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which I think makes it clear farmers need to re instate the surface
As I read it its just clearing a path of crops, not the surface per se, but, that being said, this isn't going to be anything new. Those fields will have been plowed for a very long time indeed, certainly longer than the line on a map existed, the surface will historically be "plowed then trodden in" not compacted and flat and free of mud.
A crop field will have crops in it. When it’s wet it will get muddy, sometimes that will make the going very difficult. When it’s sunny you may want a hat.
A field getting a bit muddy isn't the same as plowing a route out of existence. Or removing signage or stiles. Nature being rough and ready isn't the same as landowners seeking to turn people away.
Try another perspective, one of the things left that still fills me with joy, happiness, overwhelming feel good and general wonderment at the fabulousness of creation is rolling down a 1 rambler wide dirt path with the crop waving in the wind and brushing my legs and seeing nothing but the narrow line of the track, waving, flowing crop, other fields and trees with a blue sky/blazing sun background. Be careful on what you want changed.
Or removing signage or stiles
Which isn't what the op is complaining about and absolutely should be challenged, prevented or corrected.
Blocking or removing access is not the same as using working land for its allocated purpose,
Getting mud on your tyres”… plowed fields can be made pretty much impassable.
For a short amount of time it can be tricky.
Which isn’t what the op is complaining about
Someone made a comment about how missing signage can make treading/riding in a new route through crops tricky. It can end up with loads of attempts at routing, and crop damage, or it can end up with people just avoiding the field.
Blocking or removing access is not the same as using working land for its allocated purpose
It can have the same effect. Growing up in Herefordshire, there were farmers who absolutely used their working of the land (ditch digging, plowing etc) to turn away people wanting to use RoW across their land. Naive to think this doesn't happen.
For a short amount of time it can be tricky.
I can show you both footpaths and bridepaths that no longer exist on the ground due to years of plowing out routes. Depends on drainage, soil type, weather and volume of use etc for it to stick, of course.
Some farmers around here do this
and some don't. The ones who don't get people randomly tramping their crops down, and probably dogs randomly crapping in the crop too, as they take a variety of routes across the field because you can't see where the path actually goes.
Naive to think this doesn’t happen.
I don't think it doesn't, I just see horses not zebras
probably dogs randomly crapping in the crop too,
Which is entirely down to the dog owners, not the farmers. A sight line in no way alters your ability to use a lead or pickup after your dog.
Blocking or removing access is not the same as using working land for its allocated purpose,
It is when they illegally plough over rights of way. Lots of case law on this I believe.
The law (*englanshire)
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/section/134
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/schedule/12A?view=plain
There is also a bit somewhere about the right to cycle on footpaths not being granted.
Crops like barley and rape dont just appear overnight.
If the ROW was used, it would be compacted between being sown and any significant crop exists.
The shoots/young plants would get killed by being walked on, resulting in a natural path reinstatement.
If there is no path apparent at all, it hasnt been used enough!
And as previously mentioned, some farmer leave a strip around the permieter and request via signage that you go around. This is a good option, as it widens the hedgerows a bit and help "nature" 'n' that.
Crops like barley and rape dont just appear overnight.
If the ROW was used, it would be compacted between being sown and any significant crop exists.
True. The one I crossed the other day near Chipping Norton wasn't apparent in any way at all and nothing to ask anyone to go around the edge and so must have seen very little use. I don't ever think this should mean the right of way should be withdrawn though. I think that's what most people are worried about.
Imagine getting mud on your tyres, must have been terrible
🙄
Not being able to find a marker post as it’s the other side of a field? Gawd help you when you’re somewhere with no marker posts.
When that happens I'll have maps, probably compass and gps and will have researched it.
When you're just out for a stroll with the fam and the dog, following rights of way markers in an unfamiliar area, with nothing giving you the general direction on entry or exit, you just want to be courteous to the landowner and not take a line that needn't have been taken to avoid unnecessary damage, but yeah, thanks. 👍
At risk, perhaps, of a flaming. I run an arable farming business.
I can't comment for others but we spray ours off where they cross a field like this, as described above, by quad bike. We have a handful of them. To my knowledge we are within the guidelines all the time. In the context of the overall operation it's not a big task but it is one more to add to the list.
The surface is realistically going to be a pretty crap one for riding on. Even though we haven't really ploughed for 15+ years (another subject), we do some cultivation and some direct drilling, but you're still talking about an essentially bare soil with a fairly open structure. So, squishy if it's been wet. Inclined to pick up on boots and tyres.
