Gates, stiles and footpaths

A Slow Ways journey through the lens of access

Last summer, my husband and I walked two Slow Ways routes from Lewes to Wivelsfield ( Pyelew one ,  Pyebur , and part of  Burhay four ) in preparation for our Tour du Mont Blanc trek. We started in the historic town of Lewes and then went along the South Downs Way up Ditchling Beacon, as it’s always worth taking in a summit. We continued through green corridors, on footpaths and on road across Pyecombe, Burgess Hill and Wivelsfield.

Lost in conversation, we missed a stile for the public footpath; sauntering past an open gate marked PRIVATE - NO PUBLIC ACCESS. The track led us on to an attractive, wide, grassy path running parallel to the route indicated on the map, around three metres to our right and beyond a fence and row of nettles and brambles. We looked ahead and saw the path would eventually meet the public one in a few hundred metres, so we walked on.

Moments later we heard a high-pitched motor buzzing behind us, coming closer at speed. We turned around.

“Are you lost?” A man on a small motorbike asked.

“No, I think we meant to be on that path over there,” I pointed to the other footpath. “But we must have missed the crossing so we thought we could get back onto it just up there.”

The man didn’t look very happy. “Well, this is private property, so if you could just join the public path up there… it’s dangerous for people to be walking here because we have vehicles and tractors going up and down this path.”

I looked around. There were no vehicles in sight.

“Sorry,” I said, out of politeness rather than guilt or remorse. “We’ll join it up there.”

He was still not happy, but I noticed him peek behind us.

“Uh well, if you could just go under the fence here and onto the path there, that should be fine.”

I looked around. How convenient that there was a sliver of space in between the brambles to the other path. We made our move towards the small opening, bending down under the wooden fence, and he rode away.

We passed the juncture of the private and public footpath and had seen no vehicle flying by.

The more I walked - for necessity and leisure - the more I noticed the infrastructure: first, those enabling pedestrianism, and then those hindering it.

Zebra and dotted lines allocating where I could cross the road, traffic lights to stop vehicular traffic, hedges and fences dividing public and private land, ‘Keep out’ signs that made you tingle and look behind your shoulder should you wander the wrong way.

Maybe it was the Los Angeles upbringing that heightened my senses. Growing up in a city where jaywalking is illegal, I saw walking as limiting, even criminal, if I dared cross a road without a green figure granting permission. We weren’t encouraged to wander the streets on foot: it wasn’t safe. Home was safe, and you needed a car to get anywhere else, to move outside, to be free.

Some kids had bigger gardens or lived in a gated community with a private park. Others didn't.

School grounds were the only local green spaces in walking distance from my house, but they were fenced off to the public for students in after-school daycare. My parents worked and couldn’t afford daycare, so I ran around with other latchkey kids, jumping (or crawling under) fences so we could play basketball, American football, and pass time on the monkey bars. When we spotted teachers storming towards us, we sprinted for the section of the fence that offered more footholds for the fastest escape. Out on the streets, we chased each other in straight lines, hollering ‘CAR!’ and jumping onto narrow sidewalks as vehicles whizzed past, claiming their right to that space for a few seconds. We outgrew those days of mischief and play, eventually taking our place behind the wheel on four wheels and becoming rulers of the road, autonomous travellers.

When I left LA to study in Boston, I learned how car centricity moulded my idea of access and walking. Amidst LA sprawl, you relied on a car for survival because the infrastructure and planning made walkers feel vulnerable, exposed, and slow. In Boston I wandered main streets and side streets, soaking in the sun (and rain) during walking commutes to work and to the shops, marvelling at all the detail I had never noticed in LA. When I left for the UK, being able to hop on trains and buses to access walking routes opened up a world of walking just because I wanted to walk.

Interestingly, the more I walked in England, the more aware I became of the pitifully little amount of land we can, by law, roam on (8%), as well as all the subtle ways pedestrians are made to feel unwelcome or begrudgingly given permission to access. I am especially attuned to markers and visual/tactile clues when trying a new walk, but I am usually distracted by summit views and the tranquility of birdsong in the woods to record the minutiae of man-made access points.

