We often come across an occasional damaged stile on our walks, but this walk in Buckinghamshire had four (half of all the stiles on the walk) which were difficult or impossible to use properly. I shall drop a line to the local countryside peeps.
That is a very dodgy stile. When we were at the farm at Inglewhite we had footpaths through the fields & they used to come round & see if we were keeping them in good order! I expect that doesn’t happen these days!
@happypat I think it depends on the county. We were climbing a steepish hill in Staffordshire a couple of years ago and a chap marched past us with a cheery good morning. A few minutes later he reached us on his way down so we stopped him to find out what he was doing. He said he was inspecting stiles and footpaths, and he said we should report any that we find that aren’t in good condition. So I shall definitely be doing that.
The walking paths in the UK are such an interesting phenomena. There is nothing like that over here and the idea that you could be forced to maintain a pathway for strangers to use to enter your property would never be tolerated. I can see both side of the situation but I know i would not be happy to have such a path on our little farm...
@robz I hadn’t thought of that before. I think a number of our pathways were old ‘rights of way’ and farmers were allowed to use the land as long as they maintained the rights of way. I’m not sure of the detail but think it’s something like that. If anyone knows better, I’d love to know.
@tinley23 Ahh - that tends to make sense of why they were established. So, eventually the lands would have been sold into private ownership and the "right of way" went with it. So, you buy the land knowing what it involves. Thanks for that info - it does make a lot of sense. Cheers Rob
