THE RIGHT TO ROAM
IS THE RIGHT TO RECONNECT
We are campaigning to bring a Right to Roam Act to England so that millions more people can have easy access to open space, and the physical, mental and spiritual health benefits that it brings. To get updates and to get involved, please sign up below.
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THE CONTEXT
Ours is a wild and a beautiful island. But the vast majority of it is unknown to us because, by law of trespass, we are banned from setting foot on it. We are excluded from hundreds of thousands of acres of open space - of woodland, meadows, rivers and their banks - simply because ancient laws of ownership fail to recognise the importance of nature to the public.
The law of England should not be excluding us from nature, but encouraging us towards it. Lockdown demonstrated the vital importance of access to nature for everyone’s physical and mental health. With depression, anxiety, and obesity all on the rise, science is telling us that we need a deeper connection to nature.
In 2000, the Countryside & Rights of Way (CRoW) Act gave us a partial Right to Roam over about 8% of England. For the last two decades, we have had legal access to walk over certain landscapes (mountain, moor, commons and some downland, heath, and coastlines) without fear of trespassing.
But these sites are often remote, meaning that access to land has become a postcode lottery, available to those who live next to it, or who can afford the cost of travel and overnight stays. Everywhere else, not covered by the CRoW Act, the public are actively made to feel unwelcome in our own landscape and have been portrayed for centuries as a threat to the countryside.
But our desire to access nature should not be a crime. In recent years, science has built an irrefutable bank of evidence proving what our hearts have always known: we urgently need access to nature, its beauty, its space, its flora and its fauna, for our health, our creativity and our peace of mind. In a world of steel, glass and concrete, of stress, ecological detachment and screen-based lifestyles, the countryside is a natural health service that can heal us.
Nature should be accessible for all. Our freedom to roam should be expanded. Our rights of access should be extended to woodlands, all downland (not just fragments, as it does currently), and the Green Belt land that could give so many more people in towns and cities easy access to nature. ‘Access’ should also extend beyond simply a right to walk in some places. Why shouldn’t we also be allowed to camp, kayak, swim, and climb amongst the beauty of the natural world?
What is the Right to Roam?
The Right to Roam is an ancient custom that allows anyone to wander in open countryside, whether the land is privately or publicly owned. In countries such as Norway, Sweden, Estonia and Scotland it has existed as a common right, a defining concept of nationhood, and has only recently been codified into law. Central to all versions of it across Europe is that: 1) there are sensible, listed exceptions and modifications to this right; and 2) this right only comes with strict responsibilities to both the ecology and community of an area.
The Right to Roam is really just a definition of private property that is different to England. There are still major landowners in Norway, Counts in Sweden, Lords in Scotland who own many hundreds of thousands of acres. Their ownership of the land, however, while it allows them to take rent, mine and make money from the land, does not include the right to exclude every other member of the public. In these countries, the Right to Roam is considered so important to the health and mental well-being of a nation, that it supercedes that peculiarly English stipulation of property: the right to exclude. Instead, every person has a right to explore these vast open spaces, to sleep there, to kayak, swim, climb, ride horses and cycle.
This right, however, is contingent on adhering to a strict set of responsibilities. These are simple, basic codes of how to behave in the countryside in such a way that you neither interrupt the function of a working, agricultural landscape, or damage the ecology of where you roam. None of these codes differ in logic from the Countryside Code of England, but they cover a larger scope, because they encompass more activities, and larger areas of land. When children grow up in these countries, experiencing nature and learning the code in practical terms, these codes become second nature, part of a wider understanding of how humans should interact with nature.
The combination of rights and responsibilities creates a relationship with the natural world that is entirely different from that of England. Nature is no longer presented like a museum piece, to be observed from afar behind a line of barbed wire. Instead it becomes something to be deeply immersed in, a multi-sensory tangible experience whose smells, sounds, sightings can have profound effects upon the minds of their beholders. There is a long term effect too. Nature is no longer relegated to occasional visits, but instead becomes part of people’s daily routine, woven into their lives. The Right to Roam ensures that the government actively encourages people to go outside. By removing any sense that being in nature is a criminal activity, and instead is promoted by the state, the Right to Roam curates a common, national consensus of an inherent connection with nature.
THE CRISIS
The majority of the English countryside is out of bounds for most of its population. 92% of the countryside and 97% of rivers are off limits to the public.
