The Book of Trespass

[Jdsk]

"How ministers squashed proposals to expand right to roam in England":
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -proposals

Jonathan

[reohn2]

"How ministers squashed proposals to expand right to roam in England":
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -proposals

Jonathan

Should we be surprised given who owns the Tory party?

[Zulu Eleven]

"How ministers squashed proposals to expand right to roam in England":
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -proposals

Jonathan

I have to say that as someone who was actually at those meetings, some of the claims made about the status/expected outcomes of the review in that article differ from my own recollections.

[rmurphy195]

Scottish Outdoor Access Code
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_ ... ccess_Code

and paths and trails still exist in Scotland.

Jonathan

Does Scottish farmland have the dense network of paths we have around our village here in Wales?

Anyone arriving in our rural village could pick up an OS Explorer map and quickly work out a five mile circuit staying mainly on paths across fields (via stiles and gates), through woods and along cliff tops. Could I go to a village in farmland in Scotland and do that, as a stranger with only a map?

Spot on. In practice the ability to roam wherever you feel like it, ignoring the many footways, bridelways etc (of which there are many thousands of miles in England I suspect) would likely be devastating to crops/animals etc. In some parts of the country, where mines and like industries once existed, there are strong safety reasons to stay on the marked footpaths of which there are many. In others there a strong environmental reasons for doing so (ref the constant work done by the National Trust and other bodies in many areas to try and minimise erosion, for example).

If you look at the footpaths that we do have, they always lead from one place to another (even if sometimes "Place" means somewhere that used to exist but no longer does). Pretty well everywhere that people walked from where they lived to where they worked, be it a farm, a factory, a mine, a quarry, a village, a church, a water spout or whatever. The paths also usually took the easiest and/or safest route avoiding difficult or dangerous bits of the landscape such as bogs etc.

Plenty of places to walk on paths created by people over hundreds of years - Wales and England a criss-crossed with such paths because unltimatley very few places were remote in comparison to Scotland. A right to roam is unneccessary.

[Jdsk]

Scottish Outdoor Access Code
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_ ... ccess_Code

and paths and trails still exist in Scotland.

Does Scottish farmland have the dense network of paths we have around our village here in Wales?

Anyone arriving in our rural village could pick up an OS Explorer map and quickly work out a five mile circuit staying mainly on paths across fields (via stiles and gates), through woods and along cliff tops. Could I go to a village in farmland in Scotland and do that, as a stranger with only a map?

...
In practice the ability to roam wherever you feel like it, ignoring the many footways, bridelways etc (of which there are many thousands of miles in England I suspect) would likely be devastating to crops/animals etc. In some parts of the country, where mines and like industries once existed, there are strong safety reasons to stay on the marked footpaths of which there are many. In others there a strong environmental reasons for doing so (ref the constant work done by the National Trust and other bodies in many areas to try and minimise erosion, for example).
...

I don't know of any right to roam code or legislation or proposal that doesn't include precautions to protect farm crops and livestock. And the Code in Scotland excludes quarries and lots of other categories.

"Right to roam" doesn't mean "Anything goes".

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

I’ve become a bit agnostic regarding “access land” since a few days ago, when I discovered that it confers no right to ride a horse or a bike on the land, only to roam on foot.

Going right back to the start of the thread, how important all this is in practice, as opposed to as a principle, depends hugely upon the locality.

Where I live now, we have oodles of bridleways and footpaths, and although a lot of the land is owned by big private estates some of the owners have created additional permissive bridleways (quite why, I’m not sure, but I like it!). Nearly every wood is “access land”, the exceptions being a couple of places where the army trains. So, in practice very good access. I cycle a lot on bridleways and have only come across one small spot where locals (householders, not farmers) appear to be attempting to impede access; most are well marked, good gates, and clear even across planted fields.

Visiting back to where I grew-up, I was struck by the near absence of bridleways, they just don’t exist! Different county, different history. Random.

[pwa]

I’ve become a bit agnostic regarding “access land” since a few days ago, when I discovered that it confers no right to ride a horse or a bike on the land, only to roam on foot.

I remember the campaign for the "Right to Roam", and the law change that resulted, and it was about roaming on foot. I suspect the "Right to Roam" title came from the Ramblers. It means roaming on foot. It was a long and hard campaign that faced a lot of opposition, so trying to include other modes of movement, mainly cycling and horse riding, would have increased the hurdles and made success less likely.

[Nearholmer]

That makes sense.

I didn’t mean to trivialise the effort that went into securing the right, it’s just that roaming on foot isn’t my thing, whereas roaming by bike is, and I was a bit disappointed when I double-checked the law.

[pwa]

That makes sense.

I didn’t mean to trivialise the effort that went into securing the right, it’s just that roaming on foot isn’t my thing, whereas roaming by bike is, and I was a bit disappointed when I double-checked the law.

