Doing 'the messages'

As usual, I walked up to the local shop for my newspaper this morning.  There is a footpath through the woodland that runs parallel to the road but when you get to the end of it, it loops around a couple of trees and goes back.  The reason, I am sure, is because there is no footpath on this side of the road so (no doubt for 'Health and Safety' reasons) they don't want to encourage people to step out into traffic.  Of course, everyone just steps off the footpath and across a little muddy mound which is probably more tricky than stopping to see if there is a car coming!