As the pandemic has highlighted our need to engage with the great outdoors, a £1million study is being launched to look into our countryside rights of way.

Professor Glen O’Hara of Oxford Brookes University working with Dr Clare Hickman of Newcastle University will research how the 140,000-mile network of paths have been established and how they are maintained and used across England and Wales.

Access to these routes has been brought into focus as there is a deadline of January 2026 to register all historic paths under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.

The Ramblers are running a Don’t Lose Your Way campaign to identify and officially map as many useful rights of way as possible before they are permanently lost to the public.

The team will work with Historic England, Natural England, the National Trust, walkers and academics on In All Our Footsteps: Tracking, Mapping and Experiencing Rights of Way in Post-War Britain.

Professor O’Hara said: “There has been little attention paid to histories of the establishment, maintenance and usage of this extensive network in post-war Britain. We will focus on the strategies pursued by local government, civil society, the voluntary sector and citizen-activists in order to record and establish the public ways network in England and Wales."

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