Stopped by police and branded a paedophile... for hiking with my son: WILL SELF reveals moment an innocent ramble became a nightmarish tale of modern Britain

No 11-year-old child should have to see his parent treated like a criminal for no reason whatsoever. And no Englishman enjoying a ramble with his son should face examination by police at the roadside on suspicion of being a sexual predator.

Astonishingly – and I find it difficult, some days after the event, to comprehend that I am writing this now – this is what has just happened to my son and me.

From the quintessence of a blamelessly British pursuit to an invitation to step inside a squad car, complete with WPC specially selected in case my boy had to be taken into protective custody, all following a ‘tip-off’ from a high-vis jacketed private security guard; can there be a more disturbing parable of the Britain we have become? Let me set out events for you to decide yourself.

Will Self pictured walking on Primrose Hill, London: The well-known author and journalist grilled by police in front of his young son after an altercation with a college security guard he feels insinuated that he was a paedophile

My own father was a great walker. When I was a child, he’d take me on long rambles through the countryside – mostly in England, but also with forays into Wales and Scotland.



It was my dad’s own proud boast that he and my uncle, as young men, had once walked right across Dartmoor in 24 hours, equipped only with the clothes on their backs and provisioned with ‘a few squares of chocolate and an apple each’.

With this background, it isn’t surprising that I’ve become a keen walker in my turn, favouring high mileages and with a somewhat idiosyncratic approach: I like to walk from my house in South London quite long distances into the country, savouring the slow change, over a couple of days, from the hurly-burly of urban life to the relative peace of the countryside.

And it’s no surprise either that my own four children have also become walkers; my youngest son in particular has become not just an enthusiastic pedestrian, but a passionate one.

Three years ago, when he was aged nine, we walked for six days and 86 miles to a friend’s house in Wiltshire; last year, over eight days we walked 116 miles to another friend’s farm in Worcestershire; this year we went for the big one and covered 283 miles in 14 days from our London home to some friends’ house near Whitby in North Yorkshire.

While he’s had my example, these particular itineraries were all my son’s own idea; he may find doing 20 miles a day – and not necessarily through the most picturesque landscape – a bit of a slog, but the sense of achievement he gets from walking is tremendous.

We’re already planning next year’s long-distance walk – and this despite a disturbing and troubling encounter we had this July, when we were 11 days out from London.

Dressed in full rambling gear and boots and with my boy carrying his special walking staff, we’d left in the teeth of the heatwave and headed up the Lee Valley, then through Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire to Huntingdon, then on to Peterborough.

We revelled in the subtle changes of flora, fauna and landscape that you only notice when you move that slowly; and we also enjoyed discussing the vernacular architecture, and even the minute alterations in local accents.

We stopped for the night at B&Bs or pubs and everywhere we went we talked to people about their locale and their lives. In particular, we talked to farmers about the prospects for the harvest. I cannot recommend strongly enough this as a way of bonding with your children and teaching them about the countryside.

In particular, we enjoyed the five days we spent walking across the flat fenlands and then the Lincolnshire Wolds.



This vast and very agricultural country sees little in the way of tourism – let alone walkers – in its hinterland, and yet the people couldn’t have been friendlier and more open. The great time we had in Lincolnshire makes what happened to us in Yorkshire – a county known for its rambling tradition and thriving holiday industry – still more ironic.

Crossing the great span of the Humber Bridge on a drizzly morning, we had a long day ahead of us in order to reach the village of North Dalton where I’d booked us into the Star Inn for the night.

All went well until in the late afternoon we reached Bishop Burton near Beverley, and, looking at the map I saw that we might save ourselves a half mile or so – and a weary trudge along a main road – if we cut through the grounds of the agricultural college.



We approached the security guard on the main gate, and while my 11-year-old hung back – the rain had cleared by now, it was a hot afternoon and he was understandably tired – I explained the situation.

The insinuation that I might pose some sort of threat to young people – in a word, that I might be a paedophile – was underscored by his eyes then sliding to my drooping son. He was being absurd and offensive

The guard was entirely unsympathetic. He said it was private property and there was no public right of way.



I said this was fair enough, but I could see from the map that there was a track leading right across the grounds, it would help us a lot, and obviously we weren’t the sort of people – being long-distance walkers – to bother any livestock.

But the guard stuck to his guns, and staring me straight in the face said that it was out of the question: There were under 18-year-olds at the college. The insinuation that I might pose some sort of threat to young people – in a word, that I might be a paedophile – was underscored by his eyes then sliding to my drooping son. He was being absurd and offensive.

I began to remonstrate, saying I was with my own child, and moreover I also teach at a university. But when I saw another guard coming over to back up his beleaguered colleague I thought: life’s too short to argue with jobsworths in high-vis jackets. And so my son and I went on.

Hard to miss: Even the police officer who stopped Mr Self and his son admitted that he recognised the writer from a recent television appearance

Two hours later, we were toiling along the verge of the B1248 about five miles north when we were passed by a police car and police van in convoy. They did a U-turn and swept up beside us. The male officer got out and asked me to step into his vehicle and answer a few questions. Shocked, I told him I’d rather not. I said we were walking all the way from London to Whitby and that stepping into his car would rather ruin the purity of the experience.

He said he understood, but that he still had to ask me some questions because they had been called by a ‘concerned member of the public’, who had said that he was ‘worried’ about the child that was accompanying me.



It immediately occurred to me that the security guard at Bishop Burton College was responsible for this, for here it was again: the insinuation that a man out walking with an 11-year-old must have abducted him.

