A Pennsylvania State University student accused by authorities of playing a leading role in a cocaine operation was photographed being reunited with his parents after they posted his bail.

Agostino Abbatiello, 24, was embraced by his father, Mario, as he walked out of the Centre County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania on Thursday evening, according to exclusive Daily Mail photos.

Mario was seen tenderly holding his smiling son’s face during the emotional reunion.

After appearing in court in red jail clothing, Abbatiello left the facility wearing a rumpled blue suit and white shirt, carrying a clear bag containing his belongings.

His mother, Danielle, also appeared overjoyed to see the embattled accounting student, wrapping him in a tight hug moments after his release.

The couple paid the $250,000 bail on their credit card to free their son from jail and are believed to have driven him home to their sleek $1.4 million Long Island home after Wednesday’s hearing.  

Abbatiello has been held at Centre County since August over claims he sold multiple kilos of the drug.

His Venmo showed $116,000 of payments had been paid to him and that he had paid out $194,000 using the same app, Centre County Court heard Wednesday.

Venmo is used for electronic payments and does not record any cash transactions that people may also choose to make.

Abbatiello faces felony charges of multiple counts of possession with intent to deliver and conspiracy. He has yet to enter a plea to those counts. 

He was identified by authorities as the alleged kingpin of a cocaine trafficking operation months after co-defendant Thomas Robinson was arrested in December 20234

Robinson cooperated with a grand jury investigation and identified Abbatiello as the main supplier of the cocaine tied to campus fraternities. He waived his right to a preliminary hearing on Wednesday.

Despite Abbatiello’s parents sitting in the front row at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, he appeared jittery.

Mario, who runs an asphalt business, and his wife, Danielle, the CEO of Deco Home Hogar Inteligente, sat beside each other with sphinx-like neutral expressions as sheriffs flanked their son into the court room in handcuffs, shackles and a red jump suit.

Abbatiello sat in the courtroom with an almost-scowl like expression as he anxiously waited for the proceedings to begin.

The alleged drug dealer fidgeted with his handcuffs, moving them up and down on his wrists.

A quick smile rushed across his face, likely when he locked eyes with his loyal parents, before he was escorted to the defense table, wobbling a bit as he walked with his feet shackled together.

Abbatiello stared at the ceiling, rocked back-and-forth in his chair, and stretched his neck as his collegiate peers testified about the details of his alleged crimes.

The only possible crack in the dean’s list student’s facade came during testimony from Abbatiello’s ‘close friend’ and fraternity brother, Lars Zeepvat, about an alleged drug sale said to have been carried out in the presence of Abbatiello’s younger brother.

Zeepvat told the court how the trio had gone out to get food but stopped at the nearby Delta Upsilon fraternity along the way.

A Delta Upsilon brother, believed to be Robinson, got into the car and ‘Augie gave him a brown bag, which I believed was cocaine,’ Zeepvat said, using a nickname for Abbatiello. 

Robinson is believed to have handed Abbatiello a bag of money, the court heard.

Abbatiello looked down at the defense table and bowed his head as Zeepvat testified about the alleged exchange. The defense has not commented on Zeepvat’s allegation.

The suspected cocaine kingpin grew up in the ritzy suburb of Westbury with his father, mother and two younger siblings.

The three children were ‘all taken care of, spoon-fed,’ a neighbor told Fox News in the days following his arrest. ‘They weren’t the kind of kids to take the garbage out or shovel the snow.’

Another community member described the family as ‘pretty nice people.’ 

Abbatiello was seemingly a star student throughout his entire academic career.

He amassed a collection of outstanding achievement awards in middle school and was inducted into the National Honor Society as a high schooler, according to a photograph shared on his mother’s Facebook page.

He attended Chaminade High School, a prestigious all-boys private Catholic school in Long Island that charges $20,000-a-year, where he played football for two years.

His academic success continued throughout his collegiate career and saw him graduate from Penn State in May 2024 with an accounting degree and a 3.3 GPA.

He also made the Dean’s List for three consecutive semesters, according to a since-deleted blog post on the university’s website. 

