These signs conjure a spell, words that trigger my conscience and change the chemicals in my blood. Out of nowhere I feel as if I am doing something wrong”. Withdraw our consent to the tyranny of private property. We don’t agree any more will not participate in our own servitude. A better way is possible, and will make England a better place to live in Most cultures in the world have at some point held the notion that land cannot belong exclusively to individuals.’

I found the first part of this book to be very informative and discovered quite a bit about life in England before the Norman Conquest which I had hadn't known previously. The information about the Enclosure Act was also very enlightening. However I was less enchanted by the author's constant belittling of a certain national newspaper and its readers who he seems to hold personally responsible for anything that has happened in the UK to which he doesn't agree. I hadn't realised when reading the book of his connection with The Guardian newspaper, otherwise I wouldn't have been quite as surprised at his views. I was so also unsure why a trip to Calais to visit the migrant camps, however laudable, was included in a book about trespass in England. Apparently there are also some beautiful illustrations in the book which unfortunately I couldn't access on my tablet. There have been victories – such as the vicious Nicholas Van Hoosgstraten. But they are so hard to win, so hard. Every victory against property has been won by dedicated, brave, tireless people and I take my hat off to them. I am not strong enough, and I admire their courage and determination.

Reviews

I am so glad I did because it turned out to be a brilliant read. There are so many new things about England and the land around us that I knew nothing about that. It was fascinating reading about how certain aristocrats and other such people came to own their lands (not in a fair way!). The central message of his book is that everyone should have access to the joy of nature, and its mental and physical health benefits – a vision restricted by an elite circle of proprietors. “Areas of land we do have access to are basically nowhere near cities, or large conurbations,” he said, calling for public access to the green belt, which is “within easy access to 60 per cent” of the population. “Why do we exoticise nature as a holiday destination, or something you only visit on rare occasions? Why can’t it be part of everyone’s daily existence?”

Additional functions – we provide users the option to change cursor color and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions. Rivers and their banks, meadows and woods also do not count as “open access”. In Oxfordshire alone, the public is barred from 90 per cent of woodland. Originally a royal hunting ground listed in the Domesday Book, Cornbury’s 5,000 acres of ancient forest and farmland and its 16th-century manor house are today a green and pleasant land of private profit. Hayes also digs into the history of land ownership in England. Crucially, he links subjection overseas to servitude at home. Land became “commodity alone”, “partitioned from the web of social ties” that truly gives it value. Meandering. Fascinating. Thought-provoking. In this part polemic, part wanderer’s journal, part history lesson, Hayes organises chapters loosely around particular trespasses he has committed, exploring the history of the land he seeks to access, the beauty of nature and the way words and laws are used to guard land that, arguably, should be common land. Hayes is an alert, inquisitive observer . . . He works also in the tradition of nature writers like Robert Macfarlane … This sensibility gives him a poetic sense of the different ways that we might use and share the land to the benefit of all . . . Beyond its demand for specific, concrete changes to the law on what land we may step onto and for what purposes, this book is a call for a re-enchantment of the culture of natureNationalism suits the landowning classes because it gives people a sense of ownership without their actually owning anything at all.’ The Ramblers Association is a large organisation of 100,000 members, which supports the right to Roam – join up, they offer lots of activities and information. https://www.ramblers.org.uk/

He crosses the boundaries of one grand domain after another – from Cliveden to Arundel, Highclere Castle (aka Downton Abbey) to Windsor Castle. Eloquent writing evokes the woodlands, the wildlife, the landscapes and ecologies of the countryside that the post-Norman millennium of property law – or, if you prefer, “violence and theft” – has shaped. Fences, wall and divisions of all kinds run through Hayes’s book – a gorgeously written, deeply researched and merrily provocative tour of English landscape, history and culture through the eyes of the trespassers who have always scaled, dodged or broken the barriers that scar our land. Even with recent, grudging adjustments to the law, people in England have the “right to roam” over only 10 per cent or so of their native country, and to boat down a mere 3 per cent of its waters. In global terms, that’s an almost-unique dearth of entitlement. The length of public footpaths has actually halved, to around 118,000 miles, since the 19th century. Hereditary aristocrats still own “a third of Britain”, even though foreign corporations now run them close (and have colonised the iconic Wind in the Willows villages by the Thames). Hayes wants to understand not just how this theft of access happened, how the old shared culture of the “commons” gave way to absolute rights of ownership, but “why we allow ourselves to be fenced off in this way”. To wander and to roam are implicitly connected with moral failings and the word ‘vagrancy’ has as much sense in morality as it does in legal cases concerning homeless people. A deviant is someone who has turned off the right way. To stray from the path suggests a clearly marked line of righteousness, signposted by societal or religious doctrines. And the most fundamental link between the physical world of trespassing and its moral parallel, is the origin of the word itself. Trespasser is the French verb meaning to cross over, which came from the Latin word transgredior, from whose past participle we get the English word: transgression. Transgression, which carries with it that pungent whiff of candle smoke and incense, that sense of religious damnation, is the reason Christians pray for the Lord to Forgive us our trespasses. On childhood rambles I learned that those “Trespassers will be prosecuted” notices were legal fictions.

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Otto Ecroyd on his Northbound and Down journey: ‘I left a top job in the city to cycle 5,000 miles’