Madonna and the Ramblers’ Association

From: The Uk Ramblers’ Association News Report
Mark Twain once wrote, “The report of my illness grew out of his illness (Twain’s cousin), the report of my death was an exaggeration.” It seems that this sentiment is also true of Madonna‘s relationship with walkers on her Ashcombe House estate in Wiltshire.
In a recent interview with “Q Magazine” the pop star and actress clarified the unashamedly inflammatory stories that have regularly appeared in The Mail, The Mail on Sunday and the Daily Telegraph over the last two years.
Of her supposed objections to walkers’ access to her land and the subsequent threat to her privacy and safety, she had this to say: “To tell you the truth when we bought Ashcombe we did think: ‘Oh, there’s a path, people are going to be bothering us all the time’. But no one did. I haven’t got anything bad to say about the ramblers.”
Funny then that only a few months earlier The Mail on Sunday was confidently reporting that: “(Freedom to Roam) is likely to affect many celebrities and already threatens Madonna’s Ashcombe House in Wiltshire. Her property is exactly the sort of land the Countryside Agency is looking to open. The singer – already unhappy with a footpath through her estate – is said to be ‘furious’.”
And surely there will be a few red faces at The Mail following Alison Boshoff‘s report from January this year: “[Madonna] curses the ramblers, who assert their right to roam within 100 yards of their home, as ‘Satan’s children’ and more pithily as ‘those f*****s’. She has even written to Tony Blair to complain about the forthcoming ‘right to roam’ legislation, which she sees as a stalker’s charter.”
No letter was ever sent to the Prime Minister.
Where did all this false information come from? A clue is given in a report in The Mail on Sunday from September 2002: “Ben Thomas of the Country Landowners’ Association, said: ‘Madonna’s estate is particularly vulnerable to the Act…We are looking at the possibility of a compensation claim against the Government for loss of value on private land – and Madonna’s might be the perfect case’.”
Perhaps in light of this new evidence from the ‘Material Girl’, the CLA will reconsider its position and start encouraging their members to welcome people to the countryside instead of trying to erect ‘Keep Out’ signs on some of our wildest and most beautiful countryside?