Abbatiello became a hotshot across campus Greek Life after he rushed unsanctioned Sigma Chi as a sophomore in 2021, Zeepvat testified. Sigma Chi operates outside of the university and is not recognized as an official student organization.

He, Zeepvat and two friends would drive to Philadelphia to purchase cocaine for personal consumption amongst the frat, the court heard.

By their junior year, business ‘started to ramp up’ and the pair were selling drugs to Sigma Chi, Zeepvat said.

Their Philadelphia-based dealer ghosted them and Abbatiello reached out to RJ, a cocaine dealer in Long Island who he knew from high school, the court heard.

‘First time he purchased from RJ it was the most we’ve ever seen and it was 100 grams,’ Zeepvat testified in court.

‘Agostino brought back the coke the first time he went to New York and put it on the social room table [at the frat house] for everyone to see. People were enamored with how much it was.’

The pair consumed some of the cocaine themselves, while also selling bags of it for $60 to $120 each, Zeepvat testified.

Abbatiello’s business was quickly booming. He started selling cocaine to Thomas Robinson, a member of Penn State’s Delta Upsilon fraternity, and other fraternities by the end of junior year, the court heard.

During their senior year, Abbatiello was dealing larger amounts of cocaine, became flashy with his money, and started referring to himself as the Godfather, Zeepvat testified.

‘I knew Augie was making more. He started buying more clothes, had a different wardrobe,’ he told the court.

‘There was one thing he bought over the summer, between my junior and senior year, a very extravagant purchase, a $5,000 bong to smoke cannabis in.’ 

He added that Abbatiello’s gambling habit picked up, claiming he was betting ‘hands of anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 – a max of $8,000 to $10,000.’

‘After the 100 gram purchase things shifted. It was no longer to get high with your friends. I saw a difference in Augie. He started selling for money and for popularity.’ 

Abbatiello was working as a financial advisor in Boca Raton, Florida, at the time of his arrest, his lawyer told his pre-trial hearing on Wednesday. 

Per the conditions of his bail, Abbatiello has surrendered his passport and will be residing in Long Island with his parents for the foreseeable future.

He must remain sober, is barred from contacting any witnesses in his case, and must be driven to and from all future court proceedings by his parents. They also must maintain a weapon-free home.

‘It’s a good day for us,’ his attorney Philip Masorti told the media outside the courthouse Wednesday.

He explained that after the preliminary hearing, Mario and Danielle met with a bail bondsman at his office and paid the premium to free their son. A condition of Abbatiello’s bail was that no illegally-obtained money could be used to fund it.

‘If any of you have kids, it’s not very pleasant, sometimes parents do that and certainly that happened,’ he said.

‘So we were able to come back down and explain to the court that he posted the bond and the sources of the funds were not from illegal activity but rather from the parents’ credit card.’

Fourteen people have been charged in connection to the alleged Penn State drug trafficking ring, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said.

Zeepvat and Robert Zanolla, both of whom were in Sigma Chi, and Delta Upsilon brothers Thomas Robinson and Mohammed Huraibi have also been charged with felonies over the alleged drug ring. 

All four waived their preliminary hearings. Zeepvat, Robinson and Huraibi all took the stand to testify against Abbatiello on Wednesday.

Paul Robinson, Thomas Robinson’s father, was charged with felony tampering, hindering apprehension for taking steps to conceal evidence, including a safe containing drugs and cash, and obstructing the investigation. 

Eight other defendants facing misdemeanors have preliminary hearings scheduled for October. 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was attending a White House reception when news began circulating privately about yet another high-level exit from the Trump administration.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation to President Donald Trump after months of mounting pressure from Hegseth, according to four sources familiar with the relationship who spoke to the Daily Mail. The move brought an end to an internal feud that sources described as increasingly personal, bitter and vindictive.

Driscoll’s decision followed his complaints to Trump that Hegseth’s aggressive approach had pushed out key officials he believed were essential to advancing his planned military reforms. Trump offered Driscoll the option of remaining in the post through the midterm elections, but Driscoll opted to leave earlier.

Driscoll publicly confirmed his resignation Tuesday night, describing his time in the role as “the honor of a lifetime” and expressing gratitude to Army soldiers for their service and sacrifice.

“They have inspired me every day,” he said.

