Very happy to be representing @righttoroam.bsky.social as a member of this new rewilding alliance, and to have authored its launch report: The Welsh Way to Wild.
1) Read the report and sign up to the mailing list at: rewildingalliance.cymru
2) Give the alliance a follow: @cynghrairalwylltio.cymru
When campaigners argue for public access to the countryside, the debate is often cast as though access itself is an exceptional imposition on private rights. Yet in commercial contexts, the right to exclude is seen as "central to the business model"...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Green majority of more than 4500, Labour in third place. Absolute calamity for Keir Starmer.
And a complete failure of McSweeney’s electoral philosophy. The idea of relying on an anti-Reform vote coalescing behind Labour just collapsed entirely.
The attempted silencing of Palestine Action by proscribing is stuff of both satire and nightmare.
Now all charges against protestors should be dropped and the ban repealed so that democracy can do its job of acting as a conscience for those in power with none.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live...
This May sees the release of Our Land - a feature length documentary film about the Right to Roam campaign, directed by Orban Wallace.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=est-...
The daft thing is that with Proportional Representation there'd be no need for this self-destructive war within Labour. It could split into its component parts - left and right - and people could vote for what they wanted. It's only First-Past-the-Post that forces these irreconcilables together.
Exciting news: this May sees the national release of OUR LAND.
A beautiful documentary feature film about the @righttoroam.bsky.social campaign, directed by Orban Wallace.
Trailer here 👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=est-...
Good morning. Let's make a collective resolution: this will be the year in which we start to turn things round.
National or regional (GLA) government needs to liberate London’s river system for walking too. Try walking the Roding between Barking Creek & Redbridge?! Impossible where it offers the most benefit in statistically low walking areas. Try the Ravensbourne; canalised/buried even in most green spaces!
It seems the first of the new 'nine river walks' the Government announced in place of a real access policy... won't actually create any new access?
They're just upgrading the existing path and adding some signs and benches. A really rubbish level of ambition.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Government's proposed new National River Walk a damp squib says @openspacessociety.bsky.social -it's not new, but on existing rights of way. Priority should be green paper on access to nature, and new legislation. www.oss.org.uk/new-national... @ramblers.org.uk @naturalengland.bsky.social
For sure -- investment and improvements are needed -- but important that we critically look at the barriers to access elsewhere as well as undertaking (imo essential) improvements to accessibility and connectivity on existing routes, and that resourcing is given to LAs to undertake .
We need to flip the current assumption that we are barred from land and water unless a landowner decides otherwise, and instead start from the principle that rivers are public spaces, central to community life, health and local nature recovery.
@righttoroam.bsky.social
A serious attempt to improve continuous access along the Mersey would have required the Government to grapple with that concentration of private control. Instead, they have opted to upgrade stretches that local councils should be resourced to maintain anyway.
Creating genuinely new riverside access would mean confronting the reality that the power to grant or deny access rests with landowners. In this case, the banks and corridor of the Manchester Ship Canal are owned by Peel Holdings Ltd.
"Looking at the map, I realised that it was going to be virtually impossible to walk the bank of the river from this point to Warrington since the Mersey is either surrounded by industry and inaccessible to walkers- or absorbed into the Manchester Ship canal. Only at Warrington, another ten miles or so downstream, does the river regain an independent identity and become accessible again."
And while this relatively small stretch is being focused on, anyone attempting to follow the river beyond it will quickly run into difficulty. A walker recorded their attempt to walk this section:
gerryco23.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/w...
I've mapped the Mersey's publicly accessible waterside and the upper half through Manchester already enjoys extensive public access.
These upgrades will benefit local communities. But why does essential local authority work require a national announcement from Defra?
felt.com/map/River-Me...
The 13-mile (21km) walk will go through Greater Manchester and the north-west of England. There will be a river walk in each region of the country by the end of parliament, the government has pledged. No footpath would be created as part of the “new” river walk, government sources confirmed, but the initiative will enable nature recovery work, accessibility upgrades and community engagement work along the route. In opposition, Labour committed to a Scottish-style right to roam, where there would be an assumed right for people in England to walk around the countryside. However, the party made a U-turn after pressure from countryside groups.
According to reporting "no new paths will be created", and instead "signs to mark it as a national river walk will be erected and stretches of the existing river path will be upgraded to meet accessibility standards"
A new river walk will be created along the River Mersey between Stockport and Manchester - the first of nine such paths promised by the government for locations nationwide.
The Government has announced the first of their ‘nine new river walks’: a section of the River Mersey near Stockport. Yet what’s being presented as a national breakthrough is, in reality, a set of long-overdue local council upgrades to existing riverside paths.
A skim through the details... 🧵
This Telegraph article is a distillation of the horseshit propping up the idea of a 'rural v urban culture war'.
'BBC ACCUSED OF METROPOLITAN BIAS TOWARD RURAL BRITAIN' it claims, citing a poll commissioned by the Regional Moorland Association (i.e. gamekeepers)
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...
The River Dart in spate flowing through (and over!) Totnes following heavy & prolonged rainfall.
And this is one week past spring tides!
The Government have today announced an Access Green Paper which will consult on how to ‘strengthen the public’s legal right to access’.
This is welcome - but further delay isn't: Labour MPs & access NGOs are united on the need for access legislation now.
@righttoroam.bsky.social comment:
A swollen river, red with Devon topsoil. A house visible on the far bank.
Tonnes of topsoil heading seaward, washed out by rainfall from the River Dart Catchment, South Devon.
With heavy rainfall events becoming more frequent as a result of climate breakdown, leaving fields bare at this time of year is a recipe for literal disaster.
ChatGPT’s signature writing style is everywhere now, and I hate it. It reminds me of when we tried mixing all the beverages at the soda fountain in middle school. We didn’t actually create the perfect drink, we just made a cloying monstrosity that lost everything good about its constituent parts.
Why Your House Is Full of Stuff
You'll Never Use.
Absolutely.
Trees high on Dartmoor have been deliberately poisoned.
Perhaps an act rooted in frustration and of sorrow at the passing of an unfettered time... but an act of ecological vandalism nonetheless.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Three people on a small stage under a canvas roof with a mountain backdrop holding microphones with an audience watching.
@ebenmyrddin.bsky.social repping wild camping at the Basecamp stage at Kendal Mountain Festival.
A real joy to be at Kendal Mountain Festival with @righttoroam.bsky.social and friends -- raising our voices for equitable access to nature.
