‘Excuse me,’ he called. ‘Where is the path?’

‘It’s up on the far side of the post office.’ Doreen stared beadily at them. She didn’t smile. She didn’t know them.

‘No.’ The man stabbed at the map with his forefinger. ‘It’s here. I’m standing on it.’

‘Why ask then?’ She glared at him.

‘Because it’s too overgrown to use, and I can’t see where it goes from here. According to the map it should go straight across the field.’

Doreen sighed. ‘Maps!’ she said in disgust. ‘You don’t want to pay any attention to them things. No one uses that path nowadays. It’s moved. It goes along the edge over there.’ She waved her arm vaguely. ‘Has done since they had the hedges out after the war. This one doesn’t exist any more.’

They did not listen. Before her outraged eyes the group set off. Forcing their way through the undergrowth, they headed out into the middle of the field, beating a way through the lush corn with their walking sticks.

It was the first hint of the war to come.

The footpath did indeed in theory run between Doreen’s cottage and the side garden at Copthorne’s. Bordered on one side by a magnificent laurel hedge and on the other by Doreen’s rickety picket fence with several slats missing it was now overgrown with brambles and nettles. Unpopular with people in the village and seldom if ever used by any but the local boys on their mountain bikes and the occasional horse rider, it had all but disappeared because of the broad pleasant track everyone liked much better a hundred yards up the road. That path was a popular route into the fields and woods. Dog walkers used it, and local people going for an afternoon stroll, and kids wanting to sneak into the old farm buildings behind Osbecks. Over the years the path had moved. It was as simple as that.

Joe Middleton was sitting at his breakfast spooning his cornflakes into his mouth several days later with his own copy of the very same map that the strangers had used spread out on the table in front of him. ‘The inspectors are right. The path has been deliberately blocked, here and here and here.’ He put down his spoon and reached for his fluorescent marker.

His wife Maureen sighed. ‘I think it’s a lovely walk just as it is, Joe. It hasn’t been blocked at all. One can walk the whole length of that path. It is just that it has been rerouted once or twice. But that’s nicer. One can see the birds and flowers in the hedges…’ She broke off almost guiltily as her husband gave an exasperated sigh.

‘We do not go for walks to see birds and flowers,’ he said firmly. ‘You know that. That is the whole point of joining the Association. We walk to make sure that rights of way are not being abused.’

‘Boring!’ She said it under her breath. There was no point in arguing with him. She knew that from long experience. No point at all.

As she expected once he had finished his breakfast he headed for the phone. ‘Footpath 29,’ he said urgently, into the mouthpiece. It was like a code word, signalling the start of the D-Day landings. ‘Your inspectors were right. I checked yesterday. There are four deliberate obstructions, two fields with unsprayed, unmarked paths, a great deal of untidiness and a village of yokels who couldn’t care less!’ There was a pause. Whoever was the other end of the line at headquarters in London was rustling a reciprocal map, trying to fold it open without spilling his cup of coffee or getting jam from his doughnut onto the paper. ‘Saturday? OK. Perfect. I’ll contact everyone on my list and you bring your team. And by the time you come I will have checked every path in the parish.’

Maureen could hear the eagerness in his voice and the excitement and, she had to admit this, the spite.

Slowly she began collecting the dishes and carrying them over to the sink. She knew exactly what would happen next. The group would descend on the selected footpath, they would walk it slowly and determinedly. They would scatter little yellow arrows, hammering them on other people’s gates and telegraph poles and trees, they would rip off private signs, destroy all keep out notices and no trespassing signs they came across, whether or not they actually referred to parts of the right of way, all the time maintaining expressions of self-righteous zeal worthy of seventeenth-century Levellers. Then, exhausted and much empowered by their day in the country, they would all return home to compose letters which would flood down onto the doormats of local councils – county, district and parish – and landowners, and finally, the press, local and better still, national, and then sit back to watch the chosen community tear itself to pieces. It was a sport to people like Joe and she hated it. Even more so now because for the first time this was a footpath on their own doorstep.

