Freedom to Roam in Scotland (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Freedom to Roam in Scotland (2019)

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162 pointsasplake131 comments

I live in Scotland, but grew up in Ireland (where there is no such right). The value of this cannot be understated, IMO. It's not _just_ the right, the fact that it exists forces landowners to consider access routes. Very rarely have I found myself crossing fields full of livestock or someone's front garden, because in most places the landowners have maintained or signalled a preferred walking route. It really is wonderful.

Compare this to Ireland, where one of the most spectacular and celebrated natural rock formations [0], which has been used by the government as promotional material for visiting Ireland, is borderline inaccessible [1], and you are met with signs warning you of trespassing, and when I went last year, there was another sign warning of a bull in the field.

[0] https://www.thewildatlanticway.com/waw/great-pollet-arch/

[1] https://www.bengoesplaces.com/how-to-access-great-pollet-sea...

I visited Ireland this year (+- the Wild Atlantic Way), we considered biking but I'm happy we eventually decided to hike/hitchhike/take buses cause Ireland is not designed for walking/biking. Everything's fenced, roads have crazy high speed limits for their width, there's no pavements outside cities, even forests are banned most of the time.

Hitchhiking on the other hand was great - we waited for more than 15 minutes only once over 3 weeks.

The situation with walking is crazy to see coming from Poland, where most forests are public property, there are almost no fences on fields (partly cause people mostly grow crops instead of keeping grazing animals I guess). It's a very strange to be in the countryside and not be able to walk from one place to another.

I wouldn't necessarily say that's true for cycling. You just need to choose your routes carefully - follow the minor roads, not the major ones you'd use in a car. I've had some lovely days cycling quiet country lanes in Ireland.

Same applies in the UK, though there are some areas (principally the Home Counties) where it's difficult to find a road that isn't infested with speeding Audis.

Maybe i just don't have the intuition on what road traffic to expect in Ireland. The speed limits are like +30-50 km/h compared to a similar road in Poland (for example we walked from Derry to Letterkenny and the road was 1 lane each way with no pavement after a few km. And yet the speed limit was like 100 km/h and constant traffic. And the smaller roads were all orthogonal to it. It was similar near Donegal, it was supposed to be Wild Atlantic Way but you wouldn't want to cycle on the main road, and the small roads weren't going along the coast but towards or away from it.

Anyway, I don't want to complain too much, it was still great. The nature is superb. Just hard to get around without a car.

> though there are some areas (principally the Home Counties) where it's difficult to find a road that isn't infested with speeding Audis.

This is the issue, though. Over here, in France, secondary roads (smaller "départementales", roads you wouldn't take when looking for the fastest route from A to B when neither is directly on that road) are basically rally circuits.

Aside from a few usual suspects, the police don't really patrol them. I know many such roads where I've never seen a single cop after some two decades of riding in nice weather. And, at least around Paris, they're in good enough shape to allow speeding comfortably, but they're barely wider than a single Audi.

Just a note for future visitors, this is actually very accessible now, the land owners have (in conjunction with the government) created a fenced off walkway the whole way down to the arch. You still need to climb over a small trestle at the end, but it's very like the pathways you would find in Scotland.

https://www.irelandbeforeyoudie.com/a-new-pathway-has-been-b...

Oh nice, this is really great to know. Unfortunately, this example was one of the most prominent, we had similar issues at murder hole beach [0] where the access was cut off by a bull in the field, and a few miles away from that, a walk that was built and funded by the council but had access removed after a dispute with the land owner [1]. And we've had similar experiences in Galway, Dublin, Kildare, Waterford,Wexford, Cork and Kerry over the past few years.

[0] https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g21381844-d1...

[1] https://www.hikingdonegal.com/mc-swynne-s-gun-loop

Murder hole beach sure sounds like quite the destination.

it appears that there is a new pathway to murder hole beach, according to the article:

https://www.irelandbeforeyoudie.com/pathway-to-murder-hole-b...

and it sounds like an amazing place to visit, thanks for the mention of it!

It's really a stunning place and I'm glad to see it's been resolved. I've been visiting there for 20 years at this point, and it's really a place of beauty that is worth a detour if you're nearby.

