Speaker 3: to is really interesting because you're right, right, Like, no
Speaker 3: one wants to walk through a field of week. No
Speaker 3: one wants to walk through a boring dead landscape. They
Speaker 3: want to walk where the deer are. They want to
Speaker 3: walk in the woods, they want to walk in the meadows.
Speaker 3: But those are the places that the wildlife are, so like.
Speaker 2: You know, they want to get amongst wildlife and and
Speaker 2: disturb it. But then that's fundamentally not good for wildlife
Speaker 2: because they you know, badgers don't like it if you
Speaker 2: come and go, look, let's get selfie with this one,
Speaker 2: because that's right, really cute to.
Speaker 1: Big upon Callen's point there, then, is it that basically
Speaker 1: there's nobody Well, actually no, that's not true. The Ordnance
Speaker 1: Survey do do this. There's no organization saying look, there's
Speaker 1: loads of access in the UK and you can go
Speaker 1: to all these places. There's no That narrative sort of
Speaker 1: stopped about twenty eleven twenty twelve, and the only narrative
Speaker 1: is that there's access is unequal or access is virtually
Speaker 1: there's nothing and if you don't vote for if you
Speaker 1: don't vote in support of right to Rome, you'll lose it.
Speaker 1: All one argument, and then the other argument is no,
Speaker 1: we don't want you on our land. And that's basically
Speaker 1: that's the A and the B.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's it. Yeah, And you meet all these
Speaker 3: like sensible, quiet guys in the middle who are like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'd quite like to have a better pass down the
Speaker 3: side of the road, and no one really listens to me.
Speaker 3: And you're like, that's a fairly decent argument, Like no
Speaker 3: one cares about the better bus services and rural places,
Speaker 3: better paths on the side of the road to be
Speaker 3: able to.
Speaker 2: Ride a bike here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, do you you know there's the Strava app,
Speaker 1: so if you're into your running, a cycling or something
Speaker 1: that you can log your runs and record it. There's
Speaker 1: a if you go for the paid version, there's a
Speaker 1: heat map function. I am goingwhere with this, but that
Speaker 1: shows you anonymized data of where Strava users go right,
Speaker 1: so where they record, and that if you overlay that
Speaker 1: on top of footpath maps for the UK, you can
Speaker 1: see that most people don't go They stay on certain paths,
Speaker 1: but they don't go on most of them. Most network
Speaker 1: isn't used or it's viewed very very likely. I know
Speaker 1: it's only one app, but if you take that, even
Speaker 1: if it's five percent of the users, if you spread
Speaker 1: it across, that's an average of behavior that we don't
Speaker 1: use the network that we have, We don't use the
Speaker 1: access land that we have, so maybe before we open
Speaker 1: up the rest of it, should we Yeah? Yeah, deserves.
Speaker 3: It's weird, isn't it? But again it's like, is it
Speaker 3: really about access? And I don't know, and it's about
Speaker 3: all kinds of things, but it's yeah, no, hey, it was.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of fun and the fallout has
Speaker 3: been been spicy.
Speaker 1: So where your books? Your books out?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: When did it come out?
Speaker 4: Was it came on April, so that's the last.
Speaker 1: Week's only its first week.
Speaker 3: Now it's only one week in. So if this keeps
Speaker 3: up on going.
Speaker 1: To be you know, yeah, what's what's we'll go on callum,
Speaker 1: your point is going to be better.
Speaker 2: There was one piece that I've got highlighted, which was
Speaker 2: the just one, the do you know what's really weird?
Speaker 2: Because I I have. I did a PDF version and
Speaker 2: CHATCHI bted it, put the whole thing in and ask
Speaker 2: a bunch of questions based on it, and I had
Speaker 2: a had an hour drive to my last photoshoot that
Speaker 2: I had a conversation with gpt all about what the
Speaker 2: contents of the book involved. And then today I've listened
Speaker 2: to you for like six hours in total in audio
Speaker 2: formats and now I'm now I'm hearing it live in
Speaker 2: concert as well.
