I had a week off last week. Very nice it was too. The sun shone, the skies were clear, and York sparkled. For a couple of days I pottered and lazed. Then the hankering came over me. I wanted to stand on the top of a mountain again.

The fine weather just made the closure of the countryside even more frustrating - especially with the glory of the Dales on our doorstep. But, with foot and mouth still raging, they were bound to be closed, I thought.

Eventually, towards the end of the week, I couldn't bear it any longer. More in hope than expectation, I called the county council's rights of way department, to check if there was anywhere in the Dales I could go walking. Imagine my surprise when I was told that yes, there was. Most areas were still closed but some - including Ingleborough Hill - were open.

Exhilarated, I dug out map and compass and prepared to set off the next day. But next morning, just before leaving the house, I thought I had better double check, to make sure. I rang the council again. The response was infuriating.

Since the previous afternoon DEFRA officials had been out in the Dales issuing D-notices to farmers, which further restricted walkers' movements, a woman told me.

OK, so where? I asked. Where can't I walk? We don't know, came the response. We have asked DEFRA, but they won't tell us.

It was just another example of the mismanagement, bungling and lack of communication that has driven so many people mad throughout the foot and mouth crisis.

In the end the woman at the council said she could not really advise me. I decided to take pot luck, and set off for the Dales anyway. In Clapham, at the foot of Ingleborough, the National Parks centre confirmed that of course Ingleborough was open, no problem.

The man in the outdoor equipment shop said it had been open for weeks and he and everybody else locally was sick of the confusing messages that had been stopping visitors coming to this beautiful corner of the Dales.

I climbed, I peered down the gaping chasm of Gaping Gill, I stood on the summit of Ingleborough and gazed across to Morecambe Bay and the peaks of the Lake District to the west. It was magnificent; and in five hours of walking I saw perhaps ten people.

There is little wonder that city dwellers such as me, who love to enjoy the countryside, are getting fed up with everybody - farmers, officials and politicians alike - who seem set on denying us access. We have tried to be responsible and to follow the rules DEFRA have set out. But we have had enough.

The backlash is already beginning. All those stories in the local and national media about over-compensation of farmers creating foot and mouth millionaires: and now the revelation, in North Yorkshire, that dozens of farmers and drivers are themselves breaking strict new rules set up by DEFRA to try to stop foot and mouth spreading into the vulnerable pig herds of East Yorkshire.

It's hard to suppress a feeling of anger. All this time farmers have been ranting at walkers about keeping off their land: and here they are, not even cleaning their own farm vehicles properly.

Easy to get angry: but best not to do so, for now at least. Because while dozens of farmers haven't been following procedures, most have.

And while some farmers do appear to have been overcompensated, for many more foot and mouth has undoubtedly brought ruin.

For now, we should bite our tongues. But once this crisis is over, walkers should be out reasserting their right to walk every inch of the countryside that's a right of way.

Next time - if there is a next time - ministers, DEFRA officials and farmers themselves had better find a better way of dealing with this plague than slaughtering everything in sight, then shutting down rural Britain and praying.