Seventy cars, sixteen miles, and a council.
The limits on this place are planning conditions rather than preferences. They are enforceable, they have been argued about in public for years, and they are the entire reason this virtual walk exists.
The four constraints, and what each one actually is.
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The car park is about seventy cars.
That is the physical limit, before anybody argues about permission. Seventy cars, parked properly, on a surface that has to drain and be got off in February.
A programme watched by several million people cannot be served by a seventy-car car park, and no clever booking system changes the number of parking spaces. On a bank holiday the queue is at the road by half past nine and it stays there all day.
Seventy cars against several million viewers is not a queue. It is an arithmetic problem with a hedge in it.
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The number of people allowed here is a condition, not a choice.
Visitor numbers at this site are governed by the planning permission attached to it. That is a matter for West Oxfordshire District Council, it has been the subject of applications, refusals, appeals and a certain amount of television, and it is not something the farm can unilaterally change by wanting to.
Whatever anybody thinks of how that has been handled on either side, the condition is real and treating it as binding is the only sensible position for a website to take.
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The shop may only sell what is made within sixteen miles.
The goods sold in the farm shop are limited to those produced, grown or reared on Diddly Squat or within a sixteen-mile radius of it. That is a planning condition, not a marketing promise, and it is why some obvious products do not exist.
It also shapes the visit itself. A shop that cannot stock the ordinary things a tourist destination stocks is a shop with a much narrower offer and a much longer queue for what it does have.
Sixteen miles is a condition on a permission. It is not a story about terroir.
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The roads around here were built for tractors.
The lanes are single track in places with passing places that were designed for a milk lorry and a bus. Several hundred additional cars a day on them is not a farm problem, it is a problem for everybody who lives on them and had no say in any of this.
That is the part of the argument that gets the least airtime and matters the most. The people most affected by a famous farm are the ones who live nearest to it.
The real visit against this one.
| Coming here | Wandering | |
|---|---|---|
| People it works for at once | About seventy carloads | Everybody |
| Cost | Fuel, and most of a day | Nothing |
| Available at 3 a.m. | ||
| Available in February | Yes, and it is the best time | |
| Takes somebody’s parking space | ||
| Affects the people who live on the lane | ||
| You get to buy a jar of Bee Juice | No. It is a website | |
| You meet anybody | ||
| You see the fields | If they are not being worked | All twelve stops, always |
If you are coming anyway.
Come in February. The shop is quiet, the car park is empty, the light on the wall is better than it is in August and nobody will be queuing on the verge.
Look at the gate camera before you leave. It shows the entrance, the first thirty metres of track and about half the car park. If the verge is full at half past nine it will be full all day, and you will have driven a long way to look at a hedge you could have watched from home.
And park properly. That is not a joke about tourists, it is the single thing that most affects whether the people who live on this road have a tolerable weekend.
Two public footpaths cross this land
They are rights of way. Walking them is your right and not our permission, and no part of the planning argument above changes that. What is not a right of way is the rest of the farm, which is a working site with machinery on it.
The numbers behind the problem.
The four constraints, short.
Seventy cars
That is the physical limit, before permission is discussed.
A condition
Visitor numbers are set by planning, not preference.
Sixteen miles
What the shop may sell, and it is binding.
The lanes
Single track, and somebody lives on them.
So do the walk instead.
Twelve stops, three and a half miles, no car and nobody’s weekend ruined.
