Two Kinds of Freedom: Paths and Access Land

When you set off up a Lakeland ridge or out across a heathery moor, you are almost always walking under one of two different sets of rules — and quite often both at once. A public right of way is a legal line on the map, recorded by the local highway authority and protected by law. Access land is a wider area where you may wander where you like, largely thanks to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 in England and Wales, and the right to roam in Scotland. Knowing which you are on shapes what you may do, and how you should behave while doing it.

A public footpath is for walkers on foot. A bridleway also admits horse riders and cyclists. A restricted byway adds horse-drawn vehicles, and a byway open to all traffic technically admits motor vehicles, though most are best treated as rough green lanes. These are not courteous suggestions from a landowner — they are rights, and the path must be kept clear and unobstructed.

Reading the Map Before You Leave the Car

An Ordnance Survey Explorer map does most of the detective work for you. Rights of way appear as green dashes, each with its own dash pattern and symbol to tell footpath from bridleway from byway. Access land is shown as a pale apricot wash inside a brown boundary, and you will find the small open-access symbol at the edges.

• Green dashes crossing a field usually mean the line is definitive — follow it even if the trod has vanished.
• Look for the little cross tick on a dash; that marks a bridleway rather than a footpath.
• On access land, there is rarely a line to follow at all. You choose your own route, and navigation becomes your responsibility.
• Check the map key for permissive paths, which are granted by goodwill rather than law and may be closed on a set day each year.

Access land itself is not unlimited. It generally covers mountain, moor, heath, down and registered common, but excludes buildings, gardens, quarries, mine workings, railway land and active military ranges. Temporary closures for land management, conservation or fire risk do happen, so read the notices at the gate or car park.

On the Ground: Waymarks, Stiles and the Line of the Path

Waymark discs are your best clue. A yellow arrow marks a footpath, blue a bridleway, red a byway. They are often fixed to a gatepost or fence at the point where the path leaves the road, and then again where it crosses a field boundary — which is precisely where people go wrong.

Follow the line, not the mud. A path shown on the map running straight to a stile may have a well-worn braid of alternative trods beside it; stay on the marked or fenced line where one exists. Stiles, gaps, kissing gates and footbridges all confirm you are on the right route. Leave every gate as you find it: if it was closed, close it; if it was open and there is no livestock about, leave it open.

Dogs, Seasons and the Living Landscape

Upland Britain is a working place, and the seasons matter. Between 1 March and 31 July, dogs on open access land in England and Wales must be on a short lead to protect ground-nesting birds such as curlew, lapwing and golden plover. On grouse moors, the lead rule applies all year. Some nature reserves go further, and a few ask for no dogs at all.

• Keep dogs close near sheep, especially during lambing in spring and around cattle with calves in summer.
• Never let a dog chase livestock or wildlife — a farmer may act to protect a flock, and it is a distressing business for everyone.
• Bag and carry out dog waste. Leaving it hung on a fence is worse than leaving it on the ground.
• In dry spring weather, be alert to fire risk on heather and bracken. A stray spark or disposable barbecue can burn a hillside for days.

Why Keeping to the Path Really Matters

High ground is fragile ground. Peat, and thin humus over gritstone or slate, took centuries to form and can be stripped in a season. One pair of boots across a boggy hollow starts a scar; a hundred pairs braid the hillside into a dozen parallel gashes that funnel water, deepen into gullies and bleed carbon from the peat.

That is why you will see pitching, drainage and waymarked lines on popular paths. It is not tidiness for its own sake — it is how a national park keeps a million pairs of boots from destroying the very thing they came to see. Staying on the trod also keeps you out of restoration areas, off fragile moss and away from erosion scars that can look deceptively solid from above.

If a Path Is Blocked or the Waymark Has Gone

Obstructions do happen: a padlocked gate, a crop sown across the line, a fallen wall with no stile. Note the grid reference, take a photograph, and report it to the highway authority — usually the county council — who has a duty to keep the route open. Most farmers would rather know than have walkers climbing their fences.

Where a path is genuinely impassable, a short, careful deviation to the nearest safe crossing point is usually tolerated, provided you cause no damage and rejoin the line as soon as you can. What is not acceptable is forcing a route through crops, over locked gates or across private gardens. Access in Britain rests on a generous and hard-won balance between walkers and those who work the land. Walk it well, and it stays open for the next generation of ridge wanderers.