I soon finessed from the officer the information that yes, indeed, it was the Bishop Burton jobsworth who had put in the call, an alert that necessitated the calling out of a woman officer from over 30 miles away in order to attend, since there was a presumption that a child might have to be taken into custody.

The officer took my photo ID – a press card, as it happens – and phoned my details into the Police National Computer. He had already recognised me from the television: he’d seen me on Shooting Stars, and he saw the absurdity of the idea that I would deliberately approach a security guard, in full walking equipment, while abducting a child.

While we waited for the PNC to respond, we chatted. I asked the officer whether the Tazer he had holstered in his belt was useful and he explained that it was, particularly since they were so low on manpower he now often had to attend scenes of potential violence by himself.



As if to underscore this, his radio squawked at that moment. He listened for a moment then said that there was a man armed with a knife threatening people in a pub a few miles away. The woman officer in the van had already left, and understanding fully where his real priority lay, the male officer bid us good evening and departed.

We went on, and in due course we reached North Dalton – but the half-hour we spent thanks to the security guard’s call had cost my child his supper, while his refusal to let us walk through the college grounds (I noted as we passed that the northern entrance was completely unguarded), had meant exposing the child to the real danger in the countryside: not rambling paedophiles, but speeding cars.

SECURITY GUARD'S ACTIONS WERE 'OUT OF CONCERN FOR YOU BOTH' After receiving Will Self’s complaint about the actions of their security guard, executives at Bishop Burton College seemed intent on protecting the college from possible claims for compensation, despite Mr Self’s assurances he was merely seeking an apology.

In a letter dated August 12, human resources director Kate Calvert wrote: ‘I understand that the guard observed you in a village north of Bishop Burton . . . It was now around 7.30pm to 8.00pm and you had also told the guard you were from London and clearly did not know the area . . . He was concerned. He is adamant that in alerting the police he acted in good faith and out of concern for both of your safety.’

She informed Mr Self he must set out any grounds for appeal within ten days of receiving her letter. In a subsequent letter, the college’s vice-principal Bill Meredith said he was sorry if the writer was disappointed by the college’s response and added that he was ‘of course at liberty to take the matter up with the police’.

Mr Self says he declined, not wishing to waste more police time.

Last night a spokesman for the chief executive of Bishop Burton College, Jeanette Dawson, said: ‘It is our understanding that the member of staff called a non-emergency number out of concern for two people who were still a long way from their intended destination some time after their initial encounter.

‘We investigated the complaint promptly and thoroughly and when Mr Self appealed, the matter was reviewed by a senior member of staff who found nothing to add to the investigation.’

Far from acting as some sort of local hero, the guard had abused a child himself, in particular by exposing my son to the spectacle of his father – who was guilty of nothing – being grilled by the police on the roadside as if he were engaged in a perverse activity.



I put these points to the human resources director at Bishop Burton College, Ms Kate Calvert, and she said she’d look into it. I explained that I wasn’t looking to have the guard punished for his malicious tittle-tattle or his wasting of scarce police time, and that I’d be happy with a simple apology from the man concerned.

None was forthcoming: on the contrary, Calvert and her boss, vice-principal Bill Meredith, closed ranks in order to protect the guard, writing back that in fact the man had had a second encounter with us after he’d knocked off for the day, overheard me saying we were heading for North Dalton, and knowing how far that was, he called the police in his capacity as a private citizen purely out of ‘concern’.

Of course, whether or not this is true, it was contradicted by what the policeman had told me – and I know who I’m more inclined to believe.

I don’t doubt that Ms Calvert and Mr Meredith have acted in this way because they fear me suing the college – such is the mad culture of litigation we seem to be snarled up in nowadays.



But I never had any intention of doing this: all I wanted was an apology I could show to my son, so I could explain to him that while abuses like this may occur, Britons still understand that walking in the country with your son is not a suspicious activity and nor should it be treated that way.

You may, quite reasonably, think I’m getting too hot and bothered about this – but I don’t think so. In two full weeks of walking through the beautiful English countryside, experiencing the joy of its nature and the goodwill of its inhabitants, this episode remains an ugly blot.

The time was that you could live your whole life in Britain having no more contact with the government than buying a stamp at the local post office.

Nowadays, there are no local post offices, and everyone with a uniform on thinks he or she is the appointed representative of the over-stretched arm of the law. If this guard really did see me and my son a second time and was concerned for us, why the hell didn’t he talk to us himself? That would be the act of an honest citizen – calling the police is the behaviour of a craven sneak.

Bishop Burton College: Mr Self says all he wanted was an apology, but college authorities closed ranks

And then there’s the behaviour of Bishop Burton College.

You might imagine that, preoccupied as they are with turning out the farmers of the future, a case such as this would focus their minds marvellously.



Personally, if I wanted to teach agricultural students about how to develop a better relationship with the rest of us, I’d make sure there was a public right of way across the college grounds – just as there is across much of Britain’s farmland. Then there’s the paedophile hysteria that seems to warp people’s reason; we all know where sexual assaults on children mostly occur: in closed communities – schools, families, churches, and, yes, colleges.

It’s true enough that in 2011, 532 British children were abducted – but of those abductions a mere 72 were by strangers (needless to say, my son and I bear a strong family resemblance).

The vast majority of abductions by family members involve estranged foreign parents removing them abroad – not indigenous ones taking them for a walk in the Yorkshire Wolds.



Then again, during that same year there was a far more devastating threat to British children: 2,400 of them were killed on the roads – a ten-year high.

At Bishop Burton College, they seem happy to go along with a car-friendly countryside – they list on their website a new car park as one of their exciting campus developments – but countryside friendly to walking parents and children seems to concern them rather less.