About IMBA-UK >> Updates >> Access Report
Forestry Commission Scotland's Ae Line Trail at 7Stanes
The year has been dominated by the demise of the government's Lost Ways project and our fight to get cycling included in the coastal access provisions of the Marine Bill. A summary follows.
During the passage of the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill in 2000, parliament decided cease the addition of unrecorded byways and bridleways onto the definitive map in 2026.
To facilitate this deadline, the Lost Ways project was conceived to identify remaining routes not currently recorded, but £5m and seven years later the project has been abandoned without a single new route added.
Instead a "stakeholder group" has been formed comprising five each of landowners, users and agencies to thrash out ways of achieving this with no extra expenditure.
The user group includes three mountainbikers, and we are in discussion with them over ways to streamline the system to provide a more comprehensive mtb network.
Mountainbikers can cycle the Scottish coast under the provisions of the Scottish Land Reform Act and the Welsh Assembly Government are already committed to open more of the Wales coastline to mountainbikers, although there is an urgent need to liaise with Welsh local authorities to ensure that our needs are recognised.
The government now proposes to open the English coast to walkers, but the agency Natural England who is tasked with delivering this appears strongly opposed to include any mtb provision. Following detailed lobbying by IMBA & CTC the powerful Parliamentary Environment Committee agree with our submission that cycle access should be included where possible and appropriate - but this has not been accepted by government agencies.
If we wish to put pressure on the government and Natural England then, along with CTC we will need to develop a campaign to influence MP!s prior to the bill passing through parliament.
The National Access forum which comprised delegates from most user groups and Landowning organisations has been replaced by the has been replaced by the English National Access Forum in which users are represented by members of Local Access Forums. IMBA has access to discussion topics through the Rights of Way Review Committee.
The Wales National Access Forum continues under the guidance of the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW).
These are the new classifications for previous Roads Used as Public Paths (RuPPs).
Cyclists have full access right on these routes, and can now claims them following 20 years of unchallenged use. Two new RB!s have been successfully claimed in Southampton through this process.
The waymarking disc is colour coded in purple - and will be easy to confuse with byway (red) and bridleway (blue) once the sun gets to work on it.
This rapidly growing pastime of geo-caching, which has its roots in Dartmoor's "letterboxing", and now has some 4000 sites in Wales and involves navigating the bridleway network using GPS to locate previously arranged "caches". This is a development which IMBA may care to get involved with in a coordinating role, possibly led by Iain Johnson of mtbcycleyorkshire. See www.geo-caching.com.
Most constabularies now have a single officer with responsibilities for countryside access matters including Rights of Way. A list is available, and we are awaiting permission from chief constables to grant permission to publish on websites.
Colin Palmer.
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