Perhaps it was about time I did so, and what better way to do it than pioneering a Slow Ways route, one for which no one could tell me in advance any blockages or conditions to expect? How would invisible and visible infrastructure direct my steps?

On a dull wintry day, I set off for  Sevton 3 , an 18km jaunt from Sevenoaks to Tonbridge. The usual walking gear and kit donned, I caught the train with camera ready.

"I know a place...": knowledge

While downloading the route onto my OS app, I thought back to my first years in London. I had never heard of Sevenoaks. I’d never been to Kent. I never knew there were countryside walks near the city, or that you could reach some by train or bus. I thought hillwalking was for the Scottish Highlands and the Lake District, hours away from south England (non-walkers don't tend to look for other national parks on a map). I remember wondering how a Londoner could ever become a hillwalker if every walk entailed a week away and hundreds of pounds for accommodation and travel.

For all the gripes people have about Instagram and influencers, social media opened the outdoors to me, a city dweller who never spent much time in the countryside. Location tagging gave me a list of local areas to explore. Meanwhile, Twitter surfaced Slow Ways in my timeline, and now I can find transport links throughout Britain to chart routes.

In addition to simply not knowing where to go, I didn’t know anything about kit and equipment. I wore trainers or £20 boots that slipped on rocks and falsely claimed to be waterproof. I only went out in fair weather. I thought a stack of plasters sufficed as a first aid kit. I didn’t know you need to dial the police first to get to Mountain Rescue. 

Instagram was a doorway into online resources because I didn’t know anyone who could bestow their wisdom on me. Through it, I found Ordnance Survey, where I learned that I could download GPX files and upload them to a mobile app for navigation. Other posts encouraged me to buy a compass and maps to try analogue navigation.

For a long time, the lack of knowledge was one of the biggest barriers to the outdoors. I now know where to look, but I have much to learn. I will never forget how difficult, how frightening, how alien it felt to start learning as an adult. Nor will I forget the shame and embarrassment of not having aptitude in the outdoors because I grew up in a city. 

So when I think about access and inclusion in the outdoors, I first address knowledge and the many factors that either afford or inhibit education and consequently shape how we see ourselves and others in those spaces.

Are we there yet?: Transport

I mind the gap and step up onto the train.

I have long admired the transport system here (compared to many other places), but the train/bus dance is undeniably rife with obstacles - finding deals, booking tickets, station stiles that are too narrow or not functioning, stairs and lifts at stations, gaps between the train and platforms.

Over the speaker I hear the familiar litany of apologies for all the disabled access facilities that aren’t working. This is on top of the fact that  disabled people cannot use over 40% of UK rail stations , according to disability charity Leonard Cheshire. It’s become an almost daily reminder that despite being one of the most disability-friendly countries in the world, the UK has a lot more work to do to ensure good quality transport options for disabled people.

Then there are the fares. The return trip plus a £2 bus was significantly cheaper than getting separate single tickets (something that will be  changing soon , though uncertainty remains about whether this makes fares more affordable). I had intended to walk solo, but when I saw that one return ticket with a Network Railcard cost the same as two with a Two Together Railcard, I dragged my husband along. There was no way I’d turn down a 2-for-1 deal.

But it’s not really a deal, is it? While I understand cutting costs to incentivise groups to use trains rather than cars, I question the financial demands of single- versus double income households. I find it's one of the ways we absorb underlying narratives that solo travel or habits can penalise; not just socially, but financially as well.

When we reach Sevenoaks, we walk along the high street towards Knole Park. The pedestrian experience is surprisingly varied in the first couple kilometres. I side step potholes on the footpath, sometimes trip over an uneven concrete slab, hug the walls when the path narrows (it should be at least 1.5m), jump onto the grass in Knole Park to let drivers rush past. In a hundred metres or so, we bear right at a fork taking us away from the road and we finally get a chance to fall into stride, side-by-side.

