SHOULD BRITAIN'S ACCESS ISLANDS BE UNLOCKED?

All across England and Wales there are small areas of open access completely surrounded by private land, legal to walk on but completely out of bounds. How did this come to be?

WORDS SARAH RYAN

Just outside the boundary of the Lake District National Park, to the east of Blencathra, is a 2.1km² patch of open access moorland that you can’t get to. On all sides it is surrounded by private land with not a single footpath or bridleway connecting it. A little way north, there’s another, about 1.5km² in size, with scattered woodland and open heath. There are an estimated 2500 of these so-called access islands across England -places where you have the legal right to wander, picnic and run but no way to get there without trespassing. “This is a conservative estimate,” says Lewis Winks from the Right to Roam campaign who carried out the research. “We only included areas which are more than 15m from any public right of way. On the ground, there…

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Trail United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2024

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