Too late to shut the gate now the row has started

Any dissertation on the subject probably depends on which of the heads you are talking to at the time about what.

Rules, regulations, legal requirements, gentleman's agreements, unofficial horsetrading, historical precedents, points of view, personal agendas and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all abound in a journey on foot - although it could be on horseback - across our green and pleasant land.

But let's swat one of those heads off straight away.

There's a rumour going round that Worcestershire County Council is intending all stiles on public footpaths should be replaced by gates within the next 10 years.

It's not.

However, as you might guess from the third paragraph of this piece, that's not quite the end of the story.

There is more.

What the county council would LIKE to do is replace stiles with gates, but not necessarily within the next decade. This is an open ended aspiration that may not reach fulfilment until men walk on Mars.

So landowners should not fear the immediate plop on their doormat of a letter from the council demanding the work be done.

Or even one that says the council's going to do the job and the ratepayers will foot the bill.

The grand broadbrush plan is that the stile-to-gate transformation will gradually be phased in over the course of time as the former rot, fall down or become a hazard to anyone attempting to use them.

The reason behind this is to make public rights of way easier for everyone to use, whether they are an athletic teenage rambler, a mum (or dad) pushing a buggy or someone who can still remember dancing to Glenn Miller live.

The traditional method for making a fence line negotiable by anyone on foot is to erect a stile.

Farmers and landowners have a long-standing aversion to gates, where they're not necessary for stock or vehicle movement, because there is always the chance they will be left open and whatever was in the field will be in the field no longer.

This fear was brought into sharp focus recently, because of a court case that involved horses escaping from their field on to a road and causing an accident.

The owner of the animals maintained the gate, which was on the line of a footpath, had been shut, but left open by someone using the path.

Nevertheless, the court ruled the ultimate responsibility for the horses lay with their owner, despite the intervention of the third party.

It may seem ridiculous that you can be held responsible for your animals escaping through a gate that you have closed, but someone else has opened again.

But that's apparently the law, so no wonder landowners are twitchy when it comes to gates directly on to roadways.

If they're on a footpath you can't put a lock and chain on them either, because that defeats the object of "easy access". After all, climbing over a locked gate is harder than climbing over a stile.

Another problem with gates is that, although when they're first put in they swing like Count Basie, after a few years, or even months in some cases, the post holding the gate moves in the ground and the whole lot goes out of sync with the latch.

This invariable means it jams tight or, alternatively, moves out of alignment and misses the latch altogether.

These problems can make the simple procedure of opening a footpath gate quite a trial if you're not too strong.

If it's across a bridleway and you're on a horse, an awkward gate can be a very testing experience indeed.

Worcestershire County Council is experimenting with some "self-closing" gates that come as a complete rigid metal frame.

The hanging and latch posts are joined together by a bar that is buried below ground, so neither should tip and the gate is designed to shut automatically even if only left open a couple of inches.

This sounds a grand idea, the only drawback so far is their appearance. Some country folk don't like metal gates - they can look rather harsh in a hedgerow - and there's no doubt wood blends in better, although it doesn't last as long.

But there is unlikely to be a rash of metal gates across Worcestershire in the foreseeable future.

"While the county council's Countryside Service has a long term aim to replace stiles with gates wherever possible, there is no set timescale for this," explained David Goode, countryside mapping officer.

"It is not being forced on landowners and this is only being considered when a stile is in need of repair or replacement.

"Where a stile is the recorded structure on a public right of way, the landowner has a right to retain it.

"However, we will encourage the landowner to remove a stile if it is no longer necessary, or replace it with a gate or a kissing gate as an improvement to the footpath.

"This is offered at no expense to the landowner, unlike the maintenance of the authorised stile, which remains the responsibility of the landowner, although materials are usually provided by the county council."

Where a landowner is proposing to erect a new fence across a right of way, possibly to divide a large field into smaller enclosures, the best course of action is to liase with the Countryside Service first to work out which is the most agreeable structure - gate or stile.

The county council will probably supply the materials if the landowner puts the structure in.

"There are many ways we can manage the situation, which we can discuss with the landowner if they contact us before erecting fences," David added.

"It's our experience that most obstructions are not a deliberate attempt to prevent access, but either an oversight or a lack of awareness."

So now you know.

Life's a jungle out there in the countryside. Just don't forget to shut the gate behind you.