Interestingly, in Yorkshire, where there is the Rights of Way, which gives you the right to pass through private land on a specific path, I had the opposite experience. I can't count how many times I had to pass through ploughed fields, the arrow sign pointing roughly in the direction of the other side of the field, and in between there is... nothing. If it is a popular path then others might have created a faint footpath, so you don't have to tread on the wheat or corn. Maybe this is how the owner wants to discourage wanderers?

The owner must not have thought it through then, because most tourists will chug on straight through their field. Having a marked path is to their own benefit if they have the (mis?)fortune of living on the way to a landmark.

I remember a similar case on Malta, where I went up a hill to get a nice view from a cave, recommended to me as part of the tourist route. The whole access to the cave lies across private property and there's about 20 signs explicitly pointing where to go and what will happen if you go anywhere else. I got to the cave, enjoyed it, got out, never once stepped outside the designated route. I imagine the owner worked out that meticulous path a while ago to minimise tourist noise.

Some landowners I suspect hope that if they let the public footpath get poorly maintained and poorly marked, walkers will tell their friends its a bad walk, easy to get lost, and fewer will try to walk it. That if people can't identify the legal path across a field, they won't cross at all for fear of breaking the law.

Needless to say, this doesn't work well on the stubborn, hardy types who'll spend hours ascending hills for fun - but it might deter the more casual walkers.

Aye - this is definitely the case near me in North Wales - it’s normal to find posts that held trail markers hacked down, stiles festooned with barbed wire like it’s time for some trench warfare, and paths that just disappear into a bog, a river, or a newly built housing estate.

The local farmers generally detest ramblers, as it’s not unusual to find picnic leftovers, balloons, condoms, whatever, in a field with livestock, so I can understand their desire to discourage walkers. Heck, where I live most of the time in the wilds of Portugal, I initially had no reservations about people using our land to access the river - until they started leaving trash and faeces around the place. Now we have no trespassing signs, which saddens me, but I’ve picked up my last pile of shit and toilet paper.

Creating a marked path can increase liabilities. It implies that the path is safe. When someone falls and is hurt, the landowner doesnt want to hear that the "designated pathway" was unsafe, that the totally innocent member of the public was literally sent down the garden path to an injury. So landowners will ignore many paths, adopting an "enter at your own risk" approach. One increasing area is accessibility levels. If a landowner installs a gate or other structure on a path, does that structure have to be wheelchair accessible? Can a landowner install a gate designed to disuade bicycles?

Are you American? I am, and this line of thinking screams "uniquely American" to me, but I'm curious if "liabilities everywhere" is similarly a concern across the pond.

My understanding has been that every other country has much more "common sense" than we do in these matters.

That line of thinking is certainly not British. Rights of way exist; it's not a matter of "creating a marked path". Farmers have a duty to keep the rights of way clear. See https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/environment/countryside/public-r...

People who claim that someone who breaks their ankle on an unmaintained footpath through a field or in the woods in the US will routinely track down the landowner and sue them really need to provide some documentation that's the case.

Health Insurance companies will follow-up with determining if the property/land owner is responsible for the accident and try to sue. Months after ER treatment, I've had to respond that my child's cycling accident on a camp site was not because of the camp site owner's site maintenance. So it's not necessarily the victim who sues, but the victims' insurer.

I'm honestly skeptical that's a common thing however. I've certainly never encountered such a thing and, while I've seen a few cases such as yours mentioned online, it's not something I've ever heard from anyone I know.

If someone received an insurance payout (ie medical expenses covered) then there was absolutely a subrogation discussion between the insurance companies of each party. Upon being given access to electronic law records, new law students are often shocked to see their names on lawsuits they never heard about. That bicycle accident at the mall when you were a kid ... your dad's work-based health insurer sued the mall's insurer to get back the money they paid to the hospital that stitched you up. Thousands of such tiny actions are filed and settled every day.

Last time I had a cycling accident that required an ER trip, I received a packet from my insurer a few weeks later asking for details. The way the questions were phrased, they were absolutely looking for somebody else to pay. Is it common that the insurer takes the next step (actually suing another party)? No idea, but they definitely look for ways to pass the buck.