In all but one tenth of the English landscape, to wander off the footpath, to swim in a river, to explore and educate ourselves about our countryside, can leave us branded a trespasser and expelled from the land. This is neither fair nor reasonable, and in a time where the need to reconnect with nature is more urgent than ever, it is not sustainable. The law must be changed.
Our Environment
Nature is in crisis. Our wildlife has being decimated, the countryside has been emptied of the birds and bees and wildflowers that it once brimmed with. Our rivers are clogged with plastic and poisoned with pesticide and sewage. Since the seventies, the linnet population has declined by 53%, but how many people even know what a linnet is, or could recognise one in the trees?
We have forgotten what we have lost: how can we be expected to care about the environment when for so long we have been disconnected from it? As scientist Robert Michael Pyle wrote: “People who care conserve; people who don’t know don’t care. What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never known the wren?” We need a personal connection with nature, forged from early years and maintained as part of our daily lives, in order to care; we need to reconnect with our land.
On a wider scale, our climate is in crisis. We need to radically cut our carbon emissions; we need to stop flying so much. But with 92% of our landscape off limits, campsites are full in the holidays and the honeypot sites of National Parks and nature reserves are teeming with people at the weekends. Yet there is so much more space in England, hidden behind the stone walls of near-empty manorial estates, or the barbed wire fences of private woodlands. We need the silence, solitude and open space of the landscape as much as we need its fresh air. We need to reconnect with our land.
Our Health
Our need to experience nature is not just about recreation: more than ever it is essential to our psychological wellbeing. With our sedentary and largely urbanised lifestyles, obesity and respiratory disorders are on the rise, and heart disease and back problems plague many. We have an urgent need for exercise and for the space to do it in.
On top of this, our mental health is in crisis - as a nation we are getting steadily more depressed, and ‘nature deficit disorder’ has been cited as the cause for many developmental issues in children, such as ADHD and eating disorders. From the phytonicides released by trees in a forest, which can boost our immune systems and decrease the symptoms of stress, to the recent studies showing the correlation between kindness and sensations of the sublime, science is finally beginning to prove what we have known all along: in mind, body and soul, nature can heal us.
Our Society
The recent coronavirus lockdown has brought the issue of access to open space to the foreground of public consciousness. Those with gardens were privileged over those without, those with access to green space (whether living in the country, or near a public park in the city) were able to access nature and open air, whilst those without were literally confined within the walls of their homes. During lockdown, perhaps the issue of crowded parks and footpaths was not so much people flouting the rules, but very simply the lack of space available to people taking their daily exercise. Covid-19 has demonstrated that access to space is very visibly, very viscerally, linked to social wellbeing.
Just as coronavirus split England along the same old fault-lines of class and race, so access to land is deeply biased against large sections of our society. Two hundred years ago, the working class were still intrinsically connected to the countryside. Even as late as the 1930s, rambling and cycling were seen primarily as working class hobbies, accompanied by a strong understanding that nature was needed as a salve to counteract the hard, cramped lifestyles of urban dwelling. Only very recently has the countryside become the preserve of the middle and upper classes. From National Trust memberships, to outdoor recreation shops, the leisure industry dominates our access to the countryside. Now even the experience of nature has become something you can purchase, a commodity for those that can afford it.
Similarly, for Black and People of Colour (BPOC) communities, there are many more barriers to nature than simply the walls of private estates. The English landscape is filled with manorial estates built from the profits of enslaving and trading African people, of West Indian Sugar plantations and East Indian colonialism. The legacy of these racist, imperialist systems survives, as strong as it is unacknowledged, in the estate walls that it financed, built around common ground and blocking everyone who once had rights to this land from accessing nature. But it is also manifested in a deep sense that many BAME people feel that they remain unwelcome in the countryside.
Our Land
At the end of the Second World War, the Attlee government looked into granting a full Right to Roam in England, similar to that of Scotland today. Alongside the welfare state, state pensions and the National Health Service, full access to the countryside was proposed as a corollary to the NHS, to offer the English a way to prevent illness before the need for the cure. Of all the proposals for this post-war new order, the Right to Roam was deemed a step too far by the landowners in the House of Lords, and rejected in favour of the National Parks plan.
