WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Depending on which
archaeologist you talk to,

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the Icknield Way is described either

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as the oldest road in
Britain, or more carefully,

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as one of Britain's oldest
still-surviving paths.

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It stretches more than 100 miles
across southeast England,

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and there have been people
walking parts of this path

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since before recorded history.

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Parts of it are still in common use.

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I drove here on the Icknield Way
for a couple of miles,

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it was just a regular country road.

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But parts of it were nearly lost forever.

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All over the English countryside,

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you'll signs that say "public footpath",

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or if you're also allowed to
ride a horse on it, "public bridleway".

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These are formal rights
of way, protected by law,

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and there are more than 200,000 kilometres
of them across the country.

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Landowners do not get a say in
who walks along those paths

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and it's a criminal offence to block them.

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The trouble is that some of
those paths have been lost.

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Sure, they might have
existed once,

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historically, the public had
a right of way,

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but they're not marked down anymore.

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There's meant to be a definitive map,
but it's not complete.

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It's almost like the landowners at the
time it was drawn up

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might've had a say
in what was written down.

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- Back in the '50s and '60s was
when the legislation was introduced

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to actually map public rights of way
for the first time.

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But it was done on a local level,

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so there were definitely
inconsistencies across areas.

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People understood the guidance differently
or even in some small areas,

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there might have been local opposition

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that meant rights of way weren't recorded
that should have been.

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So we've got an incomplete network.

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- Despite the Icknield Way
being thousands of years old,

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legally opening every last bit of it
to the public took a lot of effort.

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Not just research, but also some fairly militant
walking enthusiasts turning up at public inquiries.

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This bit I'm walking on wasn't
marked on maps until the 1980s.

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As the 21st century approached,
the government agreed

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that having these maybe-paths all over
the country might be a bad idea.

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- In the year 2000, the
Countryside and Rights of Way Act

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opened large areas of country for
open access for the first time,

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but at the same time,
landowners wanted some certainty

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about the rights of way map.
If they bought a piece of land,

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if there was a right
of way on there or not.

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So as part of the negotiation,
there was a cutoff date introduced

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and that was the 1st of January 2026,

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and that was basically 25 years on
from that legislation,

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so we've got, you know,
just under five years

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to find all these paths and
put them back on the map.

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- So now, under law, England
has until January 1st, 2026

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to find and log all its footpaths.

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And as with any project with a deadline
that's a long way away,

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very little has happened
over the last couple of decades.

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But with five years to go,
the Ramblers charity decided

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to try and solve the problem
using very modern tools.

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They asked thousands of people
to check one bit of the map each.

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- They were shown that square
on the current OS map

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and they were shown that square
on a couple of historic maps

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from about 120 years ago,
and then we basically got people

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to draw on the difference,
do a big spot the difference.

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We think we've found tens of thousands
of miles of lost rights of way.

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This isn't about creating
new rights of way,

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it's about recording ones that should've
been recorded in the first place.

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Most landowners understand
the rights of way network

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brings billions of pounds
to the economy each year.

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We find a lot of farmers
and landowners like

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to use that public rights
of way network as well.

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- That is a very... political answer.

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There are certainly stories
in the last few decades

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of landowners intimidating or
bribing locals or officials

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into just quietly
forgetting about some paths.

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There are plenty of people

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who would very much like the
public to "get off their land",

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and suddenly finding out that there's
a right of way through your farm

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is often not going to be appreciated.

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- They can only really object on the basis
of the historical evidence.

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They can't object on the basis that

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they don't want that path or
that path is inconvenient,

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but we really want to
work with landowners.

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There's no point, from
a walker's perspective,

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a path just going
through somebody's garden

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if there's a way round that.

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So, you know, in some ways,
the real work starts now

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and that's about proving that

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these paths were historically
public rights of way

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and actually submitting
them to local authorities

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so they can be put back on the map.

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- England is approaching a point
that's very rare in history.

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It started with the first
concept of owning land,

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which was absolutely not some
human universal constant.

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Then, through the feudal system
and the idea

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of all land ultimately
belonging to the monarch.

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Then, to private landowners and
folk knowledge of footpaths.

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After all, when most people

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never went more than a few miles
from home for their whole lives,

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why would you need a map of the footpaths?

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Everyone knew what they were,

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they were common knowledge passed down
from generation to generation.

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But now we're in an age
of GPS, of precise maps,

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and of the expectation that everything
will be on some database somewhere.

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The process of defining who
has the right to walk where in England

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has been going on for millennia,
since before written history,

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but it ends soon, January 1st 2026.

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After that, the definitive map is set,

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and there are no mysterious
maybe-footpaths out there.

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If the Icknield Way hadn't been marked,
it could've been forgotten about.

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Either it exists on the map
or it's gone forever.

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It's not often that you see
a millennia-long process

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come to an end.

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Thank you to Jack Cornish
from the Ramblers

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and everyone who helped with my research.

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I've put links to my
sources in the description.