Well you'll have to define common, then. From the parent comment and "cases mentioned online" I would personally say it's common enough in the US. It's how our system works.

That's fair. I think it's a (possibly logical) extrapolation from the undeniably litigious nature of Americans. See recent: https://6abc.com/water-bead-warnings-are-beads-safe-dangers-...

> At least one parent has sued the maker and distributor of one of the products. The lawsuit says some children are ingesting them, and the beads are blocking airways and organs.

It usually depends a lot on both the culture of the area and how often the paths are used. Where I am in Somerset there are an incredible number of paths, there's barely a field without a path through it. The routes are well marked and have good gates or styles for walkers. They are well used which helps keep the weeds down. Most of the Forrest also goes above the required footpaths and rights of way and keep a lot of permissive paths open too.

Land owners have a responsibility to keep the routes accessible and I think they are paid a small amount for it. Grants are available for gates etc. That said they are rough routes so are fairly muddy at this time of year. I love them and base most of my running around them.

I don't spend much time in the area so I can't really comment on it, but it's definitely (in my experience) the exception rather than the norm. It's happened to me twice in 10 years of living here, both in the same general area (black isle) on two different trips. We are very regular walkers, but we're not "explorers", looking for new or untrodden paths.

There's not necessarily a lot they can easily do, there. Once a route is a RoW the farmer can't close or divert it without the consent of the council. If you've got a RoW crossing one of your fields diagonally then you're going to get a line trampled in your crops whether you like or or not!

A Right of Way I walk frequently in Kent in the UK the farmer has literally put a sign up either end of the path through his crops and then not planted a ~6 foot wide diagonal path through the crops so you're walking with growing wheat on either side of you and a cleared path where you can be comfortable you're not destroying his livelihood... if more did this it would make it so much easier.

Reading [1], is it really true under Irish law that as long as you are walking on one side of the fence (I'm not sure if “correct” is the best word to use here, given that it's clearly the dangerous side), you are not trespassing? I would expect that land ownership extends beyond the fence and includes the cliff as well.

I dont live there anymore, just visit a few times a year, so I'm afraid that I'm unsure on the specifics!

It is very nice to be able to walk mostly where you want, although it doesn't always mean that landowners won't challenge you when you're walking.

Also worth noting that the right to roam doesn't apply to people's gardens (https://www.gov.scot/policies/landscape-and-outdoor-access/p... and https://www.outdooraccess-scotland.scot/enjoying-scotlands-o...)

It applies to golf courses which I think is a bit silly. Walking on a fairway is not a good idea, and if a golf balls hits you I'm pretty certain it's the golfers fault.

It works pretty well in practice. There are signs asking you to wait if someone's about to swing and so on. And golf courses aren't that pleasant to walk on if you're not a golfer, so you tend to walk quickly along an arterial path that has plenty of golfer traffic anyway until you get to the other side.

The main reason this is convenient is there are a very long paths that would be quite inconvenient if you took away a few segments where you cross along the edge of a golf course for a few minutes.

I stay in Scotland and had always assumed the right to roam also applied to gardens. I thought it was cool that the law would leave it up to individuals to be respectful, and not have to state obvious exceptions in its wording.

The law still does defer to folk’s common sense and decency (to not leave litter etc.) but today I learned that it does explicitly state you’re not allowed to just parade into someone’s garden!

The absence of this, at least in the US, is that there's essentially no country side properly understood. A bucolic permeable area that a city person can integrate in their daily life.

The only way to enjoy the outdoors in America is as an activity. Drive there, park there. Do your thing. Come back. There's no osmosis or liminal space between urban and wilderness. It's either mechanized space for cars, or fenced off space for outdoor activity on the other (and even that you'll often end up sharing with off-road motorsports enthusiasts).

It shocked me for example, living in western europe, how easy it was to leave a bustling city center and enjoy rural serenity, and integrate this day2day. A bicycle commute through farmfields; a longer weekend hiking trip between cities; a trainride to a neighboring town; ... Whereas, I live in a state now that's by all measures a lot more rustic, access to the outdoors is completely packaged. It feels as if it is a product (even though access could be free).

