We should charge ramblers for using country paths (or reintroduce wolves)

I was going to write about 'rewilding' - you know the idea that the supposed dominant activity in Great Britain's uplands (farming) is now redundant and only sustained to provide a cover for the real dominant activity (outdoor leisure). So we get rid of the sheep farmers and replace them with nothing except a restocked wilderness. And what an appealing idea as those woods and beasts return - beavers, pine marten, otters, lynx and wild boar (maybe even wolves).

For some this is a mission of rescue. Here's uber-townie Nick Cohen in an article that manages to combine warnings about both Brexit and climate change - something of an achievement:

Rewilding the fells is not just townies forcing their naive fantasies on the countryside. It is a hard-headed policy: in a tiny way, it will help offset global warming; more tangibly, it will slow the floodwaters climate change is bringing. It will also be popular. If you doubt me, look at how many go to see the new beaver colonies in Scotland or the wetlands in East Anglia and Somerset. Or listen to the sympathetic hearings plans to reintroduce lynx to the Kielder Forest receive. Look even at the seeds on sale in supermarkets and notice how popular the wildflowers we once dismissed as weeds have become.

Now I've no doubt that it will be popular - after all we have millions of folk who like nothing better than a walk in our countryside. Indeed Nick Cohen waxes lyrical about his childhood holidays tramping the Lakeland fells (where I might well have passed him on similar childhood rambles). Cohen also notes that the money in farming subsidy is, in effect, a payment to look after the features of the fells - walls, paths, cairns, stiles - plus the signposts we all need so we don't get lost.

The problem is that the National Trust isn't going to buy up millions of acres of upland sheep pasture because most of it isn't for sale or likely to be for sale any time soon. It's true that upland sheep farming is uneconomic and unsustainable - farms are barely viable even with subsidy and welfare benefits. But the rewilding described by Cohen and others is expensive - the restocking with animals isn't simply catch and release but a complicated process of breeding, assessment and habitat preparation. This works on a small scale where charities and paying customers can make it work but to achieve a substantive change on the scale that really would mean a 'rewilded' uplands only comes from the willingness of national government to stump up the millions needed to buy the land and develop the programmes needed to recreate a wilderness not seen for several thousand years.

And there's a reason for all this. The millions of us who take to the by-ways, hills and woods of Great Britain every weekend aren't willing to pay directly for the privilege of using the countryside. We'll fork out plenty of money for fine boots, expensive rainwear, camelbacks, rucksacks, walking poles - all the paraphernalia of country pursuits, but we'll then moan about a £2.50 parking charge. And when this is pointed out - in the context of local councils having less money to support footpath maintenance and such - we're told this is 'scoffing'.

It's time we looked at ways to capture the value people get from our countryside - not through council tax (or any other tax) but through the people using the countryside for leisure and pleasure paying for that privilege. We expect fishermen to buy a licence, when folk use a gym they pay, cricketers and footballers pay to play their sports, and even elderly badminton players fork out for the village hall. How about we start thinking about people paying to use all those paths, styles, bridges and steps that are maintained mostly for free by farmers and other landowners. Currently the fishing rod licence is £27 for a full year (with concessions for the retired and for children). Hardly an imposition for someone prepared to pay over £100 for a pair or boots or an anorak.

It's a thought.

Or we could reintroduce wolves?
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Rambler gets pleasure from rambling but does he pay?

Looking after stiles is the landowners responsibility. That is when they're not fretting about the ramblers dogs worrying the sheep or the fallen stone wall (where some walkers have decided it's a short cut) that means he can't graze cows in that field. Or filling in interminable forms rained down upon him from assorted parts of national and local government. Nope, the priority is to fix a stile so Mick Melvin doesn't rip his anorak:

The president of a Bradford rambling group has called for action on “dangerous” stiles on walking routes in the district.

Mick Melvin, of the Bradford CHA Rambling and Social Club, said on an average day walkers would have a problem with up to five per cent of the stiles they came across.

He said many stiles in the district presented a danger to walkers, young or old. He said he wanted to see landowners take responsibility for problem stiles on their land, and for the Council to take action if that did not happen. 

What Mick means, of course, is that those landowners should pay - in time and money - to ensure he can have his walking pleasure. A walking pleasure for which Mick doesn't pay and has no intention of paying. Despite this Mick and his walking buddies are prepared to pay £200 for a waterproof jacket, £150 for a pair of boots, £30 or so for those funny ski pole things and so on through rucksacks, nice warm hats and a host of other items.

What Mick isn't prepared to pay towards is keeping the place he walks spic and span, fixing those stiles, mending walls, cutting back weeds and shoring up paths worn out by the passing tramp of boots. Perhaps he should consider that as an option? Somehow I fear Mick and his mates will still turn first to the Council and then moan to the local paper. Sad really.

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The countryside belongs to suburban ramblers

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The latest salvo in the great ‘right to roam’ dispute arrives – a series of disputes over access pushed forward by what used to be called the Ramblers Association and is now I gather just called The Ramblers (which makes it sound like one of those slightly plasticy food pubs serving discount Sunday lunches).

As the Telegraph reports:

Campaigners say that many of the growing number of disputes are caused by people with “money and prestige” buying property and refusing to recognise established footpaths.

A little hint of class war there I suspect – how dare those people buy land in the country and do something like farming on it when its there for city-dwellers to tramp all over on their weekends for free. And the Ramblers are talking nonsense as this case indicates:

A dispute in Swanland, Humberside, where walkers want to be allowed to use a path across a primary school playing field also seems likely to go to a public inquiry.

And why can’t the walkers take a little detour round the primary school playing field then?

In truth we know that The Ramblers object automatically to any proposed closure, diversion or alteration of a footpath that they stumble across. And even – as appears to be the case with Vixen Tor – make up rights of way that aren’t even there:

For the previous 30 years, an agreement with the Tor’s previous owners, the Windeatt Estate, had allowed public access to the site, but Mrs Alford claimed there was no such legal public right of way.

What ever the outcome of these disputes it remains the case that The Ramblers are promoting free access to the countryside – the idea that we do not have rights to control access to and use of our property if that property is the sort of place where folk in boots would like to tramp. Ancient rights of way are just that and landowners have to maintain those paths but the right to walk along a path is very different from general rights of access.

And – regardless of the evil spectre of health and safety – Mrs Alford is right:

Mrs Alford, whose family has farmed on Dartmoor for six generations, said: “There is no right of way. There was permitted access with the previous owners, but we bought the land to farm it and that’s how we want to keep it. Animals and intensive public use just don’t mix.”

At present the law grants free access under some circumstances and is used aggressively by The Ramblers and local authorities to ‘protect’ footpaths but nowhere in all this is any recognition that for the landowner these interventions are disruptive to their main business of farming, expensive and come without compensation. Perhaps rather than use the brute ignorance of the majority, The Ramblers should start thinking about how they should start paying for the leisure use they extract from those rights of access.

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