Risking a tale from a decade ago that will probably make your eyes glaze over ,… but it’s cautionary advice.
One late close season Sunday morning a good mate and I checked out one of our club owned stretches of river,.. we were both committee members at the time, and having served as a secretary of the club I was well aware of the club’s rights of access etc.
l was using my reed/ weed slasher ( shown in this thread) to take out a few nettles in overgrown swims when we were confronted by a stable-maid who told us we were trespassing. I calmly explained that my club owned the fishing rights and that we had legal access along the bank,..to which she became worryingly hysterical,.. then proceeded to run back across the meadow to the stable block and soon returned with a woman who looked as she could have given Mike Tyson a hard time !
We ( again) calmly explained that we were within our rights to be on the stretch of river. We were both subjected to a few ff’s ( water of a bailiff’s back) and were informed that we were to be reported to the landowner.
I immediately phoned the club secretary to pre-empt any crap.
Sure enough,.. he received an email from the landowner to say his tenants had been threatened by me with a machete! ( a serious accusation)
The land owners knew we had legal easement of access and were told that it wasn’t a machete but a purposeful ligit tool for our riverbank management and it was us who were threatened. That was the end of that.
My point is that if I’d been holding any one of the big threatening sharp tools available and was photographed,.. things may have been different,… although I had my mate as a witness .
It pays to be careful of folk with phones who are looking for offence where none was intended nowadays.
