to the British Mountaineering Council

Hi Peter

Thanks so much for this email and your previous emails, read but not replied to!

I am very concerned about your examples and, I'm most unhappy with all these five developments that I definitely don't approve of.  The path to Crafnant sounds way over the top and unnecessary.  I don't want our national parks to become like country parks.  Near me, in the Black Country and Brum, we have many country parks and traditional Victorian parks that do have to be maintained with paths and cycle-walkways that are well surfaced and drained for heavy use.  Signs are also essential.

In national parks, the local communities must decide what is done.  The UK population is growing, as is leisure and the use of electric cars that are no more sustainable than petrol/diesel.  This, when we are supposed to be responding and making concessions to growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions leading to the 6th extinction episode that is overtaking humanity.  I am.  I'm leading by example.  And, I've been a full-time cycle commuter since the mid 90s.  See:

 MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

where I have cut my car travel by well over 50% (down to 5,000 miles in 2021 and, I hope, a little lower this year), sticking to 60 to 65 mph on 70 mph roads to get well over 70 mpg while still having my very low impact expeditions to Scotland in April and October to try and complete my 1,101 summits visited over 2,000 feet.  I've now banned myself from using the car to go into Wales for hill walking and am doing train/bikepacking instead.  We all have to gladly make sacrifices to win the bigger prize of tackling and overcoming our unsustainable behaviours.  Especially old men like me who must show even greater restraint than you youngsters, after my lifetime of excesses.

If at all possible, car parks must not be extended, unless they will be used by walkers who will use the Sherpa bus.  We all have to show restraint and be prepared to restrict our activities, especially car use, in the light of the many pious declarations of a climate emergency - that then get totally ignored as we all carry on regardless with our fingers crossed behind our backs.

Somehow, there has to be a sea change in attitudes and behaviour away from the ubiquitous car towards active travel and travel by bus and train.  I am doing so.  I want other BMC members to do likewise.  You are welcome to read any of this out at your meetings, please!

LESS RELEVANT to read:

For the last few years, I've been pleading for the UK's major, urban-rural-urban, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway to be upgraded for use as a commuter and business route for cyclists, as well as its present leisure use by dog walkers and visitors to the Woodland Trust property, three nature reserves and two traditional railway stations used as refreshment stops.  The 22 Kms is on two old railway lines that are best for active, food-fueled travellers not reliant on fossil fuels.

When it comes to our national parks, work must be done to maintain honey pot locations to minimise erosion and to attempt to keep the majority of visitors to those popular locations.  For me, the further you go from the car parks, the wilder and the more natural the environment can be, the better.  However, well built paths in local stone are a real help to keep us all within the narrow bounds of the path and prevent widening.  Some footbridges are also essential even in wild country, as I've so valued in Scotland.  The very occasional cairn is also reassuring in wild, remote country.  The Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society have also done excellent work for decades and their signs are great to see.

Best wishes

Wrongly drawn paths, bridleways on OS maps

Dear Paul - and copied to Lynn and the Ordnance Survey

Wrongly drawn paths, bridleways on OS maps

I have read your article in the current issue of 'Summit'.  You wrote:

"We're planning a big focus on hill walkers in 2021 to ensure that we're doing all we can for this group."

And,

"... we're planning research and then a wider campaign aimed at hill walkers to connect people with the information they're looking for on safety, skills, training and inspiration."

I'm a hill walker who took out BMC membership in September, I think it was.  I wanted to support all the excellent work you are doing and love the outdoors and the hills from bumps to rocky high mountains in the UK.  The information I am looking for are accurate Ordnance Survey Leisure maps that every single mountaineer, rock climber, aspiring Munroist and hill walker can rely on!

By the way, I do think that 'Summit' magazine, now and again, needs to include the hill walkers like me who enjoy a lifetime's project to visit every summit over 2,000 feet in the UK.  You do cover Scotland and Northern Ireland, don't you?

