I CAN’T agree at all with Liz Bowman’s complaints about the state of footpaths and road verges in Stroud district (SNJ, 12/7/2017).

Britain is not France and the artificial tidiness she favours would be wholly out of keeping with our gloriously English Cotswold countryside.

Indeed visitors from the Continent, in my experience, usually express delight at the rich informality of our hills and valleys.

Our road verges, unlike those in many other countries, are packed with wildflowers – including orchids, meadow cranesbill, oxeye daisies, scabious, campion and other beauties – which would be obliterated by the severe kind of “maintenance” she seems to want.

In fact our local councils operate a sensible and cost-effective mowing regime which prevents encroachment by scrub but preserves the flora.

In the Stroud valleys we are exceptionally well endowed with public footpaths, and again these are almost without exception thoughtfully maintained by the farmers and other landowners who have guardianship over them.

I doubt whether a more rich or accessible network of paths exists anywhere.

We should be thanking our local landowners for keeping all these walking routes open and maintaining numerous stiles and gates for our convenience, rather than carping about the odd bramble which may occasionally get in our way.

It’s salutory to remember that we are living in a rural area, not in a London suburb, and that wild vegetation is one of the essential features of our beloved countryside.

Roger Gwynn

Stroud