Trespass
Every October, my home city - Sheffield - hosts a festival of the written word. It is called "Off The Shelf" and this is its thirtieth year. In twenty eight of those thirty years, I attended two or three events but I realised the other day that I had not been to anything this time round. I checked out the programme and spotted something that appealed to me this evening. It was held in The Millennium Gallery in the city centre - a talk by an environmental campaigner, artist and writer called Nick Hayes. He has recently published a book titled "The Book of Trespass" and as the title suggests it focuses upon land ownership and the limited rights that people have when out and about in the countryside. It is a topic that has interested me for a long time. How can landowners possess rivers? Why can't people automatically roam where they wish to as long as they are not causing any damage? And how, for example, did moorland get to be owned by anybody in the firs...
