A FRIEND of mine was cutting the grass at a remote country churchyard the other day when he was accosted by an intemperate tourist.

The ill-mannered visitor pompously declared he had paid a significant sum to stay in his holiday cottage and did not appreciate his peace and quiet being disturbed by the roar of a petrol powered strimmer.

It was the middle of the day, not the crack of dawn, but the oafish intruder demanded work at the church should cease.

He was advised in strictly non ecclesiastical terms where to stick his complaint, and the churchyard was duly tidied up, but the exchange indicates the misconceptions the average toonie has about life in the country.

Yes it is beautiful and I wouldn’t live anywhere else, but there is nothing remotely silent about it.

Let’s start with the birds – not the delightful songbirds like blackbirds, chiff chaffs and robins which trill out the dawn chorus so beautifully, but those accursed collared doves which squawk their tedious one note samba from dawn till setting sun day after day after day.

They are accompanied by the tuneless babble of the Bash Street Kids sparrows, the fingernails down the blackboard screech of starlings and the cawing of crows.

At night, the owls take over with their disturbing shrieks, while daylight brings the blare of cockerels welcoming the sun.

Soon adding to the bedlam are 10,000 lambs searching for their mothers, augmented by distraught heifers bawling for their calves.

Farmers never do anything quietly – it’s the law. Roaring tractors, clanking balers and other clattering machinery like to make their contributions too, rattling along at full throttle, and at this time of year they are also joined by churning combine harvesters seemingly working round the clock.

The wonders of the North Tyne also bring out bikers from all over the country in the hundreds howling their way to the exhilarating delights of the C200 to Kielder and beyond, but all too often, the screams of Yamahas and Suzukis are followed by the clatter of the Great North Air Ambulance as the twisty roads catch a rider out.

As a former biker myself, I am intrigued by the age of these latter day Hell’s Angels. When they remove their helmets to stop for a break, or to scrape a fallen colleague off the tarmac, they are invariably white-haired old geezers who look as though they should be working in a bank, not speeding through the countryside.

In my day, riding motorised bikes was a young man’s game, whether Mod or Rocker, as cars were too expensive for youngsters. Now bikes and their insurance cost more than a car, so only older folk can afford them.

Keeping the roads fit for use by all those visitors is another major contributor to the decibel level in rural life.

I count myself lucky to live close to a Northumberland County Council highways depot, which means that we can follow the snow plough in those wintry days which will be upon us all too soon.

The price to pay for this wintry convenience is they start work very early with snowploughs hitting the roads with fire and fury from 4am on snowy days.

But all the grit they spread in the winter doesn’t appear out of thin air, even though the majority of toonies think it is fairy dust, and will simply melt away 10 foot snow drifts with one brief application.

It has to be delivered during the summer by fleets of huge lorries, with piercing reversing sirens and powerful engines.

Once it has been delivered, it has to be chivvied into manageable heaps by yet more bellowing machinery.

The North Tyne lies cheek by jowl with the Otterburn Army Ranges in Redesdale, where squaddies learn to fire massive guns so powerful that they can be heard and indeed felt many miles away at all times of day and night.

Although it seems to have stopped now, the North Tyne and Redesdale also used to be a popular place for air forces from around the world to practise their low flying techniques, usually in pairs, creating many heart-stopping moments for locals as black shapes whizz by from nowhere at little more than rooftop height followed milliseconds later by an ear splitting cacophony.

One plane flew so low it sprayed a Bellingham woman’s clean washing with aviation fuel, while an American crew mischievously dropped a dummy bomb on Swinburne Quarry!

Peace and quiet in the countryside – you have to be joking!