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Walking, The Right To Roam and The Peak District

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When we roam across these high tops and glory in the vastness of the landscape, we remember that this hasn't always been our right. There was a time, within living memory, that all this belonged to the select few who guarded their rights, for hunting,shooting and fishing, jealously. For the many workers trapped in the towns and cities, during the working week, and providing the manpower for heavy industry, their few free hours of freedom, spent on the hillsides, was doubly precious.

There were many people who felt so strongly that we should all have the 'right to roam' that, in 1932, events took place that became known as the Kinder Mass Trespass. Several hundred ramblers defied the law and the gamekeepers and walked on the moors around Kinder Scout. After this first trespass 5 ramblers were sent to jail for 6 months, outraging the public who rallied to support the movement. 10,00 people joined the next mass walk on the moors, as public sympathy grew.

This action became a turning point in the way public access was viewed, in this country, and subsequent acts, still on-going, have been passed allowing access, defining responsibilities and extending the ways in which the public can access these areas. Progress, at first, was relatively slow but gathered momentum with the setting up of the Ramblers' Association and then the creation of the Peak District National park. It was the new millennium, though, before the Countryside and Rights of Way Act passed, giving walkers the right to roam freely in open country.

For many walkers the last lines of each verse, of Ewan McColl's song. 'The Manchester Rambler, celebrating the 'right to roam' sum it up, '..... / And sooner than part from the mountains, / I think I would rather be dead.'