Right Nathan! Cancel the Clachaig! Find a bunkhouse near Forfar........
Seriously though, after a couple of days to reflect on this and read the comments, the rights and wrongs of the whole thing are quite clear to me.
Maybe I should have predicted the fact that taking the dog was likely to be noticed and frowned upon, given the proximity of my planned route to a, presumably, working farm. But then I guess I did predict that, but still decided to take her with me. I don't often take her hill walking these days as she's getting too old for some of the bigger hill routes, so this looked ideal for her. I guess that wherever you take a dog walking, there exists the potential for somebody to get annoyed by it, and I refuse to simply not take her with me in the off chance.....
But maybe that was an error of judgement on my part. However, all the aggression and negativity came from his side (my A*SE comment aside, but hey, calm composure only goes so far). The communication idea is an interesting one that various people have raised. Should I have gone to the extent of googling West Mains of Turin Farm so I could phone ahead? No, I really don't think so, and presumably I would have been told to "f**k off" down the phone. I think I did all I reasonably could. After calmly pressing the case for Lucy once and once only, I compromised and returned her to the car. Going by the farmer's ridiculous and offensive comment when he saw me returning, he clearly thought that he had got his way, that he had flexed his muscle and seen off the ignorant, pesky little "rambler" who was clearly going to drop litter, leave gates open and blunder incompetently around the place. He probably had a good old chuckle to himself at the access laws while he was at it. I suspect he doesn't get many walkers, this being a small, fairly insignificant hill in the eyes of many hill walkers, so maybe he is a little "uneducated" in some of the issues involved, not to mention clearly lacking in people skills and a naturally aggressive personality. It was perhaps telling that my willingness and ability to remain calm and not descend to his level seemed to antagonise him even more.
Clearly however, I was on his terrain, so to speak. He had the upper hand. He knew what work he was doing, and where, and how long it would take. He knew my route better than I did. He could quite simply have suggested an alternative, more circuitous route. I asked him as much, so he had every opportunity to do so, but he blanked me. He could have asked if I didn't mind waiting for half an hour or so - this would have been enough time for the sheep to pass and for me to continue on my walk, where I encountered no more livestock for the remainder. I didn't think of this and he clearly didn't either or just wasn't interested.
I understand that farming is an intensive, hard, stressful way to make a living, and many things conspire against farmers - low prices for their produce, poor weather, genuinely irresponsible walkers (and heaven knows, most of us on here know that they do exist). Maybe this guy is stressed up to his eyeballs with pressures of one sort or another. But as most people seem to agree, he is clearly also an AR*E.