Skip to main content

Public Footpaths

It was too nice to stay in today.  The sun was shining, the air was warm, and Graham had taken Theo out for the day, so I was on my own.  I managed a few hours of working on the website, then slammed the laptop lid and headed out to find some sunshine.


I recently read a book entitled The Wild Rover, about walking Britain's footpaths.  In the first chapter, the author, Mike Parker, draws a 3-mile radius circle around his Welsh home, noticing how many footpaths within that area he has never walked.  When we got out the map for our own area, we noticed the relative paucity of paths; hemmed in by major roads, a railway and a river, many rights-of-way simply dead-end a short distance away.

However, a few minutes' drive down the road, the village of Repton is surrounded by a spider's web of pink dotted lines.  I parked outside the tall-spired church and set out, OS Landranger map in hand.


Considering how strongly Ordnance Survey maps and rights of way are linked in my mind - it hardly seems that you could have one without the other - I was surprised to learn from The Wild Rover that the latter were only marked on the former in 1958.  Before then the Ordnance Survey mappers had side-stepped the whole debate by avoiding any mention of a route's legal status.  And debate it was.  Britain's network of public access, which we fondly imagine to have been solidly signposted since time immemorial, was the subject of numerous Bills in Parliament and a few bitter fights between those who owned the land and those who wanted to walk across it.  Fortunately the walkers won and the paths were protected.


There is something intoxicating about setting out and knowing that you could walk to the other end of the country, if you wanted to.  The paths will go as far as you will; you aren't tied to a circular route, or hemmed in by the boundaries of a park.  Of course, one of the problems with family life is that someone's usually expecting me home to cook their dinner, but today I had longer than usual, and I was keen to make the most of it.

Don't be expecting big thrills, though.  At their worst, paths dissolve into a muddy mess in winter and are overgrown by nettles as tall as your head in summer.  They tramp you across endless dismal fields and then abandon you in one with no obvious means of escape.  They squeeze between grubby walls and fences, and place you nose-to-nose with the local sewage works.

But at their best - and a warm spring day is one of the best times to walk them - they open up hidden pockets of countryside you never knew existed.  They allow you to go for miles without seeing another human being, and eat lunch in an open field surrounded by skylarks.  They wriggle past streams, through woods, and up hills, and then drop you back into a village where you can peer into everyone's gardens as you stroll past.



And if you're in the mood for small thrills, there are plenty.  Today mine were: a perfect little brook lined with ancient pollarded willows; a giant pig snoozing in the sun; a buzzard circling overhead at lunchtime; a stoat dashing across the track and vanishing instantly into a field of young wheat; and most unexpected of all, a pair of pure white peacocks in someone's back garden.

They were a little way away, but look at that tail!

Now, of course, I'm back at the laptop.  There's always work to be done.  But sometimes you just have to get out and enjoy the sunshine, and I'm glad I was able to.

Now that looks like a good day's work!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Greece is the word! Part 2: Epidaurus

For the first part of our Greek holiday, see here . Day 4 - continued After much waiting around, we acquired a hire car and set off for the second part of our holiday. I am so glad that Graham can get into a strange car in a foreign country and drive away with no problems. I would be a nervous wreck. Even Graham was a little spooked by the Athens traffic - very narrow lanes crowded with cars and buses, and mopeds zipping in and out of every available gap. I had left Google Maps set to "avoid tolls", which meant that we stayed off the fancy new highway and took the old road towards Corinth instead. There was practically no traffic, so although it was slower, it felt very relaxed. We passed hills, hotels and oil refineries. Along the way, we stopped at a supermarket for supplies and drank Green Cola at the beach over the road. Crossing the Corinth Canal at Isthmia, we started heading south through the mountains of the Peloponnese. The sky had been growing darker and darker, and...

Greece is the word! Part 1: Athens

The last few times we have been on holiday, my family has asked, "Mum, are you going to blog about this one?" It's felt like an overwhelming task. For a start, we now have FOUR phones with photos on, rather than one digital camera. Also, I regularly write quite long blog posts about three-hour walks. How on earth will I summarise a full week's holiday? But this time, I thought I should try. It's one of the most enjoyable holidays we've had in a while, and I've definitely done too many Peak District posts recently. Everyone needs a change of scenery. So here we go, jetting off to Athens. Day 1 We landed at Athens airport in a looming thunderstorm, but the worst of the rain held off until we'd made it safely to our apartment. Graham had earmarked a nice little restaurant called Lolos for dinner - eating shell-on prawns in tomato sauce was a deliciously messy experience - and we went to bed early after our 3am start. Day 2 Next day we climbed Philopappos ...

Derwent Valley: Derby City and the Derwent Pilgrimage

It was 8 am and I was already hayfeverish, headachey and hot. Why on earth was I setting out to walk through the middle of Derby, when I could be up in the hills of the Peak District? No one was forcing me to do this section. I could skip it entirely. But I knew I wouldn't, because this was the next part of the Derwent Valley Heritage Way. And besides, I had a suspicion that it would be better than it looked. Alvaston Park was certainly a good start. It's a wide sweep of green grass and mature trees. I used to come here quite often when the boys were small. I was glad to see some of the planets were still there - although Mars has had a lot of feet standing on it, I think. Here's a tiny Toby in 2013 with Mars... ... and a more battered Mars today. Alvaston Park I kept off the roads for a while by following a cycle route. Even when I joined the traffic, it wasn't bad. The factories and office blocks had roses outside. This road, now the A5194, used to be the A6 coming in...