Column: Stuart Maconie
The time is now to save our paths.
ILIKE A GOOD path. Robert Frost may have declared that ‘good fences make good neighbours’ but I would adapt that to ‘a good path makes a good walk’. Perhaps it speaks of a certain unadventurousness on my part but I have never been one of those maverick free spirits who likes to wander over open country, frock coat flapping wildly, eyes closed in ecstasy, even if I know from the lovely yellow-washed area on my OS map that I can. I like to see the path stretching away before me. It puts a spring in my step and focuses the mind, however windy and wobbly the path may be. In fact, another line I’ve always liked is GK Chesterton’s ‘the rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road’, even if I haven’t been to the pub.
But our paths are a pleasure we cannot take for granted. When the Countryside and Rights Of Way Act of 2000 opened up those yellow-washed areas to us all (in what is surely the walker’s favourite ever bit of legislation), it also set a timetable to record every public path criss-crossing England and Wales by January 1st, 2026. On that day, a new definitive path of the UK will be drawn up and any rights of way not included on it will be lost forever.
If your favourite path is in common use and clearly marked, you have nothing to worry about. Nobody is going to lose their access to the Ridgeway or the South West Coast Path. But around ten per cent of England and Wales’ 140,000 miles of footpaths are currently inaccessible or impassable; lost, hidden, barred or overgrown. There is probably one near you, churned into mud, flytipped on, hidden by brambles or laced with barbed wire.
Another 10,000 miles are thought to have dropped off the map completely. They may be little-used, but that is because we can’t use them unless we’ve got the eyes of a hawk, protective clothes and some wirecutters. But they are rights of way. And to paraphrase the Beastie Boys, you gotta fight – for your right – to, er, partake of them.
In England, paths are made simply by walking. If a path is in fairly regular use for 20 years, it becomes a right of way. But the reverse is true, and those paths that are currently unusable or unrecorded will be lost forever if not included in the new definitive map, which is coming sooner than you think.
Back at the turn of the century, 2026 probably seemed a generous timescale. But now it is only seven years away, and one Cornish Ramblers volunteer has estimated that they will have to put in two applications to the council per week to ensure that all their paths remain on the statute books and maps.
That’s why a couple of weeks ago, I was scrambling under barbed wire, clinging to trees in a tunnel of undergrowth and scuttling across farmland in deepest Middle England with some Ramblers colleagues and a Daily Telegraph journalist hoping to find the route of a lost path near Tanworth-in-Arden station. It was a cold, tiring and muddy few hours, and journo Tom managed to cut his ear open on some thorns. But hopefully, your nearest lost path may be less arduous to find and report on. It just takes a bit of time and some detective work. Look for clues like grassed-over depressions or strips, avenues of trees, gateposts or evidence of stone pathwork. All of these may be evidence of a public route that’s been ‘ lost’.
Unlike the caricature of the American who like to boast about the size of his freeways and turnpikes, we in Britain like a bit of shyness and secrecy. It’s why we love hedgehogs. But while I am all for the hedgehog being shy, I want to know that it’s there and will always be there. The same goes for our footpaths and rights of way. Never has the phrase ‘use it or lose it’ been more apt. So get out there and get searching. You can find out more about how to do that here:
www.ramblers.org.uk/get-involved/campaignwith-us/dont-lose-your-way-2026.aspx