Open access land in popular areas like Snowdonia, sometimes have public rights of way (PROWs) marked in straight lines or in great curves.  It is important, I think, that we have accurately mapped crossing points of walls, hedges and fences but leave off the paths - only in open access land where we can wander at will.  It seems that the OS gives preference to the definitive maps rather than the reality on the ground from their aerial photographs.

The definitive maps are notoriously out of date because of the legal nature of the paper documents, the expense of paying for alterations but, mainly, simply the lack of staff dealing with PROWs.  There is a serious shortage of funds to keep the definitive map up to date, especially since austerity began in 2010.  And no money to put footbridges over even major rivers like the R Rea on the Shropshire/Worcestershire border.  Any fear of collapse and they get closed - never again to be repaired or replaced!  Walkers are then stranded and have to turn back.  Yet, they are part of the public highway.

In one square kilometre on the Worcs/Salop border at Marlbrook, there are five numbered PROWs that are wrongly mapped - a mix of:

missing on the ground,

going through buildings, homes and private gardens,

and a missing footbridge over a major river that cannot be forded in normal conditions.  The earlier was probably washed away, well over a century ago.

All of these are on the Explorer map.  Screenshots, below.

A little further north, just south of Tetstill, the mapped path goes in, very nearly, a straight line down a steep slope where the track on the ground has one obvious zigzag!  Just outside the one kilometre square is a public right of way over a 1796 brick aqueduct that has never seen any maintenance for many decades, if not centuries.  Certainly, not since Grade 2 listing.  It is now closed to walkers and awaits complete collapse!  Yet, there are perfectly adequate and used paths either side with wooden footbridges and good waymarking put in by, mainly, volunteers.

Further upstream on the R Rea, near Bayton, Shropshire are two footbridges, of antiquated design with, I expect, never any maintenance.  One day they will be closed and walkers who want a change from the big hills will be stuck!  Fording of rivers that I have done in Scotland is impossible with the Rea, partly because of its high, steep banks.

I would like the BMC to add weight to what I think I have correctly identified as in need of a great deal of improvement.  Could readers add further examples?  And the Ramblers to work with you, perhaps, to get action?

Would you be at all interested, please, Paul to help?  Or, there are always the hundreds of miles of wasted railways that would be wonderful as new cycle-walkways, if they can't have their trains back.  And our major 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway is the worst of the lot!

Best wishes

Input to the BMC Climate Project

I have just attended my second Zoom BMC Midlands Area meeting.  I think I will be given time to speak, at our next meeting, about my particular interest that is the climate crisis/emergency and what we as individuals can do.  Individual changes I'm suggesting, below rather than waiting for the government to act that never happens.  Or, certainly not in time!

Please read my questions and tell me what you think.  Could you also bring me up to date about what you are doing now?  I was most impressed by what you have written on our website.  Moors for the Future and the impressive list under 'What else?' at:- https://www.thebmc.co.uk/the-bmc-and-climate-change 

1. Where do you stand over how we all, as hill walkers, climbers and mountaineers, react to the climate emergency?
2. Should we, individually and as BMC, have a strategy to respond to the December 2018 statement at COP 24 from David Attenborough?  He spoke of the "collapse of civilisations" and "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings.
3. How do you respond to a teenager, last year who sailed instead of flying across an ocean to pursue her goal?
4. How do mountaineers who jet all over the world to climb the high peaks respond to that challenge?!
5. How do we all walk, climb and run the talk to lessen our impact?
6. Has anyone else cut their travelling and explored lower hills and new, even remote countryside nearer to home with fewer long-distance expeditions?  I've had great navigation training for remote hillwalking, even in deepest, darkest, rural Worcestershire and Shropshire!
7. In so doing, has anyone else found wrongly mapped public rights of way and missing or closed footbridges on our OS maps and on the legally enforceable definitive maps?  Report them!
8. Can access to some crags, hills and countryside be boosted by fossil fuel-free, active travel if all cycle-walkways were upgraded to be free of mud, waterlogging and widened for greater use?
9. Can more disused railways that can't have their trains back be used for walking/cycling/horse riding, as some are?  To improve access to crag and hill!
10. I'm cutting down on my car trips and, when I do use the car, I park further away and then mountain bike tracks until I am forced to start the walk for the day.  Only 140 Donalds and 224 Grahams to visit, for a clean sweep of our neighbour's really big hills!

