Depending on which
archaeologist you talk to, the Icknield Way is described either as the oldest road in
Britain, or more carefully, as one of Britain's oldest
still-surviving paths. It stretches more than 100 miles
across southeast England, and there have been people
walking parts of this path since before recorded history. Parts of it are still in common use. I drove here on the Icknield Way
for a couple of miles, it was just a regular country road. But parts of it were nearly lost forever. All over the English countryside, you'll signs that say "public footpath", or if you're also allowed to
ride a horse on it, "public bridleway". These are formal rights
of way, protected by law, and there are more than 200,000 kilometres
of them across the country. Landowners do not get a say in
who walks along those paths and it's a criminal offence to block them. The trouble is that some of
those paths have been lost. Sure, they might have
existed once, historically, the public had
a right of way, but they're not marked down anymore. There's meant to be a definitive map,
but it's not complete. It's almost like the landowners at the
time it was drawn up might've had a say
in what was written down. - Back in the '50s and '60s was
when the legislation was introduced to actually map public rights of way
for the first time. But it was done on a local level, so there were definitely
inconsistencies across areas. People understood the guidance differently
or even in some small areas, there might have been local opposition that meant rights of way weren't recorded
that should have been. So we've got an incomplete network. - Despite the Icknield Way
being thousands of years old, legally opening every last bit of it
to the public took a lot of effort. Not just research, but also some fairly militant
walking enthusiasts turning up at public inquiries. This bit I'm walking on wasn't
marked on maps until the 1980s. As the 21st century approached,
the government agreed that having these maybe-paths all over
the country might be a bad idea. - In the year 2000, the
Countryside and Rights of Way Act opened large areas of country for
open access for the first time, but at the same time,
landowners wanted some certainty about the rights of way map.
If they bought a piece of land, if there was a right
of way on there or not. So as part of the negotiation,
there was a cutoff date introduced and that was the 1st of January 2026, and that was basically 25 years on
from that legislation, so we've got, you know,
just under five years to find all these paths and
put them back on the map. - So now, under law, England
has until January 1st, 2026 to find and log all its footpaths. And as with any project with a deadline
that's a long way away, very little has happened
over the last couple of decades. But with five years to go,
the Ramblers charity decided to try and solve the problem
using very modern tools. They asked thousands of people
to check one bit of the map each. - They were shown that square
on the current OS map and they were shown that square
on a couple of historic maps from about 120 years ago,
and then we basically got people to draw on the difference,
do a big spot the difference. We think we've found tens of thousands
of miles of lost rights of way. This isn't about creating
new rights of way, it's about recording ones that should've
been recorded in the first place. Most landowners understand
the rights of way network brings billions of pounds
to the economy each year. We find a lot of farmers
and landowners like to use that public rights
of way network as well. - That is a very... political answer. There are certainly stories
in the last few decades of landowners intimidating or
bribing locals or officials into just quietly
forgetting about some paths. There are plenty of people who would very much like the
public to "get off their land", and suddenly finding out that there's
a right of way through your farm is often not going to be appreciated. - They can only really object on the basis
of the historical evidence. They can't object on the basis that they don't want that path or
that path is inconvenient, but we really want to
work with landowners. There's no point, from
a walker's perspective, a path just going
through somebody's garden if there's a way round that. So, you know, in some ways,
the real work starts now and that's about proving that these paths were historically
public rights of way and actually submitting
them to local authorities so they can be put back on the map. - England is approaching a point
that's very rare in history. It started with the first
concept of owning land, which was absolutely not some
human universal constant. Then, through the feudal system
and the idea of all land ultimately
belonging to the monarch. Then, to private landowners and
folk knowledge of footpaths. After all, when most people never went more than a few miles
from home for their whole lives, why would you need a map of the footpaths? Everyone knew what they were, they were common knowledge passed down
from generation to generation. But now we're in an age
of GPS, of precise maps, and of the expectation that everything
will be on some database somewhere. The process of defining who
has the right to walk where in England has been going on for millennia,
since before written history, but it ends soon, January 1st 2026. After that, the definitive map is set, and there are no mysterious
maybe-footpaths out there. If the Icknield Way hadn't been marked,
it could've been forgotten about. Either it exists on the map
or it's gone forever. It's not often that you see
a millennia-long process come to an end. Thank you to Jack Cornish
from the Ramblers and everyone who helped with my research. I've put links to my
sources in the description.
In Scotland we do have rights of way but they arn't as important as in England because we have the Right to Roam here which means we can go walking pretty much anywhere. Rights of way are important in the few cases that are restricted though, like farmyard which you cannot walk through unless you are on a right of way.
I dont give a rats arse about 90% of the subjects in a Tom Scott video, but i do watch them all when i come across them.
This is the initiative: https://dontloseyourway.ramblers.org.uk
"This road is 100 miles long (160 km), and there are over 2000 km (1200 miles) of other roads like it." What the fuck UK? Pick one and commit. Having both metric and customary is worst of both worlds.
Anyone else discovered a love of walking miles on end through the countryside in the past few months?