Guerrilla gardener is threatened with ...

Guerrilla gardener is threatened with being beaten up by an Alsatian dog handler.

After Worcestershire County Council declined to provide a path to keep walkers off a busy country lane, I decided to do something about it myself.  I was at the very end of clearing a path through the roadside half of an old double rowed hedge at Illey Lane, Hunnington, near Halesowen where I live.  A very large bramble bush covered the bank between the road and hedge and it was that that forced walkers onto the tarmac.

On the other side of the hedge, yesterday, a Sunday morning were the dog handlers in training.  One of them saw me on the other side of the fence and hedge and angrily told me to clear off, which I did, almost immediately.  The man thought that his dogs would escape through the fence and now less thick hedge.  I had cut back one third.  Unfortunately, as I walked back along the cleared path, with him on the other side of the hedge, the realisation dawned upon him that I had cleared even more than he had first thought.  He became even more angry, with a host of expletives, the most shocking language and threats to beat me up.  I think he said that he would kill me.  I got back to the bike, with the front wheel against the fence under the hedge.  He then stuck his body and arms through the hedge and grabbed the handlebars.  There was then a tussle between me and him as I tried to get the bike off him to hurriedly cycle away.  Thankfully, the sharp spikes of the hawthorn made him release the bike and I speedily raced off to avoid the physical confrontation that he was threatening.  I got clean away, shaken but without any injuries.

Do visit Illey Lane, and use the more civilised way of walking it by a pleasant enough secret passage through woodland, over a carpet of ivy and high above and away from the traffic to Illey Mill.  The new path is on either side of the disused Halesowen Railway that I have also re-cleared for partial walking from Hunnington cricket ground.  Both new paths are part of a circular, Covid-19 permitted exercise walk!