Afternoon all
I had a strange encounter on Saturday. I had walked from Howtown up to Bonscale Pike, and then round to Steel Knotts. My route then took me up the road towards the northern end of the Nab with the intention of climbing it from the valley. I was aware that there are access issues, particularly as the estate look after the red deer population, so had emailed and rung during the week, without reply.
Anyway - reached the gate leading up to the bungalow and came across the private etec signs, but chose to ignore them. However, after reaching the second gate I cam across a very pleasant guy in his 4x4 who explained to me that he wasn't allowing me to cross the 200 or so metres of his land to reach the open fell, which is marked as access land in OS maps. We had a "friendly" disagreement - I pointed out that the rut was in October and the deer will not calve until next month, and that I had scanned the fell with binoculars and could see no groups of deer on my intended route. His response was two fold - one that I should go another harder way, as my proposed route was the easy option. I countered this with the fact that I had already had quite a long walk. His second point was that if he let me go, he'd have to let everybody go. I countered this by pointing out that I had just walked up the road, and he had just driven up it, and neither of us had seen another living person. All to no avail.
I suppose I could have ignored him, kept walking and seen what his reaction was, but decided that I would give way, so retraced my steps back to the car.
I have some sympathy with the fact that this area is a deer sanctuary but I was mighty cheesed off that I didn't finish my intended walk. Did I do the right thing?
Paul