In A Footpath-way in Gloucestershire, Gissing describes walking from Hailes (then little more than a church, a few cottages, a farm and the Abbey ruins), taking the path from the church towards the Saltway via a path which runs by Farmcote orchard. The first summit, he describes, is Salters' Hill - reaching just over 800 feet  -at which you can 'get a touch of that tonic exhilaration which is the peculiar property of the hills'. (p. 191), and from here he acsends the hills again. At the summit, Algernon pauses to regret the lack of a consistent 'attempt to stay the hand of reckless and needless destruction which is spread so remorselessly over the landscape'. Linked to this, Algernon claims, is 'the extent to which byways and footpaths, [...] not much used, in remote parts of the country are being filched from the public by being made impassable or quietly hedged in altogether.' (p.193) Through this, 'every available road throughout the kingdom is being robbed of its secluded leisurely curves and its untrimmed natural beauties, every rugged byway and footpath over the fields and coppices become more and more indispensible to the public, as much for foot traffic as for imaginative delight.' Such is the complain, he adds, of Richard Jefferies who 'long ago advised us always to get over a stile by the roadside when wandering in the country [...] Over the grass and behind the hedges lies now our only hope of any spark of intimacy with the things we come into the country to seek ' (p. 194).