Paul Whitewick’s video The Land You’re Allowed On… But Can’t Get To examines a particularly British contradiction that I’ve never given much thought to before, either through my work with the Ramblers or in my LDWA role. He begins by standing on land that he is legally entitled to explore, having reached it only by crossing private land without permission. The public therefore has a statutory right to be there, but no corresponding right to make the journey there. It’s like the Burger King outlets that show up on maps sometimes that are actually inside British military bases used by US forces, inaccessible to locals but still very much existing.
The orange areas shown on Ordnance Survey maps identify land covered by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, generally including mountains, moorland, heath and downland. Unlike an ordinary public footpath, where walkers must follow the designated route, access land can normally be explored more freely for activities such as walking, running, bird-watching or having a picnic. There are approximately 1.3 million hectares of this land across England and Wales, although some portions appear to offer a legal right to picnic without any lawful means of transporting the sandwiches and chicken bakes there.
Whitewick investigated the problem in Wiltshire four years ago and calculated that around five million square metres of designated access land had no public route leading to it. He has since found similar isolated areas in Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Sussex, including four separate parcels beside the Ridgeway. Reaching them would require walkers to cross private fields and potentially damage crops, which is neither fair to the farmer nor a particularly satisfactory interpretation of public access. Ultimately, it’s all rather sub-optimal.
The problem becomes even stranger at White Hill near Kingsclere in Hampshire, where information boards describe the wildlife that visitors can expect to encounter on the access land. The adjoining footpath runs beside a continuous fence, a locked gate and stretches of barbed wire, while the stile mentioned in a Hampshire County Council leaflet is no longer there. Another gate carries a no-public-right-of-way notice, despite the land beyond it being designated for public access. The arrangements provide plenty of information about what can be seen, provided nobody develops the unreasonable ambition of actually seeing it.
The Countryside and Rights of Way Act makes it an offence to display false or misleading notices intended to deter people from using access land, while access authorities have powers to arrange or construct suitable entrances. However, the removal of a stile is not necessarily an automatic offence unless protection for that access point has already been established. Whitewick demonstrates that he can climb a five-foot gate without damaging it, but asks what this means for older people, families with young children and anyone whose countryside equipment does not include the upper-body strength required for an assault course. I’m not going to mention friends by name here, but how could we get Richard over those fences? Getting Richard over one of those fences would require a detailed risk assessment and a lengthy period of negotiation, which is not exactly the sort of accessibility we should be aiming for.
Whitewick is careful not to turn the issue into a dispute between walkers and landowners, recognising that irresponsible visitors, uncontrolled dogs and litter create genuine difficulties. His argument is simply that the public should be able to reach land which it already has the legal right to use, with education and cooperation offering a better solution than quietly making access impossible. He encourages viewers to identify inaccessible areas, report them to their MPs and support organisations working to protect countryside access. I personally want much more access to the countryside, although I accept that I don’t spend enough time in the sections I can freely access, and this seems like a very worthwhile issue which I’m pleased someone has thought to document as clearly as this video does.