https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67937253 Good to see someone taking a stance. Whilst I do have some sympathy with councils not having funds to clear all paths, I do take issue with landowners simply blocking paths, locking gates. or deliberately putting bulls on paths, where other fields are available. We have had countless routes blocked resulting in huge detours. Last summer we came head to head with a farmer who seemed surprised that we were off path. At the time we were faced with aggressive looking cows with calf right next to the style, and the route back was via an overgrown path that we had already drawn blood on by walking through.
I had a situation years ago - farmer was ploughing the field, and ploughed up the footpath - he was still on with it when we were walking through. So we just walked at the other side of the hedge for 600yards and re-joined the path. The bit we walked on was just grass-weeds. Starts kicking off why we’re not sticking to the path! Gladly pointed out he’d just destroyed it and it was rutted up. Couldn’t make it up. He was still kicking off. Some thick idiots out there!
Have you read "The Book Of Trespass" by Nick Hayes? Highly recommend it, puts the current state of the rights of way we have in context, most of the common land was stolen from the people over time, including handily using money given to rich slave owners for their "loss" of business so they could enclose huge tracts of land as a result. Reading it makes me want to tell every farmer and landowner who wants to have a go to just "fk off". Also this is a good site which is run to connect public paths and to get feedback on rights of way: https://beta.slowways.org/login Well worth joining.