Throughout the rest of the walk we have to fit through gates and and heave over stiles. They are impossible to wheel across, and barbed wire ensures no access around the barriers. I look at the map occasionally, to determine whether stile/gate-free alternatives exist among this jigsaw of private land. Often, there are none, at least without joining non-segregated roads. This automatically excludes wheelchair and pram users, who will have to opt for other routes or modes of transport. I’m reminded that transport is not only cycling, trains, planes, and automobiles: it’s walking and wheeling, too. 


"Head southeast for 100 metres": Wayfinding

In Knole Park, I spot the Greensand Way marker that we will follow to Shipbourne: a yellow arrow with black text. I shove my phone inside my pocket and let my arms swing at my sides. I’ve walked enough to welcome a navigation challenge, but waymarkers allow me to relax and enjoy the surroundings, like the white deer lazing near the trees and the views across Sevenoaks behind me.

As we twist and turn with the arrows, I marvel at the wayfinding tools and resources we have at our fingertips. We have mobiles with GPS signals, sat navs and apps that speak to you turn by turn, compasses as big as your palm with an array of features. Beyond technology, we can observe where moss and other vegetation grow, where the sun sets and rises, the way the trees lean, where water meets land, how contours rise and fall, whether there was footfall before or after the rain.

Signposts are also important to show the public where there is - or should be - a footpath and bridleways. As someone with anxiety, I find comfort in following fingerposts and use anything and everything to make sure I reach my destination. They are powerful tools that keep us from getting lost (when we don’t wish to), and they will always be essential in encouraging people to explore the outdoors. 

On the flip side, in pointing us in our desired direction, fingerposts also say, “This way, not the other way”. We should not wander where they do not point, even if the “correct” path is overgrown, because those fingerposts have informed us where we are permitted to go.

While these are sometimes, of course, directing us away from hazards, there are times it’s not clear why you’re not permitted elsewhere. And if we do not follow the rules, we might find ourselves going from walkers to trespassers, from citizens of leisure to criminals.


Freedom to roam: Boundaries

Upon exiting Knole Park, we cross a country road and join a footpath weaving through the woods. It’s picture perfect, frame ready. I snap a photo, pause, and look up at the shrouded sky between branches still bare from the cold. How endless a grey sky seems, not a boundary line to be found. Whatever the attempts to own airspace, no one has managed to actually divide it physically. 

On land we’ve created a gamut of partitions. As we walk on and approach Carter’s Hill, we follow a path lined with wooden fences, reinforced with barbed wire. Although I understand the hostile fencing is not primarily intended for me, I can’t help feel that the landowner appreciates the added effect of keeping people out as well.

Invented in the 1870s in the US, barbed wire was originally used to keep animals from trampling and destroying crops. Cheap and incredibly effective, settlers snapped it up, and by 1880 more than 80 million pounds of wire was sold. According to  Tim Harford , who listed barbed wire as one of the 50 things that made the modern economy, “Without barbed wire, the American economy — and the trajectory of 20th-century history — might have looked very different.” 

Over time, its purpose expanded to military defence and offence as well as to reinforce land and prison borders. It is difficult to measure how many miles of barbed wire stretch across the globe. One expert estimated that, between 1914 and 1918, one million miles of barbed wire was laid on the Western Front alone.

Today, perhaps many of us see it as part of the landscape, one of those everyday hazards you should be looking out for when you’re in the outdoors. But the wire is known to injure and kill wildlife as well. Historically, it massively disrupted buffalo herds’ access to grazing lands and water, killing millions of buffalo. It is no wonder the Native American tribes who relied on buffalo called barbed wire ‘the devil’s rope’.

The fence and barbed wire round away from us as we head into woodland, and I think about how we separate ourselves in yet other ways.

The footpath ahead marks the boundaries of my steps, so I follow it, as I've always done before.

