Relax

People that buy large houses in the country don't seem to be very relaxed about privacy at all and if they have the misfortune to have a public footpath on their boundary they will usually erect a large fence to make sure that the smelly public cannot intrude on their privacy, well earned or otherwise.

So the fences are six feet tall, close boarded or panelled and quite often topped with barbed wire. At least we have moved on from the broken glass which used to be set into the top of the brick walls which used to enclose the gardens of the rich.

Sometimes it will be a belt and braces job with a hedge being planted behind the fence - behind meaning that the owners get to see the living hedge while the smelly public get the decaying fence. Furthermore, owners are usually impatient, so the hedge will be fast growing leylandii rather than something which is both native and natural like beech or hawthorn.

All this being so, and what we are used to when we take walks in the country, it was a real pleasure to come across this fence in Norfolk. Clearly they really have chilled out this far from London.