Although Driscoll thanked Hegseth for his ‘support,’ of his reforms, the Secretary of War did not respond in kind. 

Driscoll’s friendship with Vance was widely seen as the catalyst for landing the Army job after Trump’s re-election.

‘That never sat right with Hegseth,’ one source familiar with the conflict told the Daily Mail.

Vance and Driscoll’s friendship goes back to Yale in 2011, when Vance, a Marine veteran, invited younger veterans like Driscoll, who served in Army combat, out for pizza to brief them on what to expect. 

Driscoll and his wife Cassie became family friends of the Vances, and the couples have vacationed together.

Fast forward 15 years, now both found themselves in a knife-fight with an ambitious and unlikely Pentagon leader. 

Hegseth slowly came to suspect Driscoll was ‘acting like an independent power’, a Washington source familiar with their relationship said, and grew increasingly ‘paranoid,’ according to another. 

The friction turned sharp when Trump asked Driscoll, not Hegseth, to help negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, handing the Army Secretary a direct line to the Oval Office that ran around his own boss. 

The two men never fit together. Hegseth was brash and aggressive, shoving aside anyone he suspected of disloyalty. Driscoll built alliances with the Army’s generals.

‘It was like putting two scorpions in a box,’ a source familiar with the relationship told the Daily Mail.

Before long, each suspected the other of knifing him in the media. 

The Pentagon has been investigating leaks in response to negative news coverage about Hegseth’s leadership since last year, and just this week it was reported that dozens of members of the US military’s Joint Staff had been subjected to polygraph tests over suspected leaks.

During his tenure, Driscoll’s allies believed that Hegseth’s team was feeding damaging material about him to right-wing influencers to poison his standing with the president.

In April, details surfaced online of Driscoll’s wife donating to Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander, who is married to Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser.

A photo of Driscoll jogging with Democratic Congressman Eugene Vindman became another flashpoint. Vindman was among the officials who raised alarms over Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which triggered Trump’s first impeachment.

Then came Laura Loomer. The right-wing influencer accused Driscoll of ‘constant screw ups’ and of ‘orchestrating a coup’ against Hegseth, posts Driscoll’s allies read as a campaign to force him out, or at least bring him to heel.

The Department of War denies Hegseth or his team had any hand in the leaks.

The fight never stayed between the two men. It bled into Hegseth’s relationship with the vice president, two sources told the Daily Mail.

Vance and Hegseth have long differed over the use of military force, a split laid bare in the leaked ‘Signalgate’ chat among Trump officials over strikes on Yemen. Vance counseled caution about triggering a broader conflict with Iran, while Hegseth played cheerleader.

Then Hegseth delivered what sounded like a stump speech in Iowa in the middle of that conflict.

‘He was trying to get ahead of Vance,’ one Vance ally told the Daily Mail.

Reports that Hegseth is weighing a presidential run, published by NBC News last weekend, only added to the tension, though Hegseth has denied any interest in a presidential bid.

Yet inside the White House, officials joke about ‘President Pete,’ a source familiar with those conversations said.

‘He’s giving speeches at campaign rallies. It looks like he’s plotting to run himself,’ said Kevin Carroll, a retired Army Reserve colonel who served in the Office of the Secretary of War.

A Hegseth campaign would put him directly against Vance, and some in the administration read the Driscoll fight as the first casualty of that ambition.

‘If the Secretary of Defense wants to run for president against the Vice President, I guess you have to take out an ally of the Vice President who’s serving in the service right in front of you,’ one former Department of War official said.

Both offices reject it.

‘It’s clear these ‘sources’ have no idea what they are talking about. The Vice President and Secretary Hegseth are close friends working in lockstep to execute the President’s national security priorities,’ a spokesperson for Vance’s office told the Daily Mail.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the two were ‘100 percent united in executing President Trump’s America First agenda,’ dismissing a story ‘fueled by anonymous sources’ as an attempt to ‘sow division where none exists.’

Asked Thursday about a possible Hegseth campaign, Vance said any Republican thinking of running should be ‘focused on the midterms.’ He called Driscoll and Hegseth both friends, said both were good at their jobs, and backed the Secretary of War’s push for a ‘culture shift’ at the Pentagon.

