Gated

All the years I've known and walked on Blacka Moor it has been open and easily accessible. At the point shown in these pictures (taken on Thursday) there is now a long stretch of fencing and stone walling installed only last year. Previously one just wandered onto the moor, choosing one's route though most people usually tended to go the same way making an informal path. Somewhere I've read in SWT's paperwork or publicity that they tell the story that they have 'improved access to the moor' by putting in these gates. Gates are nearly all around us just here and it's a bit of a joke that they improve anything. What they do of course is to make it possible for them to manage the place as farmland for grazing rather than as the unfettered landscape that it's always been. I suppose they could have chosen to extend walls and fences right across making it necessary for us to climb over the wall, so we should be grateful .... as indeed we should for the barbed wire they put in elsewhere.

Now one of the unintended but wholly predictable consequences of this is that all foot traffic is focused on one small pinched area and it therefore gets uncomfortably mucky and even risky to negotiate.

This increased alarmingly last winter causing interesting problems for lone walkers never mind those accompanied by a child and a dog. At a RAG meeting in June a request was made for the adjoining farm gate to be unlocked when cattle were not on the moor. This was accepted at the time but nothing was done about it - a familiar story with SWT. The cattle have of course not been on the moor at all this year, so there has been no reason for a padlock at all, given that before last year the whole stretch of land was unfenced and completely open. We were beginning to pray for a hard frost to come along and dry up the mud at least temporarily.

Recently a request for the ground beneath the 'kissing gate' to be covered with wood chippings or similar was met with the response that this would be 'importing nutrients into a low nutrient soil type'. Those who see this as being precious to a barely credible degree should draw back and be more tolerant - this is SWT after all.

There is now a promise that the farm gate will be locked open any day now. Interestingly when arriving at this point on Thursday morning the other gate (below) to the bridleway into the pasture land was stuck open, having presumably been like this all night. Fortunately none of the sheep or cattle, so far as we could see, had taken advantage of this to embark on a tour of the surrounding moorland.