Admittedly, I never thought much about footpaths until I trekked through the Cairngorms. Unless the guide or map indicated a “grassy footpath”, I’d become accustomed to sticking to footpaths for my safety and for conservation.

But in Scotland, where the Land Reform Act gives everyone the right to access land and water, I started noticing fewer marked paths on the Cairngorms map. For a while, I thought this meant you didn’t walk much of it. During our first night in a bothy, we stayed with another walker who’d spent a lot of time in the park. We asked about the climb to Beinn a' Chaorainn we were planning the next day and he said, “It’s pretty straightforward. You just go up.” 

The next day, we followed the path to where the slope eased. 

“I think this is it,” my husband said. No footpath in sight, and we just went up, continuing to make our way across the following Munros and Munro tops sans footpaths.

It’s pretty straightforward. You just go…

Granted, I think there’s something poetic about footpaths forming organically by other walkers enjoying the same trees, hills, birdsong, as I. But having to pick through the land independently with no predetermined route gave me an acute awareness of the land and vegetation in a way I never had before. Timid steps became more confident, always careful, as I decided each step based on what I felt on the ground, and the walk became what and where I wanted to go.

The freedom to roam is the freedom to walk boundary-free.


Haves and have nots: Resources

The route takes in One Tree Hill and Rooks Hill before a steep descent. We are starting the approach to Shipbourne, and the ground is getting soggier. My boots are collecting a layer of mud underfoot. By the time we reach Shipbourne, it feels like another sole, and the scraper at the church barely makes a difference. The rest of the walk is a pleasant meandering across fields and through pedestrian corridors. By the time we reach Tonbridge, we’re ready for a rest in Fuggles Cafe before hopping on the bus back to Sevenoaks for Venezuelan food at Budare.

On the way home, I spy my caked boots. Even with the mud, wet grass and rain, my feet are toasty and dry. My boots were not cheap, but they were well worth the investment to make walking pleasant regardless of weather. The same goes for the jacket, light running cap, rucksack with ventilation for back sweat, socks that don’t cause blisters, a subscription to OS for detailed maps, a compass, and the list continues.

You don’t need all of these items to start walking, but they do provide advantages in going farther and faster, camping out for less money and bother, getting more experience, and sometimes getting opportunities for paid work.

But we all start somewhere, and, for many, the ability to go for a leisurely walk can be enabled or inhibited by two crucial factors: time and money. Over the years my jobs have provided me enough to need only one job at a time, to save and build up my gear and equipment, and to free up evenings, weekends, and holidays for walks. I don’t have any dependents or caring responsibilities, and I don’t have to spend more money on custom equipment for mobility. Having juggled studies and part-time work throughout university and graduate school, I can sympathise (if only partially) with the pressures of saving time and money for just essentials.

This can be an uncomfortable conversation because of the stigma associated with discussing finances and the fact that there aren’t always easy solutions. This is compounded by a wider issue of persisting racial wealth inequality in the UK. A  recent study  for the Institute for Fiscal Studies Deaton Review of Inequalities showed that while there were significant improvements in educational attainment of almost all ethnic minority groups, that ‘has not translated into better, or more equal, earnings.’ We can build accessible footpaths and offer courses and sessions, but without considering the means by which people can reach those areas and set aside time for a walk, we could be talking in endless circles about the barriers of access and inclusion in the outdoors without effectively addressing them.


These thoughts swirl around my head as I kick off my boots and hang my clothes up. Costs, knowledge, networks, societal rules, barbed wire, passive aggressive signs, gates, stiles, footpaths. The barriers are many, just on this 18km walk.

However, I must remain stubbornly optimistic. People and groups continue to campaign for greater access to land and to defend what little we've got. There are now scholarships and funding for groups and individuals doing fantastic work to bring people outdoors. When I’ve been in the hills recently, I am hardly the only person of colour. There is still more to do and more to talk about - speak with anyone working on equity, diversity and inclusion and the list of challenges is long.

But change is possible and it is happening, and everyone is welcome to help.