Privately, a former Trump official said, Vance sympathized with his friend’s reasons for leaving but never challenged Hegseth’s leadership. The two share most of the same allies in Washington and work in tandem, another source said.

But Driscoll continued to draw Hegseth’s wrath for actions that he believed were outside of the Secretary of the Army’s purview. 

Driscoll also resisted Hegseth’s demands to remove Army generals in his orbit. 

So Hegseth moved without him. He has so far removed or stopped the promotions of at least 80 generals, admirals and other officials, the New York Times reports. 

In April 2026, while Driscoll was on a family vacation in North Carolina, Hegseth forced out Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, Army Transformation and Training Command chief General David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr, the chief of chaplains.

They were not the first, and they were not the last. General James Mingus was pushed out last fall. General Christopher Donahue, head of US Army Europe and Africa, was forced into early retirement in June.

The Army is now down to five four-star generals on active duty, from ten when Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon.

Firing Driscoll himself was never on the table. Driscoll’s friendship with the vice president protected him, and the White House told Hegseth outright that removing him was not an option, a former White House official told the Daily Mail. 

But Hegseth and his allies could still make his life miserable. The mockery had a bitter edge, because Driscoll was popular. 

Appointed at 38, he won over Department of War staff fast.

‘Driscoll had an amazing reputation. I think, ultimately, there’s a difference between looking the part and doing the part, and Driscoll got results,’ a former military officer told the Daily Mail.

Behind his back, Hegseth’s allies seized on interviews in which Driscoll said he ‘desperately’ hoped his seven-year-old daughter Laya would one day pass the Army Ranger course. They cast the wish as ‘woke.’

They also circulated a video of Driscoll as a young second lieutenant in Iraq wishing his family ‘Happy Holidays’ rather than Merry Christmas.

That was the last straw, sources told the Daily Mail, and Driscoll began looking for an exit.

Driscoll, through the Department of Army, did not respond to a Daily Mail request for comment. 

His departure has become a rallying point for Department of War employees worn down by Hegseth’s leadership, and some are beginning to push back. 

Retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis used the occasion to call on Trump to replace his Secretary of War.

It is reaching the ranks, too. Many soldiers cheered Hegseth’s appointment. That is changing, a source told the Daily Mail.

‘At the end of the day, a lot of the stuff that happens in DC is not something that we feel, because the leaders try to shield the force,’ a former military officer said. ‘They are feeling it now.’

Some acts sit beyond the reach of ordinary understanding. Among the most unthinkable is the idea of a mother taking the lives of her own children.

It is that terrible incomprehensibility that has made the case of Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse from Massachusetts, so closely watched and so bitterly debated in the US and beyond. During a snowy evening in 2023, Clancy strangled her three young children with exercise bands, then cut her wrists and tried to end her own life by jumping from a bedroom window.

She survived the fall, though her children did not. Now paralysed and dependent on a wheelchair, she remains alive in circumstances many would see as a punishment of its own: trapped in the aftermath of a night that destroyed her family and condemned her to relive it for the rest of her life.

Yet the central question before the court was not whether the tragedy happened, but why. Clancy’s defence argued that she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis — her youngest child, Callan, was only eight months old. Prosecutors, however, said she acted with purpose, describing her conduct as deliberate, clear-headed and fast-moving in pursuit of one specific aim: to kill.

Inside the courtroom, Clancy wept repeatedly, at times so intensely that proceedings had to be paused by the judge. Outside, supporters travelled from across the United States, many dressed in pink, casting her as a symbol of medical failure and the wider neglect of mothers after childbirth. Postpartum psychosis is rare, affecting around two in every 1,000 women, but postnatal depression is far more widespread, with an estimated 10 to 15 per cent of new mothers affected.

Ultimately the jury – three men and nine women – were unable to reach a unanimous verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. This means that Clancy could stand trial again – although lawyers for her ex-husband and the children’s father, Patrick Clancy, were keen to stress how traumatic the whole process had been for him and warned that the prospect ‘of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful’.

It’s hard to see what purpose another trial would serve. Her guilt is not in question – it’s her motives that remain unclear. But either way, she will be forever reviled as a child killer. Lindsay Clancy’s life is effectively over.

