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Questions about right to roam

Questions about right to roam


Postby MrFlowers » Mon May 03, 2021 10:56 am

I'm fairly new to walking in Scotland and was hoping for some advice on the right to roam. It's probably best to illustrate the difficulty I'm having with a few examples.

I've been for a fair few walks in England, so I'm quite used to just relying on public footpaths. It seems like quite a lot of paths in Scotland aren't on OS maps at all, which I take it is down to the fact you have a right to roam. And that's really exciting in many ways, and makes walks more interesting. I've read through the outdoor access code, but I'm still slightly confused about where you are and aren't allowed to walk. I live in Dundee, and the surrounding countryside is very heavily farmed. The access code mentions that you can walk along the side of a field with crops in, but sometimes the crops are right up the very edge of the field and there's a ditch making walking very difficult. That's example number one.

Example two comes after a walk last weekend just outside of Forfar where I thought I'd be able to go up a hill, but was met with a barbed wire fence and no gate in sight. I ended up having to walk down a fairly busy road instead. This has happened quite a few times now, and it starts to feel like although you have a right to roam, actually exercising that right is very difficult given barbed wire fences, lots of fields with crops in, etc.

I think a fair bit of this is down to my own inexperience with map reading, and I'd love to get better at that. I also think it's partly down to my own fear of making a mistake and being shouted at by an angry farmer. I can see how the right to roam works amazingly in national parks and places that aren't so heavily used for arable farming, but around here it seems like a bit of a battle sometimes.

As one last example, I was planning on doing a variation of a walk in a few weeks. I can't post the link as I am a new user, but googling Finavon Hill Circuit will bring it up on the OS website. The first half of it is down farm tracks and paths which are visible on an OS, but the second half is just across fields with no real discernible paths. It looks like an interesting walk, but I'm concerned about either angering a farmer, or coming up against more barbed wire fences that are difficult to get over.

Any advice would be really appreciated. I really want to get more experienced and get off paths more often, but I don't feel like I currently have the confidence to do so. Is it just a case of getting better at map reading and being bolder in asserting my right to roam? Thanks in advance!
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Re: Questions about right to roam

Postby simon-b » Mon May 03, 2021 1:29 pm

Both the Scottish right to roam and the English/Welsh access rights demand use of those rights responsibly, and you certainly seem to be taking a responsible attitude, Mr. F. I've done a lot of walking in Scotland but live in England, maybe other forum members with more detailed knowledge of the Scottish laws can expand further. But in both countries, I've sometimes had to climb barbed wire fences to assert these rights.

You ask if you should be bolder with your rights; maybe you should. You could have been bolder in England if you always stuck to public footpaths then. The OS 1:25 000 maps indicate which areas of the English and Welsh countryside are access land. One reason I'm replying to your post is because I feel all British walkers need to make sure we protect our rights to gain access to and roam in the countryside, a battle that was hard fought and won by previous generations.
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Re: Questions about right to roam

Postby Skyelines » Mon May 03, 2021 1:39 pm

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Re: Questions about right to roam

Postby Scraggygoat » Mon May 03, 2021 1:53 pm

It’s a clear dichotomy in Scotland that at low level we have more access rights, but on a practical level they are harder to exercise as the path networks that once connected places have long since been abandoned. Also there not the cultural in Scotland of walking village to village. So you will probably encounter some as much bemused as anti landowners!

Maps and google earth, and time to explore are your friends. To know if it’s worth the effort of asserting your rights. It’s not very pleasurable or responsible to just be forging forward and surmounting every agricultural obstacle.

It took me a lot of lock down to work out a 14mile near road less loop from my door with numerous trips linking bits. Working from different directions linking up river bank, woodland dog walks with some field boundaries , farm tracks and field margins to connect. Google Earth helped, as did cycling the adjoining lanes to work out where local dog walkers and kids gained entry to woods or linked gram tracks.

I’try not to hop fences, but will if it’s clear a logical access route is being blocked, and will walk down field margins. But equally will keep away from livestock as much as possible and will avoid crop.

The resultant route I quite like, and could never legally do in England, however in England it wouldn’t have taken a dozen outings to make a loop and could have been planned with confidence at home with a map.
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Re: Questions about right to roam

Postby KatTai » Mon May 03, 2021 2:12 pm

MrFlowers wrote:
As one last example, I was planning on doing a variation of a walk in a few weeks. I can't post the link as I am a new user, but googling Finavon Hill Circuit will bring it up on the OS website. The first half of it is down farm tracks and paths which are visible on an OS, but the second half is just across fields with no real discernible paths. It looks like an interesting walk, but I'm concerned about either angering a farmer, or coming up against more barbed wire fences that are difficult to get over.



The Finavon Hill side should be okay, the Turin side...have a read of some of the reports for Turin Hill (sub-2000) :shock: There are electric fences on that side. Finavon Hill itself is more managed for shooting and there is a hill fort that the route goes up to as well, I know a couple of people who walk around the Finavon Hill area.

