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By Root 325 0

are nowhere to be found. I’d cursed planners and councils for their lethargy in keeping paths marked and walkable. In 2001, when the foot-and-mouth crisis closed every path in the land, I’d written angry articles about the lightning speed with which the No Entry signs had gone up and compared it with the years that it took to remove them again. In every corner of the country, I’d hurled my hands up in horror at getting lost during the seemingly simple task of spotting a good path on the map and attempting to follow it. I’d ranted in print, on the radio, on TV, and to anyone who would listen, that councils really should take their responsibilities more seriously, not only to the walking public but as guardians of the hefty weight of history that had carved out such a cherished network of rights of way on our small island.

But that was There. Beyond, away, on someone else’s patch, in places where I was a visitor and expected some modicum of consideration. And this was Here. Not for a moment did my spleen accommodate the obvious truth that my Here was nearly everyone else’s There, and that they should perhaps be afforded the same hospitality that I so noisily demanded.

A few months on, the signs and the gates still look too new, too sharp, too much like prodnosed intruders. A couple of Welsh winters should batter them a little more comfortably into the landscape, but that’s scant consolation, for they are already doing their damned job. Neighbours who live along the newly signposted tracks tell me that the footfall of passing cagoulewearers has increased noticeably. So it seems: I keep finding complete strangers on my paths, ambling uncertainly along and fretting visibly about the cows in the next field. On my better days, I manage a smile and a hello, even as I wish they’d vanish into the sweet air. On my rather less charitable days, I do my best to look like the surliest farmer of popular paranoia and glower at them from across the hedgerows. It doesn’t work. Even my scariest facial expressions cannot compete with the signposted certainty that they are there by right – their ancient, inalienable right of way.

Is there anything that combines simple utility and quiet beauty better than a footpath? There it goes, just the lightest of touches across a field or through a wood, the sum total of countless feet over countless years. At one and the same time, it is the humblest of all our imprints on the landscape, yet one of the sturdiest too. And not just physically so, but culturally and emotionally too. We need our paths, like we need to breathe.

Britain’s network of paths is unique in the world. Nearly all countries have their waymarked trails and designated tourist routes, but we have something so much better: a filigree network of rights of way that snakes through every landscape and connects every town and village. Our paths, bridleways, byways and green lanes are threads of common land in an increasingly privatised countryside, hidden grooves of peace and beauty through the chaos, short cuts into our history and identity. They are democracy at its most fundamental, open to all, where you don’t have to pay , and they will take you as far as you could possibly wish to go. All you need are a pair of feet and the urge to use them.

In England and Wales, there are around 150,000 miles of off-road rights of way, together with over 6,000 square miles of ‘right to roam’ Access Land (about three-quarters of one of those famous international units of measurement, a Size of Wales). In Scotland, the situation is even better, for there is a natural presumption of access to all land, including tens of thousands of miles of path and track. This astounding resource is something of a shrinking violet, however. While roads and railways, airports and interchanges howl for our attention and our wealth, the paths slip by almost unnoticed.

Like most Brits, having a bit of a walk is in my DNA. It was what you did on a Sunday afternoon, wrapped up snug against the autumn winds or giving your skin a laundering in the first warm rays of spring.