But for Mr Clancy, the children’s father, his is not. He has since moved to New York and re-married, to a doctor who specialises in infertility treatment. In all aspects of this tragedy, he has been incredibly magnanimous towards his ex. ‘I wasn’t married to a monster – I was married to someone who got sick,’ he told an interviewer in 2024. He should be allowed to move on as best he can in peace.

This case has shone a light on the whole issue of postnatal depression, and of how it should be treated. Years ago, after I had my son, I was diagnosed with quite severe postnatal depression. Reading some of the extracts from Clancy’s journals, which were recovered from the family home in the aftermath of the killings, I shuddered, recognising many of her feelings.

The entries chronicled desperation, insomnia, ‘crazy brain fog’ and guilt. ‘I’m so desperate to get a mental break that my mind is trying to make something physically wrong with me,’ she wrote in 2022. Sleep-training Callan ‘just about killed me’, she noted. ‘I feel like I can’t make a plan. I can’t carry it out. Like I just live moment to moment,’ and ‘I’m drowning every day’.

I recognise those feelings all too well, even at a distance of over two decades. When my son was born, my daughter was just 16 months old: She struggled to adapt to the new arrival. He then became very ill, which led to all sorts of other difficulties. A combination of exhaustion, hormones, guilt and anxiety left me struggling both physically and mentally.

I remember joking to a friend that I was desperate for something to happen to me so I could have a ‘non-fatal hospitalisation’ and get a few nights’ proper sleep.

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I also remember how at times I would be seized by an almost uncontrollable rage. There were moments when I genuinely scared myself. I remember once, for example, being unable to get the children’s double buggy to unfold in a supermarket car park.

The children were crying in the back of the car, it was raining and I just suddenly reached the end of my tether. I smashed the buggy on to the Tarmac like a woman possessed. God knows what any passer-by must have thought. The tiniest thing would send me into a tailspin. I was a nightmare of neuroses.

But I was lucky: At a check-up, my GP picked up on my low mood. He asked if I was OK, and my emotional dam just burst. Not long after, I found myself in the office of a psychiatrist, who diagnosed a textbook case of postnatal depression. He told me sometimes in cases like mine he might recommend a period of removal from the children (the thought of which was like a knife to my heart) but that he did not think I was a danger to them. More, he said, a danger to myself.

With a combination of rest, medication and help from family and friends, I recovered. But I remember only too well how desolate I felt, how convinced I was that I was a total failure as a mother (and wife). Until then I had never had a day’s mental illness. Since then, the black dog has only ever been just around the corner.

I was lucky: I had the right professionals and the right support. It seems to me that Lindsay Clancy did not. At what point she went from being a struggling mum to a killer we may never know, but at some point her troubled mind somehow convinced itself that this was the best course of action.

Had she been properly diagnosed and treated, her children might not have paid the ultimate price. Their futures have been stolen. For the sake of their memory, it must never happen again.

I quite understand that Nigel Farage has not had an easy time of things lately, but he would do well to stop whingeing and blaming everyone else for his woes. If he wants to be prime minister, he has to accept a degree of scrutiny. Otherwise… well, you know what they say about heat and kitchens. 

How dare they troll dear Peter?

Last week Peter Hitchens and I celebrated the 80th edition of our podcast, Alas Vine And Hitchens. I suspect the reason we were first paired by the powers that be was because we are chalk and cheese. I am an eternal optimist, whereas Peter can be rather Eeyore-ish.

But despite our differences, I have become rather fond of him – which is why an incident a few days ago enraged me. Peter and I were standing in the street talking, when a well-heeled middle-aged man appeared from nowhere and slapped him on the shoulder. Startled, Peter sprang around, whereupon the fellow declared: ‘Your brother was much cleverer than you,’ and waltzed off, looking terribly smug. It’s the kind of thing that happens often on social media – but to see such vile trolling in real life was truly shocking. Do that again, sir, and you will have me to answer to.

Miriam Margolyes has a reputation for being outspoken, but even by her standards her latest outburst was shocking. In an interview with Andi Peters on ITV, she quizzed him about his lineage and then called him a ‘high yaller’ (aka ‘high yellow’), which is an old Southern American term for a black or mixed-race person with a light complexion. Aged 85, I don’t think she realised she was being offensive – but isn’t that the real problem here?

