I go for live and let live but the last time our nearby closed road Sustrans cycle way had the gate locks forcibly removed to enable vehicle access and 3 weeks of residence, it was impossible afterwards to navigate for the blockade of rubbish, rubble, guttering, discarded building materials etc, not only blockading the route completely but strewn indiscriminately across the nearby grassland and landscaped ex local tip. My local councillor confirmed the media reports that the clean up cost the council very close to £100,000 and included an awful lot of human waste.
The most worrying thing for me personally with my 3 greyhounds was the repeated requests and threats every time we walked them near the house or past the site when the vans first arrived to sell / give away / hand them over or we'll f**k you up / I've seen where you live and when you're out, I'll be round later for them - to me and my wife and children. Whatever route we took to avoid them we got bothered, We were forced not to walk them locally at all and double the security on the house & make sure someone was obviously in all the time with threats within yards of the front door to be burgled.
Daft thing is one was a near cripple and another is more scared of rabbits than they are of him - they'd have been utterly useless for what they wanted and god knows what they would have suffered if they'd been stolen.
There have been a few other times over the years when travellers have set up in the same place for a few weeks without much trouble or the excessive and seemingly malicious rubbish dumping, nor the requests and threats to me and mine to give up my pets but the last lot seem to have been a different mindset altogether and a thoroughly unpleasant crew of 15 odd caravans.