I try to explain this difference here, and it is as if people genuinely cannot comprehend. There's this veil, a mist between us, I cannot articulate this difference. When my compatriots drive on the highways, they see mountains and vistas, and to them, that alone, is the experience (and definition) of rural life. But then, that nature is not integrated at all in daily experience. only as part of a movie playing through a windshield. I guess I need a better way of explaining this integration of town and rural life, I haven't found a way to characterize it. Muir for example was very much of the escape-to-wilderness variety. I guess I'm talking more about Jane Eyre walking country paths to deliver a letter in town. If anyone has good literature on the topic that gets at this difference, how it is possible that a much denser populated area in western-europe end up feeling more serene and bucolic than sparsely populated woodlands in the US, would love to hear it.

I don’t have words or additional literature to share but you’ve eloquently shared a lot of what I’ve been trying to articulate forever. The idea of the outdoors having become a “packaged experience”… to be experienced during daylight hours set by some municipal corporation…

There are a few places around the US where I feel like this idea generally doesn't hold up, However I totally understand what you mean and it is the truth for many people living in the US.

My examples would be communities situated near or around State/National parks. There is very much a just walk around in the integrated nature sort of feel there.

Specific example towns:

Keene Valley, NY Joshua Tree, California

To a lesser extent in the bay area east, and North along where the towns butt up against parks, and accessible areas.

Additionally I've found that towns/cities which have a major university that has open access for the public typically has the ability to wander and "lose yourself" feeling Berkley in CA has this feeling for me.

Thank you, I'll check those out on future trips!

I'm not sure where you're living that you haven't experienced easy access to countryside. It's always been in easy reach in the 7 western states I've lived in, even in the Bay Area and the very center of Boise. In fact, if the land wasn't set aside as agricultural land, it was pretty rare that it was fenced off, even.

Granted, you do see fences to keep vehicles out, but that might be an artifact of our car-centric culture: if a path looks arguably driveable, eventually someone will try to drive it, regardless of whether or not they can get the vehicle out.

In CO I routinely see signs saying things like "This Property Protected by the Second Amendment" and "Trespassers will be Shot". I take such threats seriously. I've only walked onto such a property once.

(It would have been very inconvenient not too, I knew that the person who posted the sign was lying about the area being off limits, I had very good reason to suspect they weren't on the property, and I'm usually read as white)

Midwest, mid-size city. Lived eastcoast too, was the same.

You might be interested in the essay by William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness", about the : https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wildernes...

The book Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit digs into this -- I'd recommend it

Thank you, ordered!

One of the interesting comparisons between public land and private in the US I recently encountered was on a forum about long range target shooting.

One person posted a fairly blunt statement that Texas was a modern gun owners paradise.

People concurred from many perspectives (very few limits on what you can own, etc), but also pointed out there is VERY little public land in Texas where you can go shooting independently. Everywhere you can shoot legitimately is an established range on private land, or a range of a private club, or similar. Or you have to know somebody who owns or controls a large chunk of private ranch land and will let you set up targets. Texas is almost entirely made up of private land.

As compared to California, which has famously very restrictive laws, but also has vast areas of public land (both state and federal govt owned) in some very sparsely populated rural areas, where target shooting is officially permitted as long as you meet some basic safety and no-littering standards. In California you can totally drive out into the desert and DIY your own temporary range on what will likely be BLM land.

Not possible at all in Texas. Same with public lands in WA, OR, ID in many counties.

In the US it gets a little crazy: Land is separated out into square plots in quite a few places, especially the later-colonized west, think 'chessboard'. Companies buy all the white squares, leaving the black squares as public land. Which is now entirely inaccessible from anywhere except their private land.

Lots of shady duderanch companies do this.

There's an interesting legal dispute: Is crossing diagonally from one 'black square' to the next 'black square' tresspass? Technically unless you are infinitely tiny, your bulk does theoretically pass over white square.

Something has always fascinated me about New World borders of different kinds being so square.