Sad news: Ski Sunday is no more. It was a staple of my childhood, something to look forward to on rainy Sunday afternoons. No doubt it will be replaced by something frightfully modern and woke. Another nail in the BBC’s coffin. 

There are few places more enchanting than England’s Peak District in summer, and among the Derbyshire national park’s many treasures, Dovedale has long held a special place. The limestone gorge, with sheep scattered across its rugged slopes and a river slipping gently through lush green banks, has for generations embodied the quiet beauty of the countryside.

Arrive at first light and the valley can still seem almost untouched by time, a haven for tired walkers and seekers of calm. Its appeal has inspired writers, poets and artists for centuries. Victorian essayist John Ruskin described Dovedale as “an alluring first lesson in all that is beautiful”, while in Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet tells Mr Darcy of her own restorative trip there.

Yet Elizabeth might hesitate before making the journey today — particularly if she glanced at the recent Tripadvisor reviews.

Those complaints paint a bleak picture of how what one visitor called “one of England’s most spectacular stretches of countryside” became, over the summer, a disorderly “no-go zone”. Reviewers describe overcrowding, rubbish, barbecues, “Third World toilets”, people washing pots and pans — and at times themselves — in the river, along with the occasional smell of marijuana.

“It has become an overcrowded, dirty place,” wrote James, from Sheffield, after visiting last month and leaving his verdict online.

‘Used to be a tranquil spot… unfortunately it’s now a hotspot for a new type of crowd who ignore a lot of the signs there (saw multiple BBQs, toilets absolutely rancid, a complete lack of space… and not much consideration for other people who use the site).’

His sentiments are echoed by dozens of others. One woman said: ‘Did not feel safe as a solo female hiker… I was very intimidated and overwhelmed by the people that were dominating the place.’

Another review said: ‘It has been destroyed like so many places in the UK. If you haven’t been for 20 years you will think it’s a different place.’

And a tourist from Southampton said that having last visited several years ago ‘our good memories soon faded and I’m sitting here writing my review with tears in my eyes… we are truly disgusted.

‘Absolute chaos in the car parks, roads impassable, toilets disgusting, hundreds of people with food, tents, rugs… This experience will stay with me for a long, long time. Hopefully, my childhood memories will suffice to remind me what Dovedale used to be like. A beautiful place ruined.’

Certainly anyone perusing social media videos of Dovedale during the heatwaves would have noted its resemblance at times to a festival. On a Saturday afternoon not so long ago a huge fight broke out at its celebrated stepping stones over the River Dove, which marks the boundary between Derbyshire and Staffordshire.

Had the evidence not been posted online, it would scarcely seem conceivable. Yet it is there for the world to see, a brawl featuring men clobbering each other with sticks in a valley described by Lord Byron as ‘Little Switzerland’ and used by generations of artists to illustrate the power of nature over mankind. 

As a retired solicitor who lives in a nearby village told me despairingly last week: ‘What have we become? We used to treat our national treasures with respect. It sometimes strikes me that we don’t deserve them.’

Police said of the incident that a caller reported an ‘altercation between two groups’ and that ‘a child in his party was hit during the disturbance and that an attempt was made to steal his wife’s purse’.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t what our Victorian forebears had in mind when they laid the stepping stones in the late 19th century to stimulate tourism.

Violence and anti-social behaviour are not all. As The Mail on Sunday has discovered, there is something else disturbing about Dovedale – as it has become an unlikely racial battleground.

Earlier this year, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs outlined diversity plans to make the British countryside less of a ‘white environment’. It said in a report: ‘We are all paying for national landscapes through our taxes, and yet sometimes on our visits it has felt as if national parks are an exclusive, mainly white, mainly middle-class club.

‘Many communities in modern Britain feel that these landscapes hold no relevance for them. The countryside is seen by both black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and white people as very much a “white” environment. If that is true today, then the divide is only going to widen as society changes.’

Dovedale, owned and managed by the National Trust, has no trouble attracting minority groups, however, and has been popular with Muslims in particular for some years.