I get that. I know members of the Ramblers in my own area and as individuals I expect some of them would stand side by side with you on this. I do know of at least one moorland Public Footpath in an Access area that could easily be open to MTBs, with no inconvenience to anyone, but isn't. The agents for the landowner (God Bless Her in her Jubilee year) don't much like relaxation of access.

There is scope for more problem-free bicycle access in moorland areas. The only places I don't like to encounter bicycles when I am walking is very narrow paths bounded by fences or hedges. I know people will say there's no problem as the bike rider will give way, but that never happens. It is always the walker who steps into the nettles at the side. But on open terrain with good width, no problem.

[Bmblbzzz]

Spot on. In practice the ability to roam wherever you feel like it, ignoring the many footways, bridelways etc (of which there are many thousands of miles in England I suspect) would likely be devastating to crops/animals etc. In some parts of the country, where mines and like industries once existed, there are strong safety reasons to stay on the marked footpaths of which there are many. In others there a strong environmental reasons for doing so (ref the constant work done by the National Trust and other bodies in many areas to try and minimise erosion, for example).

As jdsk has already said, this is a misunderstanding of the right to roam. It gives the right to wander on otherwise unused land; certainly not the right to trample crops, scare livestock, cut trees or pick flowers. Nor to light fires. A working quarry is no more covered by right to roam than a working factory. As for erosion, that is surely caused by thousands of feet tramping the same paths, rather than by dispersed wandering.

[Zulu Eleven]

That makes sense.

I didn’t mean to trivialise the effort that went into securing the right, it’s just that roaming on foot isn’t my thing, whereas roaming by bike is, and I was a bit disappointed when I double-checked the law.

I get that. I know members of the Ramblers in my own area and as individuals I expect some of them would stand side by side with you on this. I do know of at least one moorland Public Footpath in an Access area that could easily be open to MTBs, with no inconvenience to anyone, but isn't. The agents for the landowner (God Bless Her in her Jubilee year) don't much like relaxation of access.

There is scope for more problem-free bicycle access in moorland areas. The only places I don't like to encounter bicycles when I am walking is very narrow paths bounded by fences or hedges. I know people will say there's no problem as the bike rider will give way, but that never happens. It is always the walker who steps into the nettles at the side. But on open terrain with good width, no problem.

A lot of our discussion in the CUK engagement with access reform proposals in Wales and our responses to Glover review discussion focused around the access land proposals - there’s some quite technical stuff here in that basic access land rights only includes access on foot (though pushing a bicycle is not prohibited) but large amounts of ‘access land’ is in fact ‘section 15’ land, most of which is S193 common with a right for open access horseriding too (eg. New Forest) There’s a long and complex discussion about bikes on S193 land: https://pannageman.craddocks.co.uk/2017 ... n-land-46/ and you’ll also see discussion about other types of section 15 land like Dartmoor: https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/dartmoor ... ng-cycling

Overall however, as we recently highlighted regards Bolton Abbey: https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/cycling- ... devonshire. That even disregarding a complete ‘open access’ approach, most existing access land like commons and moorland is cross crossed with well surfaced land river tracks that there is no good reason to restrict access on.

[Nearholmer]

The only places I don't like to encounter bicycles when I am walking is very narrow paths bounded by fences or hedges.

The irony is that where I live we have vast mileages of narrow, nettle-bed fringed bridleways upon which I’m free to cycle, as well as several large “access land” managed woods/small forests that have 5m wide gravel roads upon which cycling isn’t permitted.

I’m not groaning or moaning about it, more making an observation about the sheer quirkiness of the way things work in practice.

[pwa]

The only places I don't like to encounter bicycles when I am walking is very narrow paths bounded by fences or hedges.

The irony is that where I live we have vast mileages of narrow, nettle-bed fringed bridleways upon which I’m free to cycle, as well as several large “access land” managed woods/small forests that have 5m wide gravel roads upon which cycling isn’t permitted.

I’m not groaning or moaning about it, more making an observation about the sheer quirkiness of the way things work in practice.

On a brighter note (but not much use to you) I live not far from several large blocks of publicly owned forestry (what we used to call Forestry Commission and now has a different name depending on which part of the UK you live in) and they are open to cycling, walking and horse riding wherever felling is not happening. I see a lot of people like you there and there is never a problem.

[Traction_man]

"National park authority defends wild camping rights on Dartmoor | Access to green space | The Guardian" https://amp.theguardian.com/environment ... n-dartmoor

[Jdsk]

"People across England are right to trespass to stand up for their right to roam, Caroline Lucas has said.
"The Green MP will table a bill later in October to allow the public to access woodlands and the green belt in the same way they can currently walk on the coast path."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... line-lucas

Jonathan