Speaker 3: So that's Jesus, take out some kind of restraining order
Speaker 3: or something of this.
Speaker 2: I've had a full overdose. But there was one particular
Speaker 2: part that I'd highlighted that was the parrying of the
Speaker 2: people that would stop you like preparing for the stuff
Speaker 2: you role played.
Speaker 3: The Oh yeah, that was so funny.
Speaker 2: The parrying of the apple technique.
Speaker 3: The apple technique. Yeah, well yeah, the apple technique. But
Speaker 3: any piece of fruit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a banana, I feel like banana might be a
Speaker 2: little bit sectional.
Speaker 4: Bunch of grapes.
Speaker 3: A bunch of grapes were absolutely Sharon fruit, a little
Speaker 3: bit of personally LII cheese in.
Speaker 1: There listening to Britain's premiere Rural podcast.
Speaker 2: We like to keep the tone up right.
Speaker 3: So this was absolutely hilarious. And and you know, so
Speaker 3: I wandered this some how to trespass workshop, and.
Speaker 4: You know, the whole thing was the whole thing was
Speaker 4: kind of funny.
Speaker 3: But there was this moment where we were talking about,
Speaker 3: you know, what to do when you get caught right
Speaker 3: getting down to the nitty gritty. Okay, so you're having
Speaker 3: fun frolicking the meadow and the landowner comes up, and
Speaker 3: this guy, John Moses said that it's really good to
Speaker 3: have an apple on you because you just get the
Speaker 3: apple out and you start eating it and it just
Speaker 3: has this like sort of like conveys the sense of
Speaker 3: being at ease, and it kind of like puts some
Speaker 3: slightly you know, off God or whatever. And I was
Speaker 3: just thinking, this is crazy talk. And there's a there's
Speaker 3: there's a Monty Python thing about you know, how to
Speaker 3: defend yourself with a piece of fruit. Fruit, right, what
Speaker 3: you're going to do if you're walking home tonight and
Speaker 3: someone attacked you with a bunch of loganberries.
Speaker 4: And I was thinking like this.
Speaker 3: I was like, is this actually And I was looking
Speaker 3: around the room and people taking notes, people nodding along,
Speaker 3: and I was like, this is really crazy. And I
Speaker 3: wrote this up and people were reading it. People were laughing,
Speaker 3: people were in hysterics, and this was for real, right,
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, one hundred percent, so I've done a confession.
Speaker 4: You've done it, So you've done it.
Speaker 2: Some of these techniques are absolutely things that I've done
Speaker 2: when I've been caught fishing paces that I shouldn't. I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been caught fishing technique. I've never used the
Speaker 2: apple technique. Possibly do that, you know, the ignorance technique.
Speaker 3: Tique is a great one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean there is. There's plenty of techniques.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, I was thinking about the whole
Speaker 2: access thing, and I thought, I've never I've never actually
Speaker 2: felt like this anywhere I couldn't go as in, like
Speaker 2: I've never thought I'd love to be on top of
Speaker 2: that hill. And I'm not I never felt that. But
Speaker 2: in fishing, yeah, there is like little backstreams of rivers
Speaker 2: that are you know, just because there's an industrial unit
Speaker 2: there that's not good for wildlife. It's not like a
Speaker 2: wildlife it's not like a field margin and the thing
Speaker 2: it is a it's just like a a part of
Speaker 2: a river. And I thought, that's where the fish are.
Speaker 2: I want to fish there, So I.
Speaker 3: Kind of how can we get that changed? How could
Speaker 3: we kind of open up fishing opportunities for more people
Speaker 3: in those sort of you know places wackwater bailiffs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, round them all up against also people people poaching
Speaker 2: and stealing fish. That's one of the reasons. So they
Speaker 2: don't want to police it. They don't want people. There's
Speaker 2: probably a bit like the camping argument. They don't want
Speaker 2: people sitting out camping, camping on a weir pool, drinking beer,
Speaker 2: lighting fires, putting put like irresponsible fishermen are terrible, leaving
Speaker 2: line on the floor, rubbish litter that. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can't keep the scroats away, but it doesn't stop me
Speaker 2: wanting to catch the fish.
