Looking Up

A six-week stay on the Isle of Mull last year got us accustomed to the "right to roam". It has upsides and downsides. The obvious upside that you can walk anywhere reasonable that you choose, without challenge. If you spot a landscape feature or a historic site that looks interesting, just go take a look - no need to check access rights or the status of designated paths

The downside is that there are few footpaths marked on the OS maps, so planning your route in advance is a bit of a lottery - a right of way marked on an English map gives some degree of assurance that a route is feasible and passable, even if it is little frequented. In an unfamiliar and sometimes treacherous landscape, we found ourselves much more reliant on guide books and Web sites than we would be in the rest of Britain. After a few weeks, we got our eye in, and enjoyed the challenge of "how do we get to see that bit of coastline/village/monument", but we were lucky to be there long enough to have the luxury of bedding in

In England and Wales, land rights still echo both the feudalism of the Norman hegemony and the land-grab of the enclosures. Ownership trumps all, and even the very limited corridors of access that are established are conceded grudgingly, eroded where possible and, when changed, almost always changed in line with the land owner's wishes. Government legislative and administrative activity in the last 10 years has served to tighten controls, further empower land-owners and criminalise trespass. In a recent case, the courts have removed rights on part of Dartmoor

I took this picture on a thoroughfare in our village called Hayway Lane - labelled as such on OS maps since 1900, but not marked as a public footpath. In the 1700s, this lane led to an area of communally farmed land called The Great Meadow - it's pretty obvious what the lane was used for! In 1773, the enclosure act for the village deprived people of their rights on the meadow, but declared the Hay Way "a private road and a public foot way". We are pretty lucky this document exists.

Despite the lane having been used by villagers since forever, a landowner built a house beside it, declared Hayway Lane a private road and asserted his view with CCTV and aggressive personal encounters with walkers. This affluent village bristles with lawyers, administrators and historians. Representations were made, the Parish Council made an official request to the relevant local authority and, after only (!) a two year hiatus, the lane was officially declared (for the second time) a public footpath. A small, but personally pleasing, eddy against the tide of weakening rights

The days events in Westminster have been depressing beyond words. What a low opinion our leaders must have of us if they think that performative cruelty to vulnerable, traumatised people will earn them votes. More depressing still, the thought that they might be right

At least one cannot accuse them of inconsistency. Get off my land