If only it could be celebrated as a model of harmony. For Dovedale now seems to be attracting the attention of far-Right groups, apparently unhappy with online videos of families enjoying the scenery and picnicking by the river.

Only last month a group of activists, draped in England flags, held up a banner in front of the stepping stones bearing the words: ‘Mass deportations are necessary.’ On a video, one of the men is heard saying as he films an Asian family in the background: ‘They say it isn’t a takeover… We’re literally the only white people this side of the river.’

On another day a man turned up and recorded a video of himself spouting white supremacist tropes, which he later posted online.

Thankfully, their distasteful views aren’t widely shared. But locals and other visitors are not without concerns. In 2021, Shaykh Mohammed Aslam, a Muslim cleric from Birmingham, planned a religious gathering for 600 people in Dovedale to celebrate Mawlid al-Nabi, a Muslim holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

Free minibuses were laid on for the hike that aimed to ‘increase brotherhood, strengthen bonds, relax the mind, help rejuvenate the soul, and allow us all to truly appreciate the creation of Allah…[in] a renowned beauty spot’.

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As it transpired, it was called off at the last minute because of Covid restrictions but not before stirring unease among nearby residents. A local newspaper reported that the ‘event had alarmed locals, who have been growing increasingly frustrated by hour-long traffic queues and huge gatherings’ in nearby villages.

It added: ‘In many cases, the influxes have led to mountains of litter being left.’

A villager said at the time: ‘I respect everyone has a right to come and enjoy the countryside, and of course I accept that it’s part of living in a beautiful area, but recently it’s just getting too much.’

One group, Muslim Hikers, has been credited with successfully making the countryside more inclusive. Started by Coventry-based rambler Haroon Mota, it describes itself as ‘a trailblazing organisation committed to promoting diversity’.

More than 150 people took part in one of its hikes to Dovedale, which was organised in conjunction with Strava, the fitness app.

Of another event, Mr Mota said: ‘The Ramadan Retreat is probably one of my favourite Muslim Hikers events to date.

‘It felt incredibly enriching and powerful to share breaking the fast and praying together, against the backdrop of the green peaks of Dovedale.’

Meanwhile, in response to the protest by far-Right activists last month, a UK-based Palestinian ‘influencer’ posted a video from Dovedale in which he pretended to have persuaded the local authority to declare the area ‘Britain’s first Islamic national park’. He also joked about plans to build a mega-mosque on a nearby hill.

As ever with social media, his stab at satire rebounded. Predictably, many took him at face value and expressed outrage.

Two weeks later, for instance, Paul Porter, another influencer, solemnly warned his 14,000 Facebook followers about the ‘Islamic national park’ plan, urging them: ‘Take your dogs and family. Make noise, claim your land.’

And with divisions becoming further inflamed, so the cycle of hate continues.

Still, when the MoS visited Dovedale last week everyone appeared to be rubbing along just fine. What was undeniable though was that it was overcrowded, uncomfortably so, with not even grey skies and frequent downpours keeping the day-trippers away. The car park was jammed, so too the overspill.

‘You think this is bad now, but I was here in the heatwave when it was bedlam,’ says Keith Gould, 64, a former warehouseman from Birmingham, visiting with his wife Julie. ‘We wanted to come back when it was cooler.

‘Too many families stay by the stepping stones where they spend the day cooking and eating and don’t venture into the hills. If everyone spread out it wouldn’t appear so rammed.’

As we talk, we pass a recently erected National Trust sign appearing to reflect the concerns of recent weeks. It warns: ‘No BBQs, No fires, No cooking, No shisha pipes, No gas stoves… This is a nature reserve, thank you for helping us look after it.’

At the stepping stones at a bend in the river, at the foot of Thorpe Cloud, a large flat-topped hill, queues of 20 to 30 people form on each side. People seem to cross ten at a time before the other side gets a turn. Some take dogs. Others struggle with pushchairs. One woman, dressed as if for a wedding, tentatively moved from stone to stone in kitten-heel slingback shoes and a long, elegant dress.

Inevitably things get fractious. ‘For the love of God, why does everyone have to stop in the middle of the river to have their pictures taken?’ exclaims one man queuing. ‘We’ll be here all day.’ Others mutter in agreement. This is how fights start, but thankfully the moment passes.