He was worried about that too. Embarrassed. ‘I have been too busy with other projects, Mo.’ He kept looking at the map and shaking his head. ‘How could I have missed it? This is my own village! Right on my patch. What must the Association think of me? I won’t be able to hold up my head when they come over.’ He sighed mournfully. Then he glanced at her. ‘You’ll be coming too, won’t you, Mo?’ He walked over to the sink to begin brushing his hiking boots even though he knew she hated him doing it over her cooking space. ‘I thought we could have cheese and pickle sandwiches this time. There isn’t a pub round here that I can recommend to the members. Not the sort of thing they’re used to, anyway.’

‘There’s a lovely pub, Joe.’ Maureen was indignant. ‘For goodness’ sake. These people are supposed to be coming out to enjoy the country, not replicate their posh London bistros!’ She knew it was a pointless comment. She had learned by now that enjoying the country was not actually on these people’s agenda at all. She heaved another deep sigh. ‘I’m not sure if I can come. I might go over and see the kids. I promised our Primrose I would.’ That would take her safely out of the loop for the whole day with a bit of luck. She glared down at the sink, now covered in a fine dust of dry earth. What she had said was tantamount to treason and she knew it, but she had also known for a long time that she was going to have to put her foot down one day and today was as good as any to start. One did not mess in one’s own village. What Joe was about to get involved in was going to have repercussions.

It wasn’t until three days later that it began to dawn on the inhabitants of Winchmoor that they were the target of a well-orchestrated, nationally-advertised invasion. It was Doreen who saw the first sign. Someone had ripped out several of the sagging pickets of her fence and tossed them into her garden. The rambling rose whose weight had caused it to collapse had been viciously hacked back and someone had nailed a small bright yellow arrow to her gate post pointing down the footpath, which from being a gentle rose-scented overgrown lane had turned since mid-morning into a broad, naked track. On the other side to her own garden Colonel Wright’s beautiful laurels had also been sliced back into a hideous torn caricature of a hedge through which she could now see clearly right into his garden.

‘Oh my lor!’ She stared round, her heart thudding with fear and anger. ‘We’ve been vandalised.’ She picked up a piece of her fence. It had been lying out across the path and she had meant to fix it sometime, but no one had ever made a fuss about it, not even the kids on their mountain bikes, so she never thought anyone minded. And now. She surveyed the wreck of her roses in dismay and suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

Colonel Wright did not cry. He contacted the police. They agreed with Doreen that it must have been vandals. Neither the local constable, nor Bill Cartright, chairman of the parish council, had noticed the small yellow arrow and if they had they would not have realised that it was a declaration of war. No one did until the letters began to arrive – from all over England! It appeared, to the amazement of the inhabitants of the village, that members of the Association had been coming on a regular basis from every corner of the country to this particular spot and that they had regularly, if unnoticed, been walking this beautiful and important track, a vital link in the national footpath highway, and had suddenly found it unacceptably and deliberately blocked.

Stung by the attack the various council departments went into action, now fully and indeed painfully aware that they had been remiss in the maintenance of several rights of way in the Winchmoor district. First they contacted Ted Ames, the farmer. He must spray off the crossfield paths immediately or face heavy fines. No, they wouldn’t wait for the few short weeks until the harvest. No they wouldn’t agree that as the villagers had walked around the field for fifty years instead of across it the path had been changed by custom. No one had applied for a proper diversion according to the bylaws. And that was that. An ugly brown gash appeared across the field as the crops died. Poison was what the enemy wanted. Now. Poison was what they got.

‘You know who’s behind this, don’t you?’ Sally Murphy from the pub had phoned Julie Ames the day after her husband had given up arguing in the name of common sense and sprayed the field. ‘It’s that odious little man from Dyson Drive.’

‘Not Mo’s husband?’ Julie was shocked. ‘Surely he wouldn’t do this. Not to his own village.’

‘He would. You know the kids have been banned from riding their bikes up the path now? Apparently they are not allowed on the footpath as it’s only for people on foot. There’s a notice gone up. And horses can’t go up there any more either. They all have to go on the road through the village and you know how dangerous that is!’ She paused as they both considered the flow of lorries hurtling off the bypass to cut a few minutes off their journey towards the motorway link. ‘I heard he walked straight through Bill Riley’s back garden the other day as well. Said it was an ancient right of way and no one was going to stop him.’