To BMC over their 2021 Strategic Review

 I am concerned that Covid is like the canary in the cage warning of danger ahead.  Not just the runaway greenhouse effect that is dangerously affecting all life on earth but, the fact that our prodigious use of oil and gas means that we are now well and truly trapped into using vital hydrocarbons that are getting in shorter supply.  We are trapped in total dependency on using ever more oil and gas that are finite and, causing life support systems to fail.

I would like some recognition that we must learn to travel shorter distances in the years ahead and, starting now to cut back to preserve life.

Sacrifice to survive.  Restraint for ourselves to give a richer and fuller life to our descendants.

I have found that I don't need to make the six long drives to Scotland to climb the big hills that I did last year.  Perhaps, only one in October this year, because of lockdown.

Instead, I have contented myself with local and much closer to home regional walks and explorations as part of my daily coronavirus exercise.  I have discovered new walking territory and lower hills.  But also many misleading, wrongly mapped and missing footpaths and bridges on the legal definitive map that then get put on the OS maps.

There needs to be an encouragement for members to report the errors to the local authorities so that we don't end up trespassing quite so much!  Our maps, as regards the public rights of way (PROW) in England Wales, must become more accurate.  Where there is Open Access land, the maps must show the stiles, gates and bridges but the actual PROW from the definitive (often medieval) map must only be shown where they can be seen and actually walked, in my opinion.  Why are we still mapping footpaths in open access hill country that go in straight lines or in the most beautiful curves and, through rivers where there is no ford or bridge and, even straight through residential buildings?  Although, in this last example, the OS did draw their path around the garden and house.  But the legal, definitive map has it straight through someone's home!

So there you have it.  Much fun can be had very much nearer to home without doing quite so much damage to our descendants' prospects.

Access to more accurate maps, PLEASE!

Less long-distance travel but more under our own steam with urban, traffic-free cycle-walkways free of mud and puddles.

MY PROPOSAL for BMC regional and national approval and action

Please use the OS Landranger 139 and Explorer 219 maps to easily find these cycle-walkways, as I like to call them.

Dowery Dell Trail

8 Kms Halesowen to Longbridge Railway as an adventure (rough) walk and, for most of the way, is unofficially possible to walk but is not legal.  The precedent has been set by children and youngsters since the line was opened as a single-track railway in 1883.  Walked in many parts ever since.  But how can we make it official with the permission of the landowners or, through compulsory purchase by the local authorities and the Combined Authority?

The 600 metre section from Hunnington Blue Bird Park, via the cricket ground opposite, to the farmer Cherry memorial bench is legal and official on a cul de sac public right of way next to the trackbed.  Permissive path round the cricket ground.  The rest of the route on the trackbed to the M5 subway public right of way is not but has always been walked for 137 years.  From the subway to Longbridge it is all public right of way on tarmac.

22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway

All official and legal and marked on the OS Explorer map as a traffic-free cycle route - but a mudbath in places when wet weather arrives!

Includes parts of S Staffordshire Walkway, Monarch's Way and Valley Parkway.

From Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to Aldersley Stadium and on to the canal towpath in NW Wolverhampton; on two railway lines.  Through the heart of the Black Country boroughs of Dudley and Wolverhampton, via rural South Staffordshire District Council and Wombourne.

It is on two railway lines, with two stations as tea rooms in Wolverhampton.

MY PROPOSAL for BMC regional and national approval and action:

All dismantled/disused railway lines to be brought back into use, where practicable - for trains and, more likely, for walking, cycling and horseback, in the new normal and, essential normal, of lower finite fossil fuel use.  Also Stratford to Honeybourne Railway and 120 Kms Black Country Railway finished.