WITH some of my grandchildren in the car, the topic under discussion was "what was it like when you were little?".

Half a century separates their today from my yesterday. It became immediately apparent that childhood in the post-war countryside was very different from that in which we live today. My very earliest memory is of George, the PoW who kept an eye on me when I was around the buildings, I suppose as a toddler. He had spent four years in this country, coming each day to work, and I stood in for his little boy of the same age, away in the mountains of Bavaria.

My main recollections, though, are of a countryside as we would like still to see it today, though that can never be. My childhood days were broken down into three activities: school, roaming, or helping around the farm. For today's children, the only similarity is school and even that has changed. My primary education was confined to the 3Rs with a liberal amount of religion on a daily basis, all delivered by teachers who could physically punish and who operated solely on a blackboard and chalk.

Today you never see children roaming and, in many cases, the dreaded Health and Safety regulations make helping on the farm illegal.

"What was roaming?" was the next question. Well, it depended on the average age of those assembled, as you rarely went alone, and it changed as you got older. There came a point when the farm came first, but you escaped as soon as you could. In a coincidental sort of way you met up with the other boys; girls were not even considered. The day's activities were seasonally decided. In April-May it was birds' nesting, followed by camp building, burning bacon, cooking fish and potatoes in hot ash and using various methods to kill rabbits trying to escape the mower or reaper. Our main weapon was the catapult and we spent a considerable time in the stream, collecting good round pebbles. We climbed trees, scaled quarry faces, swam and, in autumn, scrumped.

In short, we did what children today are rarely allowed to do. Occasionally there was a broken bone and much bravery was shown during the mending, as the patient returned to roaming activities as soon as escape was possible. I lost a toe and crushed a foot in an accident behind the blacksmith's shop. He was sorry, as were my parents and others, but nobody was sued or blamed, apart from me. I spent a summer in plaster up to the knee, going barefoot, and consequently gained a lot of respect for bravery.

We were pursued by bulls, heifers, horses, keepers and gardeners at the big house. We were rarely caught and, if we were, we were shaken and shouted at or given a clip.

Children today miss a lot. My children had the benefits of this freedom, spending summer days on the island where adults were banned. They travelled many miles from home on ponies all year round and, at Christmas, ran the "pony express", delivering cards over a five or six-mile radius. The traffic was far less, we didn't fear "odd people" travelling about with evil intent and anyway the children had Solomon with them. Today he would be a liability, but then he was a very effective protector as few folk would risk a bite from a bull mastiff.

Recently I met a neighbour on his quad with his daughter on his knee; another uses his boys to ferry stuff around the farm on the quad regularly, all of which is, of course, illegal. My grandsons can handle the old-fashioned tractor, they help at lambing and bed up the cattle for me - again all illegal, but many of us do it, forgetting the outcome if anything did go wrong.

However, as I pointed out to the kids, one thing is the same and that's threadworms. I had 'em; my children did, but rather sadly, I think, not all of the grandchildren have. The old saying "a peck of dirt is as good as a preventative" still holds good. We always reckoned we knew who had them when they couldn't sit still at school.

The serious side is that today's hygiene fanaticism stands people poorly when they meet a bug. I was amazed to read recently the advice to walkers not to drink from streams when walking in the hills. How sad. Our household supply is straight off the moor and everyone who samples it remarks on its quality but, if we had paying visitors, we would have to have it treated. As far as we are aware, no one has ever left here with a bug, but I suppose you can't be too careful. What a shame.

Although I roamed when young, and still do, I am against the R2R or Crow Act. We used to break the laws of trespass; in fact we didn't know of public footpaths, but we were part of the local community over whose land we went. We never did damage, except to ourselves. When nesting we knew the birds and how many eggs they laid, only taking one if that was not already in the collection. Three lapwing's eggs, leave. Two pigeon's, take one.

What was difficult to explain to the boys was the ways farming had changed, going as it has from mixed and fairly extensive to specialised and more intensive. Be it stock, crops or game, there is now no place for the roamer. We knew our area and its wildlife, we learnt from our peers, as tribal children still do today. We never damaged any wild things but we beat to bits rats at threshing time and we were always after the unwary bunny.

In those far off days, litigation was unheard, of except for the heinous crime of poaching and we never would have dreamt of taking a pheasant or partridge. Today, if a roamer goes down a shaft on the moors above us, the landowner will stand the risk of ending up in court. I would like to think that, as kids, we would have been down the odd shaft but, where I grew up, we didn't have any.

Today's children get much of their countryside knowledge from teachers not, as we did, from our peers and I doubt that they are very well-informed as a result. But a combination of Health and Safety, political correctness, Crow, and an unbalanced rural policy have all put paid to the pleasures of freedom for children to grow up with a sense of caring for an environment and, in time, handing it on to the next generation for them to take their turn.

I don't go abroad, except to France and Ireland where kids do still roam. I wonder if that is why so many people are going there to live? What a shame.