The line of these RoWs are just straight lines on the map between two known points because it was once presumably pasture and didn't need marking out. It's not necessarily that that exact line is a specific historic walking route. Often it's a diagonal corner to corner. I've long felt that a permanent grass path around the field would be a much better one for walking, riding and farming alike. Better surface, you walk along by the hedge or stream, and we could cease this, quite silly when you think about it, operation of cultivating, drilling and then spraying glyphosate to kill what we've just put in. Would it matter that it's longer? Going for a walk or a ride is not a search for the minimum distance is it? Like above, we tend to have a grass path around the edge anyway, sometimes a proper track. We haven't signed them as alternatives though. I hadn't thought of that and will look into it.
Changing RoWs is very difficult BTW. A proposal like the above does not tend to be well received by the ramblers.
Many farmers will see access generally as just a negative. A cost, a risk, a pain in the arse. I don't share their mentality but I can understand where it comes from.
On how to complain or get the work done where it hasn't been, perhaps try a parish council. We have been contacted by ours before on a RoW issue and immediately rectified it. They have no teeth of course, but it'll be people who know the farmer and that may therefore get a positive result.
I’ve long felt that a permanent grass path around the field would be a much better one for walking, riding and farming alike.
You'll get a lot of agreement on this, I suspect.
At risk, perhaps, of a flaming. I run an arable farming business.
Interesting @luket.
Kudos to you for marking the way.
It's not about wanting any particular surface to walk or ride on, it's just that most of us don't want to be dicks and damage anything we needn't be on.
Ploughing is what you expect in the countryside, but having a fairly obvious line to take afterwards means folk do less damage beyond that and the path gets trodden in quicker.
Kudos @luket
The adjoining land owner to these problem farmers is an absolute delight. I took him a slab of ale a couple of years back to thank him and his team for cutting bridleways that were not their responsibility to cut.
I’ve long felt that a permanent grass path around the field would be a much better one for walking, riding and farming alike
Yeah, riding in Picardie recently and likely other French arable farming areas this is pretty much the case and makes a lot of sense. There are quite a few other areas in the UK where the ROW goes along field boundaries rather than directly through them.
Some farmers around here do this
This pic ^^ is kinda interesting. That crop has been growing a fair while before being sprayed off. So there's that. But at the same time, that extra plant material might make for a better surface?
Many farmers will see access generally as just a negative. A cost, a risk, a pain in the arse. I don’t share their mentality but I can understand where it comes from.
Yep, If we want farmers to maintain these rights of way for the "benefits of everyone" then we ought to be paying them to do so.
You've also got to remember that lots of field boundaries have been removed or otherwise changed over the years, so PROWs that dog leg across big arable fields now often did follow the boundaries when originally mapped and listed. Or as said earlier they we pasture when recorded, so going diagonally across wasn't an issue. I've had a few that literally zigzagged across what are now mahoosive open fields.
LAs PROW Officers have a bugger of a job being piggy in the middle between the legislation, land managers, access groups and an unwillingness for their legal departments to enforce the legislation when they ask them to do so. I know as I was a PROW Officers for over 10years and an Outdoor Access Officer (Scotland) for 12 years.
An added issue in England and Wales is ensuring that by providing an (often sensible) alternative (permissive) route you're not leaving yourself open to that being claimed eventually by deemed dedication, but there are mechanisms that can be used to prevent that.
Diverting them to rationalise the network can be done and benefit both users and land managers, but it does require all groups to be sensible and play nicely for a workable outcome.
Yep, If we want farmers to maintain these rights of way for the “benefits of everyone” then we ought to be paying them to do so.
Nope. Don't agree. Local Highway Authorities generally have a duty to maintain and protect PROW and should do so to the best of their ability. In ploughing up cross field paths it's the land managers duty to re-instate it and the HA responsibility to ensure they do so. Don't want to have to re-instate it, don't plough it up.
The other option being as mentioned up thread to look at a sensible way to manage it with formal diversions or other suitable agreements.
Managed, clear, and signed access is better for both land managers and access users and helps stop conflict as generally people just want to know where they're going and follow a route and land managers know where to expect people, so can manage thier land appropriately.
you’re not leaving yourself open to that being claimed eventually by deemed dedication
I worry about the opposite. Provide an alternative permissive route, everyone uses that for 20 years, claim that the original ROW has lapsed, get it removed from the definitive map. Then remove permission for the permissive route. Or is this not possible?
