Return from holiday - unpleasant surprise

We returned from a short holiday to discover the chain locking the gate of the Turnditch Orchard had been cut again. Once again bolt croppers had been used to cut out a section of the chain locking the gate. Whoever did this had tried to hide their handiwork, but in effect the road gate had been left unlocked. We'd left the old chain in place, pending replacement of the road gate. The chain is relatively thin galvanised mild steel and fairly feeble from a security viewpoint.. We'd inherited that chain from the previous owners. We've now replaced the gate chain with a much stronger, thicker, hardened steel chain.  This an initial temporary measure until the new gates are installed.

This will be of concerned to the angling club who use our gate as their "daisy chain" lock has gone missing. It will doubtless worry the neighbouring farmer who clearly been doing some work with his sheep in the adjoining field over the past couple of days. Our gate is the only real locked barrier between the road and his herd of sheep. If gates were left open the sheep might stray and cause damage or be injured/lost/stolen.

As before the criminal activities will be reported to the police.

More crime in Turnditch Orchard

At the weekend when I visited the orchard to pick up some sawdust left over from the tree felling work I noticed that someone had cut the main gate chain. They'd used bolt cutters to cut through the chain, I found the evidence in the cut links on the ground. There are clear cut marks on the link. Whoever did this tried to hide the effects of their criminal damage by attempting to knot the chain around the gate frame.

A link cut from the gate chain on Turnditch Orchard

I don't know the motive behind this latest attack, but it is getting damned annoying. Those people/organisations who are allowed vehicle access have been given a key, at our expense, to the gate padlock. We'd allowed enough looseness in the chain to allow dog walkers access for their dogs to the public footpath. In common law we only are required to allow access to humans along the foot path and the old stile remains open. A contact phone number is posted on the gate to allow people to call us if they need access.

It is time for us to get a bit tougher on the security of the site. Few people know I used to help design physical security for premises located in Africa and the Middle East. Soon people will be finding access security to the orchard much more difficult to compromise.

Edit: 8th June 2016: I spoke too soon. We've had another attack before I had chance to introduce the new security measures.