Rubbish has been thrown over the barrier, and further up the valley the land is scarred by earthworks. "It used to be a most pleasant wood to walk in," says John Bailey-Smith, president of the Caterham Residents' Society. Local people used to walk in it long before the Forestry Commission took it over, and public ownership actually made access easier No longer. When Bailey-Smith recently attempted to walk there he was met by a Doberman, "which made it quite clear we were not welcome".The dog was right. Mrs Joanna Crux of Birchwood Farm, one of the current owners of the privatised Birch Wood, says: "I just don't want people in there People take advantage.
Let one in, and they camp out and light fires and come over fences and in the end it becomes stupid. So I would rather not have them at all."In Cotgrave Wood, Nottinghamshire - in Robin Hood country - there have been concerns about the possible danger posed to walkers since it was bought by a shooting syndicate. (Such syndicates are among the most enthusiastic purchasers of Commission woodland.) Cotgrave Town Council wrote to the local MP, Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, about their worries. The forest, originally planted and then owned by the Forestry Commission, was sold in 1983.
Public rights of way run through it, but the owners do not allow "freedom to wander through the property" because this would disturb pheasants that are being "intensively reared" for the guns of "a shooting tenant".As Town Clerk Ann Ellis wrote to the Chancellor: "What used to be a very popular and safe attraction ... has now become an eyesore of 'Keep Off' and 'Private' hoardings." "I do not have any control over the management of this particular forest," replied the Chancellor. "I am not quite sure that I can help." ("The attitude," says Mrs Ellis, "seems to be that if you roam in the forest and get shot as a result, then it's your fault.")It is much the same story far away in Yorkshire coal-mining country. Local people say that they used to be able to walk in the woods at Stapleton Park, near Pontefract, as far back as anyone can remember, but that access has been barred since these were sold off. Hilda Gibson, who lives nearby, says: "I have lived in this area since the beginning of 1929 There was always access to the woods. You could wander wherever you liked and nobody minded." Once the Forestry Commission took over the land in the Fifties, she had thought that the right to walk in the woods "would be preserved in perpetuity". Instead, the Commission has sold them off and the "keep out" signs have gone up.Three years ago the Ramblers' Association wrote to ask the then owners to explain why public access was being denied.
Joanna Ibbotson, of Stapleton House, replied: "I purchased these woodlands to safeguard the privacy of my home and the safety of my children, who, outside the shooting season, have full access to their home and land, and in the present climate I do not want to have people unknown to me wandering in my woods."It is hard not to feel some sympathy for such views and with the Chancellor, who, in his reply to Ann Ellis over Cotgrave Wood, wrote: "I am not sure that there is anything very unreasonable about the owner of a forest asking the public to keep to the footpaths when they visit it." But this begs the question of why the forest should have a private owner in the first place.Paddy Tipping, MP for neighbouring Sher-wood, and a champion of public access, was ordered out of Cotgrave Wood with his children last year after they had strayed unwittingly from the right of way "We lost the pathway because the waymarks had been moved. A gamekeeper came up and threw us out and was quite abrupt and nasty about it."Tilhill Forestry, which manages Cotgrave Wood for its private owners, says they are "sympathetic" to public access and have cleared paths to make it easier. It said that walkers were "free to use the established routes". We approached the shooting syndicate for their views, but they declined to comment.STORIES like these can be repeated from all over Britain. In all, according to the Ramblers' Association, 2,680 woods and forests in England, Wales and Scotland have been sold off since 1981, when the Government first made the Commission put land on the market. In those 15 years, 46 per cent of the woodlands the Commission once owned have been sold.In Norfolk, where Old Wood stands, 49 per cent of the woods have been privatised In Surrey, home to Birch Wood, the figure is 56 per cent. Stapleton Park is on the border of North Yorkshire, where 57 per cent of the Commission's woods have been sold off, and West Yorkshire, where the proportion is no less than 91 per cent.