An angler among the day-trippers tells me that it’s the perfect spot for trout fishing. It’s hard to imagine anyone catching much these days. The noise around the stepping stones is deafening.

As we wait to cross, children play with inflatable dinghies and paddle boards.

Many are critical, meanwhile, of the National Trust’s role in what they see as the area’s decline. The Trust, incidentally, charges £6 for the car park. And it costs 50p to use the loo.

‘I hope the NT takes heed of the negative reviews because this beautiful landscape is being progressively ruined. We visited today and were shocked by how eye- wateringly overcrowded it was,’ wrote a woman on Tripadvisor last month. She went on to call for a ban on picnics ‘as many families were clearly taking the mick’, and condemned the whole atmosphere as one of ‘unmanaged chaos’.

And then there were the toilets. ‘I paid the obligatory 50p to use the public toilet but gave up before I’d even gone because they looked like something out of the Third World… Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this. It’s a shame as it could be a breathtaking experience. Instead, I just felt my blood boiling.’

The National Trust told the MoS that it had reported to the police the presence of far-Right activists at Dovedale, but recognised the problems that high visitor numbers bring.

‘Our rangers, welcome team and volunteers work hard to care for Dovedale, doing regular litter picks and talking to visitors about ways to enjoy the space responsibly,’ a spokesman said.

‘We encourage everyone to take their litter away with them.’

But such toothless advice will satisfy few visitors to Dovedale who despair at the beauty spot’s decline.

Tammy Hembrow has once again set tongues wagging over possible engagement rumours after sharing a very affectionate moment with her younger boyfriend, Grayson Te Moana, at Sydney Airport.

The 32-year-old fitness influencer appeared smitten with the 23-year-old model as the couple spent time together at their departure gate ahead of a Saturday flight to Adelaide.

In exclusive images, Tammy was pictured leaning closely into Grayson as the pair shared a passionate kiss while sitting side by side before boarding.

The loved-up duo looked fully absorbed in the moment, with Tammy tenderly cradling Grayson’s head as they packed on the PDA in the busy terminal.

For the airport outing, Tammy opted for a sporty yet polished travel look, wearing a navy-and-yellow striped tracksuit with a coordinating cropped top and a sleek black crossbody bag.

Grayson, meanwhile, kept things low-key in a black hoodie and grey sweatpants, pulling his hood up as the couple enjoyed their intimate moment away from the crowds.

When asked by the Daily Mail if an engagement was in their future, Tammy cheekily responded with ‘maybe’.

Tammy was later spotted walking through the airport alongside Grayson, who towered over her as they made their way through the terminal with their luggage. 

It looked to be a low-key but loved-up airport outing for the couple, as they appeared completely smitten.

But when asked what had prompted the pair’s trip to South Australia, Tammy was coy, joking it was a ‘surprise.’ 

The loved-up outing came after Grayson recently sparked a frenzy by appearing to joke that Tammy was pregnant with their first child.

The aspiring influencer shared a photo of Tammy filling in a waiver form on her phone, with one question asking whether she was pregnant. 

Tammy appeared to select the option indicating she was in her first trimester.

But Grayson quickly appeared to pour cold water on the idea, captioning the post: ‘Fun waiver joke’.

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That did little to stop fans from wondering whether there could be more to the story.

‘She’s pregnant whaaaat?’ one follower wrote.

Another questioned whether the whole thing was ‘rage bait’.

Tammy has three children from previous relationships.

She shares son Wolf, 11, and daughter Saskia, nine, with ex-fiancé Reece Hawkins, and is also mother to daughter Posy, four, whom she shares with ex-fiancé Matt Poole.

But these days, Tammy appears firmly focused on her romance with Grayson. 

The pair first sparked romance rumours when they were spotted locking lips on the Gold Coast in March, shortly after publicly confirming their relationship.

They had already ‘hard-launched’ their romance at the Australian premiere of Wuthering Heights in Sydney in February.

Grayson is the latest in a string of high-profile romances for Tammy, who previously enjoyed a short-lived interstate relationship with footy star Bailey Smith.