Remarkably, he is not. In some ways it is unfair to focus on the duke because the problem is much wider. The task could take over three years - prompting Mr Brodie, the Ramblers' Association and the Open Spaces Society, to complain of delaying tactics. Preparing Abbeystead for the new legislation could prove onerous, nevertheless, and take three to five years. Most of the fencing would remain to indicate the estate boundary.
Passions still run high today.
Mr Brodie, and the earlier activists, portray responsible roaming across God's open countryside as an inalienable human right. A few miles across the Pennines, Alan Gaskell, a veteran activist with the Ramblers' Association, is waiting to see a life's ambition fulfilled. I am 78 and time is running out and all I want to do is walk responsibly through the countryside. With luck, time might be on his side.