Finding Your Fields Of Sporting Elysium

If you know where to look, pockets of shootable countryside are still available to those without a banker’s bonus, as Richard Negus reveals

- Richard Negus

On the rare occasion I tune my truck radio from the local station to a national broadcaster, I am struck by the length and magnitude of the traffic reports I hear. While I blithely trundle along near-empty Suffolk lanes to get to whichever farm I am working at, the voice from the speakers tells of tailbacks, tail lights and turmoil. The average daily commute for the UK’s workforce is one hour and 38 minutes. How many Shooting Times readers also endure such soulless hours spent in traffic jams or on overcrowded trains to get to their place of work?

To alleviate the woes of these lengthy commutes, many buy homes in the suburbs. While this is a pragmatic solution, it does mean that where you have to live is, often, not where you want to live. This is particularly true for those of a sporting bent. The commuter belts of our major cities may be leafy, but on the whole this is a sanitised countryside, overly stuffed with your fellow man.

The sporting options that cling on here are often jealously guarded, astronomically expensive or closed shops, almost impossible to access. To buy a house in the rural enclaves of the Home Counties requires an eye-watering financial outlay, not to mention that your choice of gun, attire and dirty dogs will single you out to neighbours as a dangerous threat to property prices and society.