The Wild Rover: A Blistering Journey Along Britain’s Footpaths by Mike Parker Page B

MP turned Times columnist Matthew Parris and, always looking like a slightly melted Action Man, William Hague. In the 2010 election, the Tory ranks were swollen by the arrival of a real live Action Man, über-yomper Rory Stewart, as the new MP for Penrith and the Border in Cumbria. As part of his Boy’s Own pedigree of soldier, diplomat, writer and adventurer, he spent nearly two years walking 6,000 miles from Iran to Nepal, via Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and, on being selected as candidate for the 1,200-square-mile constituency in late 2009, spent much of that winter getting to know the patch by walking around it, something that he said ‘allows me to capture the spirit of a place in a way that I could not by car’. As you might expect, most Liberal Democrat MPs claim to be fond of walking, even the ones who look as if they would drop dead if they tried, but none really spring to mind as hardcore ramblers. Or anything else, for that matter.
    To today’s politicians, walking is not the hobby du jour that quite projects the image that they are so eager to cultivate. It’s all a bit too frumpy and slow for the insatiable demands of the 24-hour news media. So instead, they must go jogging, for that is far more in keeping with our adrenaline-fuelled, go-getting culture. Jogging is macho and sweaty, and allows them to look as if they are sponsored by Nike (hey, the youth vote!) as they manfully grunt and tug on a water bottle helpfully carried by their private detective. Like so many elements of our modern political system, it is a direct import from the USA, where no self-respecting presidential hopeful fails to take a well-photographed jog or two just prior to an essential vote. It’s a high-risk strategy, though. In May 1991, George Bush senior collapsed while jogging and, for one awful day, the world contemplated the possibility of President Dan Quayle. Even Bill Clinton had a go, when you’d think that footage of him all pink and panting would have been the last thing the spin doctors would want to remind us of. It was, of course, Tony Blair who first brought the habit to our shores, but even Gordon Brown – looking like a sack of coal in trainers – was seen tottering around St James’s Park, no doubt in a vain attempt to outdo serial jogger David Cameron. I suppose that at least we should be thankful that our politicians have looked west for inspiration, rather than east, or we’d have Nick Clegg wrestling bears on the Six O’Clock News or a bare-chested Boris Johnson harpooning carp in the Serpentine.
    The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act came into law two weeks short of the end of the 1940s. The decade had been brutal, bloody and difficult, but there was a sense that better times were on the way, and that the new provisions of the act would be a significant contribution towards that. Bizarrely, however, driving through the creation of ten new National Parks proved to be a whole lot easier than establishing a handful of official Long Distance Paths. While provision for the National Parks could be somewhat vague and general, with extensive exemption from planning restrictions for farming and forestry, the establishment of footpaths was far more specific. Each one needed to be precisely measured, mapped, signed and publicised, and every landowner on its route could – and often did – object. Establishing exactly where public rights of way existed was the major problem, for these were not yet mapped by Ordnance Survey, who were concerned only with the existence on the ground of tracks and paths, and not their legal status as public or private routes. The official OS Instructions to Field Examiners of 1905 had stated their case with characteristic baldness: ‘the Ordnance Survey does not concern itself with rights of way, and Survey employees are not to enquire into them.’ It was not until 1958 that the Ramblers’ Association finally persuaded OS to mark them on their maps.
    Neither were