Bridleway
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In my part of the world it seems that some farmers are very good and either run a quad bike along the line of the route or they spray a line about a metre wide to kill the crop
It's not so much very good as what they should be doing as invariably these farmers are claiming BPS which means signing up to cross compliance, the GAECs & SMRs....and GAEC 7b covers cross field paths.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/guide-to-cross-compliance-in-england-2022/gaec-7b-public-rights-of-way
1m for footpaths and just having tramlines where the path should be isn't good enough (try that with maize by late summer!). So it could be seen as being happy to take the subsidy but then not fulfilling the obligations of cross compliance that come with that subsidy albeit i do think education of the rules plays a big part
^^^that bridleway should be 2m
As luket, i think having a grass margin around the parcel boundary in place of a cross field path would seem a common sense alternative to me
up near me outside Glasgow, we have a path that's developed more over the pandemic, joining the canal towpath with the nearby river path. It's become a fairly well used path, running alongside a field boundary wall, then onto a rough bit of doubletrack before joining the river path at what looks like an old, but now gone, kissing gate. It's used as an alternative to the 1 person wide footpath that runs along the side of the main road.
Beginning of the year saw a rather large pile of poop encroaching the path, there was just enough room to squeeze past. However, a few weeks back the large pile of poop got even larger, running perpendicular to the path and wall, and fully removing any access past that doesn't involve skirting round the pile, quite far into the field, or swimming through.
Maybe it was unintentional, maybe not... lots of room elsewhere round the perimeter for it though.
bit difficult to do anything about it up here though, isn't it?
suppose it'll be gone soon anyway.
Bridleway
Some more bridleway, yesterday.
I’ve recently done quite a bit of walking & riding on the Worcestershire, Herefordshire boarder where making paths and bridleways as difficult as possible to use seems to be as difficult as possible.
Making access to rights of way anywhere close to or through gardens, farmyard, or bits of land which should be private but aren’t seems to be beginners level stuff.
A complete lack of helpful signage while going completely overboard on signs explaining in detail what the landowner will do to a pet which steps off the invisible path seems like the next level. While the creative use of ‘deer’ fencing & gates which appear to have been re-purposed from the set of Jurassic Park seems to be the preserve of the terminally wealthy.
The more creative go for things like putting stiles for new fences in the middle of hawthorn bushes/graveyards for more lethal bits of agricultural equipment both of which have often been there far longer than the fence.
The pinnacle of the art is the creation of footbridges. Some seem to be based on more creative obstacles from Ninja warrior courses while the best I’ve seen is a plank type bridge with a stile in the middle over a 1.5m drop (It might not sound much but the genius who built it doesn’t seem to have attached the stile to the bridge for added excitement) - For the record that’s on a path marked as a bridleway.
I’m truly blessed to live in the Peak where access on the whole is pretty good.
In Powys, there are 1000's of PROW. That doesn't mean they're all useable. Lots of footpaths are amazing bike tracks, lots of bridleways are impassable and there are some great rides broken up by 100m or so of private land.
For landowners, following the rules to the letter and providing a high standard of access is an expensive PITA for paths which may hardly be used.
Pragmatism is they way forward, I think. Add a PROW to link up some worthwhile sections, let landowners off their duty in the un-interesting areas and maintain popular paths to a high standard.
Crops like barley and rape dont just appear overnight.
If the ROW was used, it would be compacted between being sown and any significant crop exists.
The shoots/young plants would get killed by being walked on, resulting in a natural path reinstatement.If there is no path apparent at all, it hasnt been used enough!
Came here to say the same - but you put it better.
I'm really not seeing the problem. If a route is used regularly people will not need signage to get across the field, and if it's used regularly the route will be trampled and flattened as the crop comes through so the shoots get killed.
Like any other bridleway or footpath, if it's too wet and muddy to walk or ride, wait a couple of weeks till it's dry enough - it's not going to be a head high jungle in that time
You can always volunteer to your local authority to help with any ROW clearances or report issues on the pathwatch app
Actually, a lot of RoW departments don’t want volunteers. The amount of supervision, Bueaucracy and planning required is out of all proportion to the amount of useful work done and the same staff shortages that prevent the routine jobs being done also mean there’s nobody to lead work parties anyway.
People talking about “going round the edge” - fine, but a farmer near me gave me a telling off for going round the edge when the RoW goes across the middle. How can I know which kind of farmer I might encounter?
An NFU rep routinely comes to our LAF meetings to complain about people stepping off the RoW and trampling crops, but experts on here tell us trampling crops is the right approach. Again, it’s at the whim of the farmer.
Most RoW have been on the Definitive Map for 70 years and they’re there because they were long-established rights of way when the DMs were drawn up. Farmers who can’t build that into their management plans aren’t trying very hard. They all seem to know how to fill in the public subsidy forms without any trouble. We need a way to link maintenance of RoW to those payments.
. They all seem to know how to fill in the public subsidy forms without any trouble. We need a way to link maintenance of RoW to those payments.
As above there 'should' be cross compliance for a number of grants and subsidies in terms of making sure existing formal access is open and accessible. In practice those issuing the grants/subsidies really aren't interested in enforcing this.
But note, maintenance of a PROW surface isn't generally the land managers responsibility in England and Wales. Their's is to ensure they don't obstruct people's right to use the way. Ploughing a path and not re-instating it to the specified widths within the 14 days is obstructing it, nothing to do with maintenance.
They all seem to know how to fill in the public subsidy forms without any trouble. We need a way to link maintenance of RoW to those payments.
I was told by the local MP that this was supposed to be discussed in parliament. I totally agree that subsidies should be linked to ROW clearance.
There are a few footpaths running across the middle of a field round here that get plowed up once a year. Yeah it is muddy as hell for a while but the path always gets re-established by people walking it. Don't see it as a massive issue TBH.
This was a footpath on the way to the pub at a friend's house, the kids loved it.
I think the replacement for single farm payments will be linked to efforts made on access/bio-diversity/environment enhancement. Not sure on the details yet. ATM, changing a PROW to go around the edge of a field is quite an involved process, despite it often being the most practical solution. I think a bit of give-and-take is needed and some co-ordinted planning by local council, farmers, countryside users and wildlife enthusiasts.
I was told by the local MP that this was supposed to be discussed in parliament. I totally agree that subsidies should be linked to ROW clearance.
They are....see my previous post: cross compliance linked to BPS (Basic Payment Scheme...ie main farm subsidy). Cross compliance breach if found not to be complying resulting in penalty taken from BPS payment.
However, given us leaving you know what, BPS is being phased out by end 2027 and i do wonder what will be used to incentivise farmers aside those that are taking up CS or SFI (or any other new scheme under ELM)
People talking about “going round the edge” – fine, but a farmer near me gave me a telling off for going round the edge when the RoW goes across the middle. How can I know which kind of farmer I might encounter?
I didn't mean to suggest you take a unilateral decision to go around the edge. Rather, that a rerouting of some of these crossings to around the edge might be in the best interests of all parties. How one makes that happen is another matter, of course.
As for making a diagonal crossing permanent, the issues there are quite a few. You'd tend to end up with a lot of extra tractor wheelings, and many of the worst kind, with tight turns which are bad on the soil, nooks and crannies reducing food production etc. In my humble opinion it is better to make the big fields produce well and take lots of nooks and crannies, wet spots etc out of production completely and into genuine habitat creation. Not hard to imagine a field with an existing RoW across it that could be replaced using a boundary up the northern side of the hedge around the edge, which gets a lot of shade so is limited in yield anyway, while at the same time making a straight run to finish the field and leaving a wiggly field edge filled permanently with wildflowers and whatever, even just let go? There's a fair bit of this (well, sort of) going on and perhaps a recent acceleration but I'd like to see a bit more supporting this kind of idea in policy making terms, and none of it so far has links to access as far as I know.
"countryside use isn’t just for confident know it alls."
Well it bloody well should be. We can't spend all our time pandering to the failings of every useless nitwit who wants the joys of the country side without a bit of work to get them.
Oh why oh why isn't there a smiley box I can click on?
So what if the RoW isn't pan flat. Get your feet muddy and walk across.
Of course perfect paths would be nice if that's your bag but in the real world a bit of dicount on the energy bill is a tad more important don't you think.
Bit of a first world, Mumsnet problem methinks.
I’m pretty agnostic on the rerouting of bridleways as does offer the opportunity to explore alternative routes. Happens a lot in the South Cotswolds and offers free range to explore with a guilt free conscious.
Well, these are the new schemes. Due to be implemented from 2024:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/environmental-land-management-schemes-overview/environmental-land-management-scheme-overview
Nothing obvious about PROW in there...yet
So what if the RoW isn’t pan flat. Get your feet muddy and walk across.
Of course perfect paths would be nice if that’s your bag but in the real world a bit of dicount on the energy bill is a tad more important don’t you think.
Bit of a first world, Mumsnet problem methinks.
The op wasn't on about the quality of the surface. That's something a few of you are mistakenly getting wound up about.
👍
The op wasn’t on about the quality of the surface. That’s something a few of you are mistakenly getting wound up about.
Correct they were complaining about ROW not being open despite them being open but a little muddy.
So what if the RoW isn’t pan flat.
Not the point I was making at all. It was about knowing where you can go. Some people might be referencing the definitive RoW maps and following a GPS route or a compass, but for others a plowed field with no finger pointers is just a “turn back” situation. They don’t want to interfere with farmland being worked.
Correct they were complaining about ROW not being open despite them being open but a little muddy.
Yeah, except they weren't really were they? But hey, if it makes you happy. Derail away. 😊
The op wasn’t on about the quality of the surface. That’s something a few of you are mistakenly getting wound up about.
The OP complained that the landowners don't "reinstate the ROW" but the ROW doesn't cease to exist because it's across a ploughed field, it exists regardless of the surface.