In today’s post-lockdown society, now, more than ever, the time is right to renew that initial vision, and open up more of the English countryside to the public. We need to alleviate the pressure on the National Health Service by opening up the Natural Health Service, by giving people access to the natural healing properties of the countryside, the health benefits that come with the visceral experience of nature, with access to open space.
THE SOLUTION
We need greater access rights to the land and waterways of England and Wales. The CRoW act needs to spread its wings over the land an include activities other than walking. What about kayaking, paddleboarding, wild swimming, wild camping? Across the border in Scotland we have seen the default of exclusion replaced with a default of access, and a definition of recreation which allows for all kinds of different ways to be in the land, whether you're a walker or not. Why can England not enjoy these rights too?
With new rights should, yes, come, new responsibilities. We should create an English Outdoor Access Code, akin to that in Scotland, which makes clear - through democratic discussion, rather than landowner edict - how we should be in nature. How to enjoy it, protect it and yes, sometimes mitigate our impact on it. Equally: the responsibilities of landowners should be made clear too: accommodating the right of people to enjoy the countryside that is our collective inheritance, not merely the preserve of the few.
Here are four examples of areas we're excluded from:
RIVERS
There is an ongoing debate concerning access rights to England’s rivers. Many countries across the world allow full or partial access to their rivers and lakes. Finland, France, Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, Hungary and Belgium allow a general right of navigation on all rivers, with specific, seasonal arrangements made to accommodate other users such as fishermen. Australia and America, whose legal system was built on English Common law, allow free access to all rivers that can be navigated. There is a
strong legal argument that public access to all rivers was enshrined by the Magna Carta. But this is heavily contested by the angling community, for whom a lucrative industry depends on the exclusive use of rivers, and so in England only 3% of rivers are open to a legal right of access.
The Environment Agency has stated conclusively that kayaking causes no harm to the environment of the river, and has even been shown to benefit the ecosystem. But still kayakers are thrown off waterways by fishing bailiffs whose agencies have rented exclusive access to the waters. Similarly, whilst swimmers in Scotland can access all inland waters (as long as they follow the outdoor access code) in England swimmers are limited to small stretches along common land, or the rare spaces where rights of way lead into the water. River banks and their courses are dominated by a single leisure group, the anglers, while other pursuits and people are banned. We must be given full right of access to all rivers and work in close harmony with the angling clubs so that the rivers can be a shared resource, not just for fishing, but for us all.
The more people that have access to blue space in England, the better they will be safe-guarded against pollution. As British Canoeing’s ‘Clear Waters, Clear Access’ campaign asks, why shouldn’t visitors to our rivers be persuaded to care for them as they use them? For example, kayakers on the Derwent have been operating a scheme where they take an empty bag with them on trips, returning with rubbish they have collected along the way. With more people out on the rivers, there will be more eyes to pick up on spillages or pollution, more people to clear the rivers of litter and obstructions, so improving the ecology of our most vital resources.
WOODLAND
In England, the half-million acres of woodland that are owned by the Forestry Commission are already open to public access. However, more often that not, this woodland is a monoculture crop of pine, and a world apart from the brimming life of deciduous woodland. The public are banned from the majority of the woods in England largely so as not to disturb the pheasants that are imported in crates from France, and reared in the woods to be shot in their millions.
But woodlands are perhaps the healthiest environment for the public. The Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, has for thousands of years been used to improve mental and physical health, and now science has shown that immersion in woodlands can reduce stress and boost the immune system for days afterwards. Most of these woodlands have benefited from public subsidies in the past, so if we are paying for their upkeep, why are we banned from experiencing their health benefits?
GREEN BELT
Green Belts take up only 13% of England, and yet are perhaps the most important area of open space to the public, because so many of us live within easy access of them. If Green Belts were opened up to responsible public access, the 30 million people living near them would have more easy access to open air, and the mental and physical health benefits that come with this.
Much of this land is agricultural, pasture and cultivated land, but that doesn’t mean we can’t access its open space. Why can’t we follow
Scotland’s example, where under the Scottish Right to Roam Act, people are allowed to walk the verges of fields, avoiding crops and machinery and livestock, taking care to leave the land as they found it? The verges of fields would give people access to the open air whilst keeping the farmland safe. If it works in Scotland, why not just over the border in England?
