Every country walker knows the cry. Where the hell is the footpath? A right of way with no signpost is not a legal right at all. It is an invitation to trespass.
The revelation that 2,500 areas of English countryside that supposedly enjoy a “right to roam” can be reached only by trespassing over private land is absurd. It means that some 2,700 hectares of open land effectively require a helicopter for their legal access. Even the busy South Downs has 11 unreachable “islands” of delight. Meanwhile, campaigners have recorded 32,000 cases of blocked public footpaths across England and Wales. The contrast with France could not be more glaring, where trails – from local track to “grande randonnée” – are routinely and meticulously marked on trees and gateposts. Way-marking in Britain is atrocious.
Around 90% of Britain is still in some sense rural, most of it inherently attractive to city-dwellers. The overwhelming majority of Britons love the countryside and freely contribute their taxes to support it, which is why planning that countryside is a democratic duty. Yet party policy documents fall staggeringly short on that front.
The opportunity to support a new rural stewardship came in 2018 when the then environment secretary, Michael Gove, decided to revise post-Brexit farm subsidies. He declared his intention to move radically and sensibly towards support for “public goods”, rather than just farm incomes. But that support turned out to be essentially for environmental rather than popular goods. His beneficiaries were woods, trees, animals and birds.
In the recent years of wrangling over the new stewardship of the National Trust, there has been no mention of what its Victorian co-founder, Octavia Hill, sought in fighting for common land. This was the gains to public health, relaxation and pleasure that access to the countryside would afford an increasingly urban population. Gove’s stewardship was admirable in principle. But it was the creation of a naturalist, not a psychologist – let alone an aesthete. There was no look-in for those with a love of scenery.
Nothing is more crucial to enjoying nature than walking. It is the physical and mental liberation of the individual from the grip of the built environment. Ever since a modest right to roam in England was introduced in 2000, it has extended over just 8% of England’s land area. Scotland has been far more generous, with a still-regulated “right of responsible access” to almost all its landscape.
Last summer, Labour pledged to bring the Scottish practice to England. Then in October, Keir Starmer added this to his list of U-turns. Indeed, in his party conference speech, he outspokenly promised to weaken planning control and liberate building on the green belt. He wanted “yes in my back yard” and farmers free to erect on-shore wind turbines and solar arrays. This spells landscape disaster.
With the centenary of the 1932 Kinder Scout mass trespass of the Peak District on the horizon, it seems tragic that the glory of the hills and dales enjoyed by Scots, Scandinavians, Austrians, the Swiss and other Europeans still cannot be tolerated in England. We should not still have to fight for such liberties in the 21st century.
• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
