With the ever increasing building of homes and the growth of traffic on roads there are times of day when crossing the road is hard for humans, long gone are the days of playing football or cricket on a road.

Most people who live in the Forest will have come across the sight of a deer dead at the side of the road, and sheep of course, but I haven't heard too much about wild boar being hit. So with no hunting allowed wild boar will become a real problem sooner or later. We were used to lawn like footpaths neatly kept short by the sheep, but the boar have turned them into ploughed fields.

Are they dangerous? local papers have had stories of people being threatened by boar, the school incident, and recently a man who's dog was badly injured by a boar. They are extremely strong, and although I don't believe boar go looking for trouble, the opposite is probably true, but there is always the danger of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I used to do Orienteering and would get a regular magazine of events, and I remember a story of someone taking part in an event in Italy or Spain, where a guy searching for a control point in woodland heard a noise, he turned and saw a boar charging towards him, he tried to get out of the way but was sent flying into the air his leg snapped at the knee. A rare event but a child or older person could be more severely injured.

Strangely enough even though I live here and walk and run through the woods of the Cannop valley I have never seen a wild boar. I thought I saw a Lynx on Fetter Hill. Come on stop laughing, it was raining heavily and shot across the road and into the bushes, it was a UFO, unidentified fleeing object. Fred