DOWNLAND
Downland describes a landscape of open chalk hills - in its natural state, home to many species of wildflowers and insects, from orchids to the Adonis blue butterfly. Downland is already covered by the CRoW Act, but there's a problem. Because so much of our downland was ploughed up during and after World War Two, what we have left includes lots of small fragments. That has led to a very odd access situation. There are many open access 'islands'
of downland in the South Downs and in Dorset, where we have the Right to Roam on the remaining fragments, but we have to trespass over non-access land to get to them. This is clearly ridiculous. To help fix the situation, we're calling for an extension of the definition of downland to include semi-improved grassland, which could help connect these 'islands' to points of access.
THE COUNTRYSIDE CODE
THE CAMPAIGN
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WHO ARE WE?
We’re a growing alliance of ramblers, wild swimmers, paddle-boarders, kayakers, authors, artists and activists.
The campaign has been started by Nick Hayes, illustrator and author of The Book of Trespass, and Guy Shrubsole, environmental campaigner and author of Who Owns England?. Follow Nick on Twitter and Instagram; follow Guy on Twitter.
This campaign is for a wide and diverse range of people. If you are Black, Asian or from another under-represented background, if you are non-binary, if you are a parent or guardian, then our campaign needs your voice and mind to shape our approach. Please get in touch with us here.
EQUALITY OF ACCESS
One thing about rambling is that it abhors a fence. For this reason, we will present a campaign than actively eschews partisan divisions. A full Right to Roam will benefit everyone, regardless of political affiliation. Just as importantly, we will actively pursue a non-exclusionary campaign, and seek to engage with as many people as possible, from all backgrounds. Equal access to land is interwoven with racial equality, class equality, and gender equality. When the land is opened up to all, it is for everyone. We recognise that the walls of private estates are not the only barriers to feeling comfortable in the countryside, and our campaign will seek to reach out to members of society who are not currently engaged.
We’re campaigning to extend the Countryside & Rights of Way (CRoW) Act so that it covers more of the countryside as well as more activities, both on land and water.
We want to see Right to Roam extended to woodlands, all downland (much is currently still excluded), Green Belt land, rivers and river banks. We’d also like to see access rights broadened beyond rambling to include a right to kayak, swim, and wild camp.
This campaign is about sharing. We want to share the countryside with each other, and with its owners. And it is sharing that will spread the message. Please follow us on Twitter and Instagram, please share our videos and posters amongst your friends, and please sign up to this website to receive more information on how you can help share the message that nature should be open for public access.
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THE DEBATE
England has had a partial Right to Roam now for nearly twenty years. For the most part it’s worked well – and now it’s surely past time to extend it to certain other landscapes, such as woodlands and rivers. But we fully acknowledge that for some landowners and managers, this might seem a frightening prospect. Below we address some of the genuine concerns raised about extending access to the countryside, as well as rebutting some of the myths told about Right to Roam.
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Would you want someone wandering around in your back garden?For centuries the Right to Roam has been deliberately conflated with home invasion. The absurdity here is a question of scale: the law of Tort, which governs trespass, makes no distinction between climbing the fence of someone's back garden, and taking a woodland stroll in a duke’s 13,000-acre estate. People have a right to privacy and personal security in their homes and gardens. But when the private wall of an estate extends around thousands of acres, the question becomes more prevalent: how much land does one person need exclusively? Each country that has a Right to Roam also has a codified understanding of what constitutes an area of privacy. In Sweden, it is forbidden to walk or camp within 70 metres of a dwelling or garden, in Norway it is 150 metres, in Scotland its is defined as a ‘reasonable distance’. An Englishman's home is his castle, a bastion of security and privacy, but when an Englishman's home is actually a castle, how much land does he really need for his exclusive use?
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There’s already enough Open Access land, why do we need any more?"As it stands, only 8% of the English countryside is open for people to freely roam across. Some of this land is in large areas, such as the National Parks, and others are tiny plots dotted around the country, available to see on Ordnance Survey maps. As it stands, access to the wild, to wide open spaces, has become a postcode lottery, a perk for those that happen to live in the area. Of the wide variety of landscape types in England - its woodland, fenland, grassland, rivers, lakes - only a few are represented by this 8%. On top of this, for anyone wishing to get out into nature for longer than a day, the current rulesprevent overnight camping unless in designated, paid-for spots, even on most open access land. (There are a few exceptions, such as on parts of Dartmoor, but they are the exception rather than the rule.) When you factor in the elements of travel costs and overnight accommodation, access to nature has become contingent on your economic income. We need the right to camp on land as well as walk on it, because as anyone that has gone wild camping knows, waking up in nature is a world apart from waking up in a campsite. We need to feel at home in nature, to go to sleep under the cries of hunting owls, to wake up to the dawn chorus.
