Should a wee in the woods get you fined – or dumped by your partner? A penny for your thoughts | Zoe Williams

When contractors hide in laybys to catch offenders, it's about more than just public decency and hygiene. It's about money

Wild weeing - outdoors, wherever the mood takes you, rather than in some tiled facility designed for the purpose - is not like wild swimming. It doesn't have disciples, people don't yammer on about it, and you won't find articles about where's best to do it and how freeing it is. It seems to be an entirely personal preference, unfreighted by cultural association. I know someone who split up with a woman because she took an adventure wee while hiking. I know someone else who wees in his garden when his toilet is closer. I personally look down on it as a sign that you drink too much water.

As an inalienable right of the free, however, people do seem to be quite attached to it - as Dacorum borough council in Hertfordshire discovered when they fined two men, one of whom has a weakened prostate, for weeing in a layby near some woods. Lawyers weighing in for and against the council subsequently have been careful to distinguish between rural and urban wild weeing, the latter being more likely to class as litter, because it would leave more trace. I don't even agree with that; the trace is part of the charm. If you couldn't catch the scent of urine on the air, would you even know you were in the West End? But don't listen to me, I disapprove of water.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist