Equally good open trails and paths on the Hereford side as the Worcester side of the hills, many established for horses and donkeys (for the quarry works) so ‘Bridleways’ by any other definition, ridden thousands of times for decades by many cyclists, all mapped as footpaths.
Reading the article on the front page and for many years I’ve wonderd this about the malverns paths. Why they are footpaths and bound by the MHDC by-laws, in the first place given the historical usage of most of the paths on the hills and how they go about reviewing and updated based on usage, or not as the case may be.
I do think the permissive path setup is a step in the right direction however.
hopefully any future conflict won’t lead to corralling of cyclists to “cycle routes” only
This is a worry. One would hope that the waymarked trails better manage visiting cyclists, in the same way that forest trails manage mountainbikers. This should mean that walkers will expect to regularly see bikes on certain paths, and conflict minimised. However, waymarking trails can cause a few dickheads to think the trails are there for MTB’s, ride inappropriately and inconsiderately and cause conflict.