I’ve found my dream job – thanks to that nasty fall into wild garlic | Adrian Chiles

Nothing could be more fulfilling than making the countryside safe for walkers. No one should have to risk their neck on a rickety stile

I know what my dream job is, partly thanks to something I once wrote here about a nasty fall I had one Easter Sunday. A riveting piece, which you doubtless remember. It was on Gower, during a long walk, when a knackered old stile by a patch of wild garlic proved no match for my bulk. I still sport the scar. Two years on from this unhappy incident I was stopped while out shopping in Sketty, a suburb of Swansea. This nice woman told me that her husband, being in charge of paths for Swansea council, had read the piece, worked out where the now-destroyed stile was, and got it fixed.

I expressed my gratitude, but my first, thrilling thought was this: there is a head of paths? That's an actual thing? How wonderful. I want that job. I want to get up every morning, sift through reports of poor signage, overgrown-ness and death-trap stiles, consult my maps and then go out and rectify. I believe I have also written about an encounter with some path-clearers. I'm serious about this. I left the woman my number for the path man to call me so we could talk for hours, but he didn't. If he was worried I'd want his job off him, he was on the right, well, track.