Another opinion on Access

The editor also has strong personal views on access. I'm all for it and think the public has been excluded for too long not just from Mountain Moor, Heath, Downland but from Coast, not to mention Woodland, as well. From the first recognition early in 19thC that the squires had nicked the countryside, to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, 1949, a century and a half passed. The access provisions did not work; so another half century later came CROW, imperfect but a major step forward. With a timescale like that, you can be philosophical and say that another fifty years doesn't much matter or, like me, you can get a bit impatient and insist on significant improvement while your feet are still functioning.

The conflict between footpath access and open access is a delusion; they are complementary. This country, one of the richest in the world, can afford both. In cash terms, the tourist counties should be better off for the investment. In real economic terms, the benefits are incalculable: a fitter, happier population. By Government standards, a few million pounds is petty cash. (Am I right in thinking that Britain paid the last instalment on the first World War last year? If we needed Armageddon so badly we bought it on the never-never, surely we can put a major social improvement on the slate? Don't ask me about Concorde.)

The Rights of Way Network is one of the great romantic glories of England. It is thrilling to set out on a path that can take you ultimately anywhere. The network has been likened to a great cathedral, beautiful in itself and rich with history, that you would not trade in for a neat cast concrete tabernacle with central heating and fluorescent lighting just because a developer offered a few quid in part exchange.

Who did the likening? Well, me, actually, the sour Augustan fan who enjoys iambic pentameter couplets but can't abide path rationalisation schemes. On the topic of open country access, I am less rhetorically restrained. Wandering without concern for the niceties of the Highways Act across open countryside is not just one of the great romantic glories of England, it is the greatest solace and delight of the human spirit for those of us not blessed with mystical delusions. Enter that in the balance sheet and gross it up. (OK, there is also Bach if you want to be picky.)

When I first joined the Ramblers' Association, its journal was not the glossy it is today; published articles by Tom Stephenson, the RA's first Chief Executive. The first I read epitomised the open access case in a limerick. *

There once was a man who said, "Damn!"
It is born upon me that I am
An engine that moves
In predestinate grooves
Not even a bus but a tram
So, Ian, are you are you a man or a tram?

Peter Gould

*(Maurice Evans Hare 1905, if such details interest you. I quote from memory. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations differs slightly)