A Townie's guide to the countryside

And why farmers seem like miserable gits

Even country people are sometimes blindsided by the apparent malevolence of land managers. Townies have no hope. In my role as peace envoy for the rural community, I will hereby attempt to communicate the reasons why landowners like to have a modicum of control over their land and how townies can avoid being spiked/shot/poisoned/nuked/verbally abused.

Firstly, an explanation of how the countryside generally works.

Rural England is mostly owned by the following:

1. The Church of England

2. The Queen

3. The Duke of Westminster

4. Big companies

5. Estates (country houses, castles etc)

6. The City (pension funds etc)

7. Foreign investors

8. Farmers

9. The government (all the cr*p bits that can't be farmed profitably)

These organisations use a variety of agents, managers etc to oversee their land. Some organisations run their land through direct management, some through contractors or tenant farmers.

However, whoever owns it, the people who run it from the ground are generally:

- Farmer/farm manager

- gamekeeper

These are the guys with the combines, quadbikes, guns, chemical weapons and attitude, so you can more or less ignore the rest and worry about why they get feisty and how you can keep them on your side.

Reasons why you want them on your side:

1. They have guns, and know how to use them

2. They have fearsome vehicles and murderous accoutrements (see pic)

3. Their barns store enough of the periodic table to conduct a chemical and possibly nuclear war

4. They can outrun you off road

5. They know more swear words than have featured in the whole back catalogue of Shameless

A concept - your garden - a complete stranger walks in your gate, lets their rotti off its lead and flings a load of Macdonalds wrappers across your lawn. How would you feel?

OK, an extreme example, but there are reasons that land owners get upset. Here are the main ones:

- Birds. Shoots are good income streams for estates across the UK. Thousands of game birds are purchased each year at great cost and carefully managed. Loose dogs can disturb birds and cost estates dear. Despite looking big and posh, most estates are living on a knife edge of survival (imagine paying the utility bills for a castle these days) and every penny counts.

- Livestock. Keep it in and shut gates. Keep dogs on a lead - even if your soppy spaniel only chases sheep for a laugh this is still worrying for the sheep.

- Respect. Treat the countryside as you would expect others to treat you own garden. It's a rare privilage that we are able to traverse privately owned land at certain points via public paths, and we should be grateful for that privilage not abuse it.

If, despite following this advice you still come across Roy the gamekeeper, the best tactics are:

1. Run

2. Run

3. Run

Incidentally Townies, in case you didn't realise, we're not constantly shooting things in the countryside - those bangs are MOSTLY bird scarers....