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You can get into the countryside by using footpaths and rights of way, why do you need more than that?"There are 140,000 miles of public rights of way in England and Wales, but an estimated 10,000 more miles of ancient footpaths that have been lost from current maps. As a result of the CRoW act, after 2026 no further applications to reopen ancient paths will be accepted - this cut off date will enshrine that these footpaths will be secure but also enshrine the rest of the land as private and inaccessible, covering over the lost rights of way. Footpaths are, and have always been, desire lines. They represented the most logical, pleasant and practical way to get from one side of the country to another. They were not envisioned as official codified rights, but simply created by the footfall of everyone that used them. For this reason, even in a countryside that embraces a greater Right to Roam, most people will opt to use the existing paths. However, there is so much more of the country to see than the view from the footpath. For those that enjoy spotting the flora and fauna of the countryside, searching out the deer or hare in the woods, spotting the barn owl in the field, uncovering rotting trunks to find the rare stag beetle, any deeper understanding of nature is blocked by the insistence that we stick to the path.
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People don’t know how to treat the countryside with respect, there'll be loads more litter."We hate litter, and pick it up whenever we see it. But the litterers and the vandals are the outliers. By far the majority of people who come to the countryside treat it with respect. For those that don’t, how will people they ever learn the code of the countryside, how to behave in nature, if they cannot regularly experience it in practice? If people continue to be cut off from the beauty of nature, how will they ever care about how it is treated? Nature must be experienced from an early age and enjoyed to be respected. We propose that an extension of the Right to Roam should come with a much greater emphasis on promoting the Countryside Code: Why has the Government spent less than £1m promoting the Code in the past 16 years? It needs a proper promotional budget. Why shouldn’t children be taught the Countryside Code at school? Instead of signs that warn against trespassing, why not have more signs that explain the Code? In Scotland, research has found that people respond much better to being informed than they do to being told. Let's create a culture where people are much more aware of their responsibility to the land, to nature, and the communities that live and work in the countryside.
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What about dogs defecating everywhere, scaring wildlife and worrying livestock?"Dogs are a genuine concern, and can do real damage to the countryside, especially during bird-nesting and lambing season. Again, though, we look to our Scottish neighbours, where trials have been in practice and evidence has been gathered for almost twenty years. Dogs are restricted at certain periods in the year, and in many places they are required to be on leads. Research has shown that far from banning people with no trespassing signs, by far the most effective technique is signage that informs people why such steps are necessary. People respond much better to being informed than being compelled.
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Of course Right to Roam works in Scotland, there’s lots of mountains and open air, but there’s not enough space in England…"This is one of the oldest stories told about the English countryside. Only 9% of England is built upon, and the rest comprises open countryside, farmland and 'natural spaces' (forests, lakes, grasslands etc). In short, England is full of space, but it’s hidden by brick walls and barbed wire. On top of this, by opening up more of England, you would alleviate the pressure on existing open access land. At weekends, England’s paths would not be so full of ramblers and roamers, but instead, people would be able to get that sense of wide open country that is so healing to the soul.
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Isn’t this just about abolishing private property? Isn’t this just the ‘politics of envy’?Not at all. In countries that have enshrined the Right to Roam, the land is still owned by individuals. Private property is still intact. The only right they cede is the right to exclude others. This is not about envy. It is about equality. When access to the health giving resources of nature is so vital, how can it be fair that so much is given to private individuals? Private property must simply be redefined to allow people the access they so greatly need.
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What about extending the Right to Roam in Wales?Our campaign is about extending Right to Roam in England. Access rights are a devolved responsibility – the Welsh Government have the power to extend the CRoW Act in Wales. We very much hope they do, and think people in Wales should have the right to more access to nature too – it’s just that this campaign has been set up by people living in England, and we think a campaign about Right to Roam in Wales is best run by people who live there!
MEDIA
Before we can share the countryside, we must share the message.
Please download our PDF documents which go into more detail about various aspects of this campaign. Please share them with people you know who might be interested, and on your social media.
And please watch our collection of films, which tell the story of the campaign. Please also share these with people you know, and on your social media.
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