Dave, thank you for a very gracious post. My profound apologies if I appear to have singled you out for particular opprobrium - if only everyone using the countryside was as considerate as you.

I am a smallholder, working less than 50 acres, and as such the only BMW I could afford (should I want one) would probably be tax-exempt! I receive no subsidies and the farming side just about breaks even. I am fortunate in that I also do building work, and that my wife works full time, otherwise we would be living constantly on the brink of a thumping loss - hence my rage at the loss of a breeding ewe because of someone's thoughtlessness or ignorance. Over five years she would have represented a turnover of more than £1,000. Dead, she costs me £17 for the knacker to pick up now that the local hunt isn't allowed to take fallen stock.

So why do it?

Partly because it's a lifestyle I love. There is an atavistic connection with the land and the seasons that it would be hard to find in any other walk of life. To me every spring is a mixture of magic and misery as we work rund the clock lambing and see the fruits of that work prancing round the fields. Every summer is an anxious time spent wondering how the silage will be, and whether we'll have the right combination of sun and rain to sustain the stock through the winter.
And, I have to say, every summer brings with it frustrations caused by the stupidity of people who lurch off down a footpath and through gates without thinking.

I am perfectly well aware of the significance of a right of way - and as mentioned earlier, I'm lucky enough to have been able to enlist the help of local ramblers to keep ours clear (as the tracks date back maybe a thousand years, it matters to me, too, to see them kept in use - even though I have taken measures to keep 4x4 'greenlaners' away having seen the destruction they can wreak). But the right to use a footpath needs to be exercised with courtesy and common sense.

Sometimes there will be stock on the land. I'm sorry about that - I would love to be able to ensure that my stock cannot mingle with the public and be spooked by dogs and the like (last year one ewe did spontaneously abort after being chased by a dog. A neighbour saw it happen and told me. Had I been there I could and would have shot the dog). As I said earlier, much farming is about grass management. If you farm land that can't go under the plough - in my case because the fields are too small economically to plough with modern gear, the gradients are too steep and because the bedrock is too close to the surface - then all you can do is graze stock. If land is not grazed and managed it reverts to scrub and no-one benefits. Grazing needs to be rotated, and to ensure that the walkers can walk alongside a pleasant green sward means that animals have to be allowed to keep the grass down.

Thus, sometimes, there will be a conflict. That is why the DEFRA guidelines exist - to ensure that walkers are not put in unnecessary peril. It's not completely safe. A herd of dairy cows is capable of killing an adult. Nevertheless, it is commonplace for farmers to abide by the DEFRA rules. Believe me, it's not worth their while not to. The NFU does provide insurance against third party claims, but with hefty exclusions and caveats, and if the farmer is in any way at fault he will not be indemnified - and all of us are aware of what that can mean.

Interestingly, the law as it now stands says that it is the farmer who is culpable if a gate is left open and his stock strays and causes damage. So if a walker leaves a gate open and some frisky heifers get out and tangle with a camper-van (as happened to a neighbour last year), it's the farmer who carries the can.

And Stigweard - most British laws governing property, mining and abstraction were drafted and codified long before there was a general understanding of plate tectonics, so I'm afraid you will find some of their definitions archaic. If that proves too offensive to the geophycisist within, maybe you should lobby to get them dragged kicking and screaming into the at least the 20th century.

Folkiedave - there are farmers and farmers. Cereal barons in the flatlands of England do make a fortune. Those of us with dairy, beef and lamb on margianl land (the sort of countryside that walkers find so much more attractive than the grain prairies of Middle England) are the poor relations. Tesco now pays the producer less for a litre of milk than it did 10 years ago. Within a 50 mile radius of me, dairy herds are being sold off at the rate of one a month. Farmers are desperate to disversify, but there are only so many quad-bike tracks and caravan parks an area can sustain.
Most people stay in farming because it's the only life they know, and it's the job they love. I don't know anyone who is in it for the money.