Speaker 3: And irresponsible I think we've all fished in places that
Speaker 3: we shouldn't have been fishing and in some ways, you know,
Speaker 3: oncoming ground. That's partly where it came from, was being
Speaker 3: a little boy wanting to go and fish, wanting to
Speaker 3: go with my terrier to try and catch rabbits in places.
Speaker 4: But as you say, yeah, I mean I kind of agree.
Speaker 3: It's interesting. I just found lots and lots of people
Speaker 3: who who felt they could walk anywhere, and particularly the
Speaker 3: people from abroad. That was really interesting. People who were
Speaker 3: saying that, you know, Britain is a place where you
Speaker 3: can really you know, you can really roam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that comparative analysis you think about where you're
Speaker 1: coming from. If you mentioned right at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the book you were talking to an American journalist, Yes,
Speaker 1: and she was talking about land access in the States.
Speaker 1: It made me when I read that, it made me
Speaker 1: think about Steve Ranella, the meat eater guy. His brother
Speaker 1: Matt Renella, has a completely counter campaign running which is
Speaker 1: trying to stop hunting social media from publicizing things and
Speaker 1: getting to into hunting. Yeah. So he's got this Hunt
Speaker 1: Quietly movement, which is trying to maintain the public access
Speaker 1: by trying to reduce poor behavior that's amazing and that's
Speaker 1: and it's so it's really interesting to listen to I
Speaker 1: like listening to his stuff. And I've been on his
Speaker 1: podcast talking about the UK sort of situation because the
Speaker 1: access to land there is it's weirdly, it's sort of
Speaker 1: the public publicly held land is almost communist in the
Speaker 1: American in the American sense, and the public lands and
Speaker 1: this is held in trust for the nation for everyone
Speaker 1: to use is a very non American idea.
Speaker 3: It feels like, yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this when he was taught, he was amazed
Speaker 1: that you could have effectively foot high way. He's running
Speaker 1: zigzagging back in American stalking ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about that that like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like these and you can't build over them, you can't
Speaker 3: divert them. And yeah, it's really it's really so curious.
Speaker 3: It's so curious these comparisons. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: I mean, look, so access might be very good, but
Speaker 3: I do think and it's a point I come to
Speaker 3: at the end, I wish there were more opportunities to engage,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, why aren't there more people out
Speaker 3: there talking? Why aren't there more people, you know, feeding
Speaker 3: and maintaining flight ponds, and you know, there are just
Speaker 3: all sorts of things we could and should be doing.
Speaker 3: And I think that's it's it's easy to point to them.
Speaker 3: It's much harder to work out how we create those connections.
Speaker 3: But that's where our focus should be. And I worry
Speaker 3: that if we bash each other over the head with
Speaker 3: is access good or isn't it good? You know, as
Speaker 3: a kind of big stick, then we kind of lose
Speaker 3: sight of really what we should be talking about.
Speaker 1: So what would you like people to do after listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast in relation to this?
Speaker 3: You've got to buy the book, right, And I'm not
Speaker 3: just talking about one copy. I'm talking about two, three,
Speaker 3: four five cop exactly. I want to bang. I want
Speaker 3: to like brat Summer. I mean, you know, there are
Speaker 3: enough people out there trying to.
Speaker 1: Six people in our audience. Know what that means?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Exactly?
Speaker 3: People?
Speaker 4: What what the hell is that? No? You know? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean, honestly, like.
Speaker 3: Read it, enjoy it. I think it's a fun read.
Speaker 3: I think it's a fun read. I mean, I hope,
Speaker 3: I hope you you you know, raise a smile. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's something the observer pointed out. They said, you're very
Speaker 3: funny at points. You know, it's a kind of it's
Speaker 3: in some ways a bit of a love letter to
Speaker 3: English eccentricity. But but I think what I want people
Speaker 3: to do is I want them to read and I
Speaker 3: want them to think.
