Swan, it's not all "yours". If someone wandered in through your front gate, walked through your flower bed, pissed on your lettuces, and left through the hedge, you'd be a bit unhappy! For the agriculture point - it depends. From an environmental point of view, it's better to raise food supplies close to where they're needed so that you don't have to transport them for long distances. Shipping strawberries from Australia to the UK in January, for example, is very heavy on jet-fuel, and is unnecessarily hard on the environment. In addition, the British ecology is evolved with farming in mind - if fields of grass weren't cut (or otherwise trimmed by animals) then the various other plants and creatures which also live there would die out. That's not to say that it has to be done intensively - if we can't physically use all that we produce (and much of the EU's produce is still going to waste, although less than there used to be) then there's no point going balls-out to produce it. I'm personally amazed at the Common Agricultural Policy - even given the example of the USSR's hubris in setting top-down policies, they still wanted to do the same thing. :-(

As a _very_ keen walker, I'm all in favour of footpaths. As kat points out, in wilderness areas it's immaterial since there's nothing much to damage - in Scotland for instance you'll mainly only find footpaths in the Borders. But in lowland areas, "freedom to roam" is identical to "freedom to stomp crops" - criminal trespass is only applicable if you catch the buggers responsible! If there's no restriction on where you can walk in a field, ppl will walk over it all with the inevitable consequences. Too many walkers really don't care about what state they leave the place in. This may sound snobbish, but it's particularly true of ppl who've lived in large towns and cities all their lives - street-sweepers will pick up dropped crisp packets and cans in a town, but there's no-one to do that in the hills!

Gervase, the recent "hot-spot" of FMD shows it's a good idea to err on the side of caution!

Graham.