As far as I was concerned, I was swapping the crowded streets and cramped skies of south London for the open spaces of my native North Yorkshire because I wanted to breathe again.

I wanted to cleanse my system with great gulping lung-fulls of fresh air – and the taste of freedom that characterises this wonderful county of ours.

Ten years later, I find I have a passionate concern – not just for the public I have served, not just for the countryside I have grown to know so intimately, but for the whole business of rural policing.

Keeping the peace in a place like London can feel a little like fighting a war. As a beat bobby, you don't exactly see everyone around you as the enemy, but you have to be aware that that's how a substantial number of them see you. On duty, you have to be guarded, wary, always looking about you; off-duty, you need to maintain your anonymity.

One of the things that most surprised me after I took up residence just outside Leavening, on the edge of the Wolds, was the way I was treated in the village pub. I probably wouldn't have gone in there were it not for being invited by a contact, an old farming type who lived just up the hill – and, who, as it happens, gave me one of the minor characters in my book, Now Then Lad.

"Come on," he said. "They won't bite you." And so, one spring evening, I walked down to the Jolly Farmers with old Walt. I'd no sooner ordered our drinks than I was being challenged by one of the regulars "Mike Pannett, isn't it? Our new bobby?"

In London, I would've paid for my beer, left it on the bar, and slipped out. Here, I was treated with friendship, respect – and a keen interest in what I intended to do about the poachers, the petty thieves, the people who dumped household waste on the verges.

My quiet pint turned into a long, long evening. It cost me a small fortune and a sore head – and gave me another story that's found its way into the book.

From such small beginnings, I started to learn about the community I now served, a community spread out over 600 square miles and in which I was very much on my own a good deal of the time. Call for back-up after an incident outside a pub in Kirkbymoorside on a Friday night and you might be told that the Scarborough lads have a major punch-up on their hands, the Pickering lads are attending a road traffic accident, and – what's that? York? Don't make me laugh. You do realise it's Ebor Cup day, don't you? But we've got a dog-handler. He's on his way – from Northallerton.

The thing about policing the countryside, I soon realised, is that you can't do it on your own.

As I got to know the health visitors, gamekeepers, farmers, district
nurses, vicars, teachers, landowners and ordinary villagers on my new patch, I learned that top of their list was to be able to see a copper now and then.

One who talked their language, understood the countryside and the pressures they faced. And I soon realised that these people could be my allies in the fight against crime.

They say the hills have eyes. Trust me, they do. How many times did I show up for a cup of tea and a natter at a gamekeeper's cottage or some farmer's back kitchen to be told: "Oh, I see you were over so-and-so's…."

"But I only left there half-an-hour ago," I'd say.

"Aye, well…" was all the explanation I got as they spooned the sugar into my mug.

These were the people I recruited, initially as what I called my "eyes and ears", later as Country Watch, a network of individuals who'd turn out on a winter's night in their own vehicles, burning their own diesel, to keep an eye out for untoward traffic movements and other suspicious goings-on. They helped me track down any number of thieves, poachers and tearaways – and some of them became my friends.

As well as maintaining a presence, and protecting my community from criminals, I grew to understand
that I had another role to play. My part of Yorkshire hosts millions
of visitors each year, from all over
the country and abroad. Why do
they come here? More than once I've been told: "Because it's beautiful, tranquil and safe. It's like going back in time."

It seems to me that, in rural North Yorkshire, we have something precious to protect. Yes, our market towns are blighted at times with the same kind of unruliness that we used to associate with the cities, but our villages are, by and large, peaceful and law-abiding. There's a respect for the law and the officers who uphold it. After all, this is God's own county.

I have managed to exercise a degree of discretion in the way I operate.
My weapon of choice is the quiet word – or, on occasion, the stern talking-to. It works far better than the more heavy-handed approach, charging someone with a minor offence, generating a mountain of paperwork, and, as often as not, making an enemy of someone whose only real crime was to have a rush of blood to the head.

My big fear is that as procedural regulations tighten, as the number of officers allocated to these rural patches shrinks, we'll lose the
one thing the rural public wants above all else, the thing that makes them feel secure as they draw the blinds and settle down for the
night – a visible police presence,
and a truly "local" bobby they can call their own.



To order a copy of Now Then Lad...Tales of a Country Bobby from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www. yorkshirepost bookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.

Mike Pannett will be signing copies today at Waterstone's, Harrogate, from 3-4pm, and at Waterstone's Bradford, on August 30, from
noon-2pm.