Speaker 4: It's not a polemic.
Speaker 3: You know, it's an inquiry and it puts lots of
Speaker 3: different points of view across and sure I have a
Speaker 3: point of view, but it's there quite quietly.
Speaker 4: I want people to.
Speaker 3: Come away thinking that they've been introduced to people and
Speaker 3: places and complex arguments that they weren't aware of before.
Speaker 1: Callum, you look like you're going to say something.
Speaker 2: I was just going to ask, where can where can
Speaker 2: people find you on the social media's or on.
Speaker 3: The social medias? Oh, I'm I'm gonna I'm not off
Speaker 3: social media, but I don't use it as much as
Speaker 3: I used to. People might find it disappointing. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: follow on Instagram, follow an Instagram occasionally look at Twitter
Speaker 3: and then I think, oh my god, why did I
Speaker 3: do that?
Speaker 4: Or X or whatever you call it.
Speaker 3: Now. Yeah, I'm kind of like, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: kind of I'm increasingly getting to a place where I
Speaker 3: like to write things. I like people to read them.
Speaker 3: I like I like to engage with people that way,
Speaker 3: or rather actually not engage with them that way rather
Speaker 3: than rather than you know, on social media having a
Speaker 3: back and forth.
Speaker 1: If people are subscribing to you on social media, they
Speaker 1: might be expecting all these epic shots of all your
Speaker 1: adventures outdoors. But it does just seem to be a
Speaker 1: lot of drinking coffee and sort of nice shots of
Speaker 1: the corner of a window and this very nice cafe
Speaker 1: down the road. Is it like you do seem to
Speaker 1: have a very a life, like it's like of for
Speaker 1: Ben Elton film.
Speaker 3: I don't even know who Ben Elton is, but yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I I move a mover. I kind of yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: quite nomadic. I'm kind of in London a lot. I
Speaker 3: love being in London, but I also like getting away
Speaker 3: from London. And yeah, I spend a lot of time
Speaker 3: in Norfolk, so I kind of sometimes you get the
Speaker 3: occasionally I like rush back from Norfolk having been stalking
Speaker 3: and like I get my timing slightly wrong and I
Speaker 3: end up at like a book launch in South Kent
Speaker 3: in kind of covered in you know, munk Jack piss
Speaker 3: or whatever and you kind of yeah, gone between the.
Speaker 1: Two, launched that as your own fragrance.
Speaker 3: Exactly, exactly, Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit of Jack Green,
Speaker 3: a little, a little there's a sweetness to munk Jack.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's been a Yeah, I've been shooting a
Speaker 3: lot of munk Jack because I'm getting married soon and
Speaker 3: I decided i'd put munk Jack on the menu.
Speaker 4: So I've just been just slaying munk Jack.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's that's there's no better place to
Speaker 1: end the podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And also I think you know, the other thing is
Speaker 3: I just want to say a final thing is like
Speaker 3: if you're listening to this podcast and you know, you
Speaker 3: want to go out and you want to shoot munch Jack,
Speaker 3: want to shoot rabbits, you want to do whatever, and
Speaker 3: you know like like try, you know, really like connect
Speaker 3: with people and knock on doors and so on. I
Speaker 3: had a really good chat. You know that guy who
Speaker 3: does Tommy's Outdoors that podcast. Yeah, he was saying to
Speaker 3: me he's a Polish guy who lives in Ireland, and
Speaker 3: he was saying that he just like spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time knocking on doors asking if you could come
Speaker 3: and shoot people's deer, and he said he's got like
Speaker 3: so much deer stalking now. He's also met so many people,
Speaker 3: and yeah, you know, I think I think people are
Speaker 3: a lot more welcoming than you know, we often realize.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, do what you want to. Life
Speaker 3: is short, right, have fun and engage with nature as
Speaker 3: much as you possibly can, and ask for more. We
Speaker 3: should definitely all be asking for more and asking for
Speaker 3: more for other people as well.
Speaker 1: So Patrick Gawbray, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you