Before sitting down to write this I went for a brisk walk along a public footpath at the edge of my village and felt much better for it. We all know walking is good for both body and mind but, apart from in Scotland where you can roam freely but responsibly, you must stick to the rights of way. Which can be hard because, in law, many footpaths just don’t exist.
“There could be 49,000 miles of lost footpaths that are unrecorded and unprotected, which people can’t currently enjoy but should be able to,” Jack Cornish, head of paths at the Ramblers, tells me. “Many of these will have been missed off the Definitive Map [the legal record of public rights of way in England and Wales] and there are 8,000 applications pending, with the hope of getting them added to it. Some of them date back to the 1980s and are still to be reviewed – many local authorities don’t have enough resources to clear the backlog.”
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The vast, rolling countryside of eastern England is a joy for anyone with walking boots and a rucksack. Yet a new report by the think tank Onward, titled Walk on the Wild Side, says in many areas people have barely anywhere they’re allowed to walk because of the amount of high-grade farmland and large number of unrecorded rights of way.
A new national trail
It suggests launching a new North Sea National Trail, from the Humber, through the Wolds to Norwich, which it says would address the country’s biggest access-to-nature gap. In the heart of that ‘gap’ is Lincolnshire, England’s second-biggest county, with the largest backlog of ‘lost’ paths – over 500 applications are pending.
“We’ve had a 225% increase in the number of applications in the last three years,” says Andrew Fletcher, Lincolnshire’s rights of way manager, who now has a team of six working full-time to clear it.
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“There’s a great deal of local interest; in fact, more than 400 of them have come from a handful of individuals. Generally, there’s a larger evidence base for historic claims in an agricultural setting, which also contributes to a higher number of applications coming through. We’re very conscious that these applications can take their toll on homeowners and landowners, and the public are keen to protect their rights of way. That’s why we’re keen to process applications as quickly as we can.”
Processing them is complex, however, and proof is needed that the path, bridleway or byway in question has been in regular use for 20 years or was once a right of way that has been overlooked. Each case involves a lot of voluntary hard work, getting written evidence from people who’ve walked the route and digging into the archives of libraries and parish councils.
The benefit of green spaces
In its report, the Onward think tank urges the new Government to take up its predecessor’s pledge that no-one should live more than a 15-minute walk from green spaces. “They [green spaces] save the NHS over £110 million per year from fewer GP visits alone and £2.1 billion of annual health costs could be saved if all of England had good access to nature,” the report states.
And what of Onward’s notion, which has been submitted to Defra, of a new national trail across eastern England that would be a “flagship for interaction with nature”? I detect a mixed response. The Ramblers believes new trails are great for keen walkers but don’t address the barriers that prevent people walking close to home on smaller, linking paths that are lifelines for communities.
Kate Ashbrook of the Open Spaces Society says, “The trail may make a good headline but it doesn’t appear to be particularly useful. It does not go close to many population centres. And how would it be funded?”
Walkers had feared thousands of miles of rights of way would be lost forever by 2031 – the deadline for getting them registered on the Definitive Map. But the Government has recently scrapped the deadline, meaning local councils now have time to assess the huge backlog of claims. “It’s a fantastic step forward in making sure everyone can enjoy the benefits of walking in nature,” is the happy response from the Ramblers.
Main image: Getty
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