With regards to access, it's better to maybe think of it as right of responsible access rather than a right to roam, if there is no field margin and you are walking where there are crops is it responsible access? Yes, farmers are encouraged to leave margins but it isn't something they have to do unless where there is a footpath marked on the map. I'm lucky, the farmers near me leave nice wide margins to walk around and are welcoming to responsible walkers, they usually give a friendly wave when passing in the tractor and tend to leave ploughing fields until needed. There are also a lot of public path networks locally with signposted footpaths through farmland - https://www.angus.gov.uk/leisure_sport_culture_and_libraries/outdoor_access/paths_and_path_networks
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Re: Questions about right to roam

Postby MrFlowers » Mon May 03, 2021 6:25 pm

Scraggygoat wrote:It’s a clear dichotomy in Scotland that at low level we have more access rights, but on a practical level they are harder to exercise as the path networks that once connected places have long since been abandoned. Also there not the cultural in Scotland of walking village to village. So you will probably encounter some as much bemused as anti landowners!

Maps and google earth, and time to explore are your friends. To know if it’s worth the effort of asserting your rights. It’s not very pleasurable or responsible to just be forging forward and surmounting every agricultural obstacle.

It took me a lot of lock down to work out a 14mile near road less loop from my door with numerous trips linking bits. Working from different directions linking up river bank, woodland dog walks with some field boundaries , farm tracks and field margins to connect. Google Earth helped, as did cycling the adjoining lanes to work out where local dog walkers and kids gained entry to woods or linked gram tracks.

I’try not to hop fences, but will if it’s clear a logical access route is being blocked, and will walk down field margins. But equally will keep away from livestock as much as possible and will avoid crop.

The resultant route I quite like, and could never legally do in England, however in England it wouldn’t have taken a dozen outings to make a loop and could have been planned with confidence at home with a map.


This makes me feel a bit better about my own experience navigating so far. I know my own area fairly well by now, but when taking day trips I'm far less confident. Google Maps has been my friend so far, for sure. Normally you can get a decent idea of a path from that. Thanks for the advice though!
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Re: Questions about right to roam

Postby MrFlowers » Mon May 03, 2021 6:55 pm

KatTai wrote:
The Finavon Hill side should be okay, the Turin side...have a read of some of the reports for Turin Hill (sub-2000) :shock: There are electric fences on that side. Finavon Hill itself is more managed for shooting and there is a hill fort that the route goes up to as well, I know a couple of people who walk around the Finavon Hill area.

With regards to access, it's better to maybe think of it as right of responsible access rather than a right to roam, if there is no field margin and you are walking where there are crops is it responsible access? Yes, farmers are encouraged to leave margins but it isn't something they have to do unless where there is a footpath marked on the map. I'm lucky, the farmers near me leave nice wide margins to walk around and are welcoming to responsible walkers, they usually give a friendly wave when passing in the tractor and tend to leave ploughing fields until needed. There are also a lot of public path networks locally with signposted footpaths through farmland





Thanks for the tip re Turin hill. Sounds like I might be avoiding that one! I hadn't actually seen that there's a list of hill walks on this site as well, I'd just been looking at the regional ones. That's opened up a whole new world!

I've yet to have a bad experience with a farmer personally, but I have friends who have. I think it's probably because I am hugely over cautious about these things. Probably a good thing! But thanks for the tips and the link to the outdoor access paths in Angus too.
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Re: Questions about right to roam

Postby jupe1407 » Mon May 03, 2021 8:00 pm

MrFlowers wrote:
KatTai wrote:
The Finavon Hill side should be okay, the Turin side...have a read of some of the reports for Turin Hill (sub-2000) :shock: There are electric fences on that side. Finavon Hill itself is more managed for shooting and there is a hill fort that the route goes up to as well, I know a couple of people who walk around the Finavon Hill area.

With regards to access, it's better to maybe think of it as right of responsible access rather than a right to roam, if there is no field margin and you are walking where there are crops is it responsible access? Yes, farmers are encouraged to leave margins but it isn't something they have to do unless where there is a footpath marked on the map. I'm lucky, the farmers near me leave nice wide margins to walk around and are welcoming to responsible walkers, they usually give a friendly wave when passing in the tractor and tend to leave ploughing fields until needed. There are also a lot of public path networks locally with signposted footpaths through farmland



I can recommend GraemeD's report for some amusing light reading on Turin Hill :lol:



Thanks for the tip re Turin hill. Sounds like I might be avoiding that one! I hadn't actually seen that there's a list of hill walks on this site as well, I'd just been looking at the regional ones. That's opened up a whole new world!

I've yet to have a bad experience with a farmer personally, but I have friends who have. I think it's probably because I am hugely over cautious about these things. Probably a good thing! But thanks for the tips and the link to the outdoor access paths in Angus too.
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