Dare we hope…..

[DavidS]

Deadline to record forgotten footpaths to be scrapped https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy89yddgg7yo

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

The deadline for vehicular rights was retrospectively wound back by the NERC act, courtesy of our friends at GLEAM and a useless Labour government.

[Asgard]

...and right on cue the farmers are whinging and baying............get orf my land!!!!

[garyboy]

Sounds like it's a financial decision as much as anything else. Successive governments just have to renege on their unrealistic, tight deadlines, due to the decline in all global economies, despite the varied lobbying from all sectors.. farmers, landowners, walkers, bikers , etc.

I just read about the enclosure riots from 100s of years ago. Land fenced off by landowners, the enclosures, and access rights diminished. Conflict of land use is historical.

Governments ' war on farmers, net zero scam. Growing populations, Public access..
It's not a new issue .. but now a bigger problem.

[garyboy]

I remember the date of .. 2026 ..
as Richard (RS2) was the first to highlight this to us in the TRF, many years ago.
It just seemed So unjust, at the time.
Now .. government cutbacks, to councils, make it all unviable.. for the moment.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Decades ago, the Government ran a scheme called Discovering Lost Ways.

The TRF discovered loads...and the Government shut it down.

I've got a big old book on the shelf behind me.called The Old Roads of Dorset.

Many of the footpaths and bridleways I remember from my youth are in it. They were all once proper, maintained highway for wheeled vehicles.

It's interesting to look at a map of Devon highways...it has more miles of highway than any other English Shire County. I suspect that at one time it wasn't unusual, just that the landowners in Devon were less likely to rob the public of their roads than those in other counties.

In Dorset, the Drax family own 2 % of the land area of the country, and got the A31 diverted around their property at Charborough Park. That's the reason for the long straights and blind bends you find between Wimborne and the Red Post junction. Richard Drax was until the last election the MP for South Dorset.

The Weld family's land holding is only marginally smaller than Drax's.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Sounds like it's a financial decision as much as anything else. Successive governments just have to renege on their unrealistic, tight deadlines, due to the decline in all global economies, despite the varied lobbying from all sectors.. farmers, landowners, walkers, bikers , etc.

I just read about the enclosure riots from 100s of years ago. Land fenced off by landowners, the enclosures, and access rights diminished. Conflict of land use is historical.

Governments ' war on farmers, net zero scam. Growing populations, Public access..
It's not a new issue .. but now a bigger problem.

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

[garyboy]

A lot of this overbearing unfairness stems from 1066, and all that.