Dear List
While the recent countryside rights of way act has provided huge
benefits to those wishing to explore the countryside, I was dismayed
this week to note one landowner's massively inappropriate reaction to
having 'the public' on their land as a result of the act. A small,
though important tin mine, within the Dartmoor National Park and in
clear open country, has been completely fenced off with barbed wire. The
area includes two large openworks which do have shallow open shafts in
them, but instead of making the shafts safe this landowner has fenced
off the entire site as well as huge area around a blocked adit portal.
There are scores of similar sites within the open access lands of
Dartmoor National Park as well as many other areas of moorland in the UK
, many of which are open to the public for the first time under the CRoW
act and this is a dangerous precedent. Its probably a knee-jerk reaction
to our increasingly litigious society, but I'm sure with proper
consultation this site could have been made much safer without the need
for such drastic measures. I'd be most interested to hear of similar
recent incidences elsewhere in the country.
Phil Newman
(Exeter, Devon)
|