Show some respect for our countryside and we’ll welcome you back – Sarah Todd

My children know, The Husband is suspicious…

The truth is, rather than rejoicing at visitors returning to the countryside, this local has had feelings of, well (it’s difficult to say) awkwardness. Suppose it’s a kind of animosity. To be brutally honest, I sometimes wish they’d all clear off home.

There, it’s said.

Tourism leaders and town mayors have made eloquent speeches saying they can’t wait to welcome visitors back to the countryside and our seaside resorts. It’s just that the Prime Minister’s partial lifting of lockdown all seems a bit soon.

All very polite and sensible. The emphasis being on people’s health and wellbeing while the dark cloud of coronavirus is still hovering above us.

Is it just me who has listened to these appeals for people to stay away and thought ‘stop pussyfooting around’? 
Be honest, say it like it is. It’s been smashing to have the countryside back 
to ourselves. The longer lockdown has gone on the harder it’s been not to feel a certain amount of hostility towards outsiders.

The roads have been so quiet. Horse riders have hacked out without fear for their lives because of maniacal drivers, cutting through country lanes on the misguided advice of their sat-navs.

There has been cheery “hellos” with villagers never before met, no school mothers rushing through at speeds that would give Lewis Hamilton a run for his money. There has been no Costa coffee cups or McDonald’s burger bags in the hedgeback, thrown out of car windows. No nappies or plastic dog poo bags chucked over the hedge.

With less traffic on the roads, farmers have got jobs done quicker – no double-parked walkers’ cars to dodge with potato planters and other machinery.

Of course, our solitary confinement can’t last forever. It’s cloud cuckoo land to think this rural idyll can continue. But is it so wrong to yearn for the pause button to be pressed? To hark back to quieter times, when leisure time in the countryside involved a solitary stroll rather than a mass invasion of fluorescent fleeces.

Somebody with tact and diplomacy could surely articulate that there are lessons to be learnt from lockdown life. There is a message to be passed on to visitors and it involves understanding that unless locals own a local shop, pub or similar business, the countryside has recently been a much pleasanter place to live. There’s no point sugar-coating it.

A few weeks ago, when exercise was limited to once a day, my son was out on his horse and for the first time in our memory, a cyclist came up behind and shouted out “bike coming past”. Such a simple courtesy, but it was so very much appreciated.

A few words to the four-legged friend before the ‘whoosh’ of the bike prevented a jump out into the road. They had a bit of a chat, our 16 year-old lad and the cyclist. Apart from the fancy bike, it could have been a scene from 50 years ago. Horse rider and cyclist out enjoying the countryside and a bit of banter between them. Fast-forward to the week just gone and the Lycra brigade are back out again, dozens and dozens of them. Never so much as a glance of acknowledgement; back throwing their energy drinks into the hedge bottom.

Then there were the walkers parked in the gateways to farmers’ fields, blocking vision from road junctions and with their bumpers hanging over the edge of people’s driveways. Dogs not on leads. Who do they think they are? And never mind all the baloney about the local economy, even if anywhere had been opened this particular visitor never spends any money. It’s always a pack-up and a flask for this lot.

There will be some significant legacies of lockdown. From economic to a wider admiration for those working in the NHS and care homes. It would be smashing if, in some small way, the countryside could also be viewed with new respect. With the disintegration of foreign food supply chains, it was the fields and farms of Britain that put food back on the shelves.

The countryside is not just a beautiful place. It’s the nation’s larder, a working space. What about rural communities the length and breadth of the UK installing honesty boxes, near popular parking or picnic areas? Politely asking for a simple donation of a £1, to be used for some sort of post Covid-19 charity fund, would maybe be a proactive starting point. Visitors are going to come to the countryside. Miserable old devils like yours truly will have to get over it.

A token gesture to rural communities would be well received. Yes, the best things in life – such as the countryside – are free. But as the late US president John F Kennedy used to urge “Everyone can make a difference and everyone should try...”

Sarah Todd is a former editor of Yorkshire Life magazine. She is a farmer’s daughter, mother and journalist specialising in country life.

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