A solitary path marker. In Cumbria for a few days and we did our usual run over Shap Fell. Half marathon in 1 jour 45, but this is what caught my eye. A solitary path marker. Now I know the fell - my parents have lived here for 30+ years.
In that direction lies mud, more mud and bogs. Not quite Dartmoor sinking stuff, but you will rapidly be up to your waist in cold water.
They call for more data on the "death Toll", money and more (killer) roads, but never for a radical infrastructure redesign. No data on "roadkill" of native animals either.
A few more pics from part 2 of #SlowWays Plymstock to Salcombe. Restarting at Bigbury was not ideal - no buses of course (except on a Tuesday 🙄) so getting there this morning was a mini adventure in itself. Three buses (miraculously on time) & a lovely 5.5 mile walk along the Avon Estuary to the ferry. The continuation of the SlowWay was 10 miles through a landscape of rolling green hills & coastal valleys characteristic of the South Hams. A cracking #holloway too.
The United Kingdom is crisscrossed with public footpaths where the public holds a legal right to traverse.
Many of these paths are centuries old. Many of them are probably even older, dating back thousands of years to the Neolithic or older.
They predate virtually every extant property claim that could be leveraged against them. They have belonged in common to the community that uses them since before there was a British state.
And yet, the British state is in the process of handing over thousands of miles of public footpaths to private owners because these paths—older than the state—have not been registered with the state. In James Scott’s terms, they are not legible to the state.
But carefully surveyed, delineated, discrete parcels of private property linked to individual owners—the state’s favorite—are legible to the state. So over they go.
"The commons refers to all our shared natural resources – including the land, the forests, the moors and parks, the water, the minerals, the air – and all the social, civic and cultural institutions that our ancestors have bequeathed to us, and that we may have helped to maintain or improve."