Iowa is divided so neatly into 99 square counties (apart from the 99th, a rectangle with a funny story), Wyoming itself is literally a four-sided shape the size of Britain.

This kind of thing is so mind-blowing to a European.

Yet somehow, despite the general tendency to squareness in political boundaries, electoral boundaries wind up with bizarre shapes...

On that note, what's the squarest country in the world?

I think Sudan, Egypt, and Libya would be contenders. I suppose there's probably a general principle at work that if your country's borders were decided not by geographical or cultural boundaries but rather by an occupying bureaucracy, then there's a high probability of squareness.

Or if your territory is made up partially of land the ownership of which isn't a pressing concern for anyone because it doesn't support a population and has few resources.

The western part of the boundary between U.S. and Canada is unusually straight, but I suppose that was an expedient agreement at a time when neither side wanted to go to war over it. Not that relations were totally peaceful or friendly.

Egypt probably looks the closest to one.

Switzerland gets a honorary mention - the country might not be, but the people are total squares.

Thats' a bit unfair.

And back on topic, Switzerland's Wanderweg paths are numerous, very well signposted with bright yellow signs, and excellently maintained as well as clearly described in numerous guidebooks. Walking the countryside in Switzerland is a joy.

And Switzerland features the most drop-dead-gorgeous hiking maps of any land I've visited. It feels like each mountain was hand-drawn and shaded by someone who knows and loves it, and you can often ID them from the ground based on the pictures. But the artistic details are still subtle enough not to interfere with the roads, trails, POIs, and text.

> It feels like each mountain was hand-drawn

They might be! https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/arts/alps-map-glacier-roc...

cf https://map.schweizmobil.ch/?lang=en&layers=Wanderland%2CVel...

also https://www.schweizmobil.ch/en/hiking-in-switzerland/more-wl...

The mystery of the squarest country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mrNEVUuZdk

I think Europeans may not really get how big some of these places are until they experience it first hand - it can easily take 9 hours at freeway speed to drive from one corner of WA state to the other (Blaine to Walla Walla), and that's if you stick to the freeways and highest possible speed highways, keep cruise control on at 115-120 km/h wherever possible, and take an absolute bare minimum of stops for gas and restrooms only.

On the other hand just the province of British Columbia is the size of a good chunk of all of western Europe added together, in square km, and can take a very long time to get from Vancouver to somewhere in the far north (or a far off coastal location by combination of roads and ferries), due to its many mountain ranges and thousands of km of coastline.

I think Americans may not really get how big some of these places are until they experience it first hand...

Consider a San Diego - Boston route, which crosses pretty much the whole US (OK, not Alaska), is around 3000 miles and 45 hours net, give or take.

This compares surprisingly well to a route between Lisbon, Portugal and Tallinn, Estonia, which crosses pretty much the whole of Europe (OK, not the nordic countries, also not even the UK), is around 2700 miles and 44 hours net, give or take. And this is not even an extreme, for example a Gibraltar - Tromso, Norway route (South - North) is 3300 miles, and would take more than 55 hours!

It is also easy to forget that Europe (the continent) does not stop at the EU borders. But some might consider adding the Russian plains cheating!

>... it can easily take 9 hours at freeway speed ...

I think most Europeans would have built high speed railways to get around in half the time to be honest.

7.5 hours from Strasbourg to Perpignan via train. 9 hours via car at an average of 100kmh.

So the train is approximately freeway speed.

Lille (Northern France) to Marseille (Southern France) - 1000Km

10 hours via car at highway speed - 5 hours with train

For long distances you'll be using the TGV (300km/h) if you need to go to smaller cities the trains will go roughly at highway speed

What percentage of cities in Europe have TGV lines?

TGV is France’s intercity high-speed rail system, so not many.

But, just about every major and secondary city in the EU has high speed rail service. As you move into central and Eastern Europe, the speeds drop quite a bit, but are still faster than anything Amtrak offers (except the short section of Acela line that can actually go fast).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Hi...

> I think Europeans may not really get how big some of these places are until they experience it first hand

Conversely, I think most Americans don't get how big the UK is, or how much longer it will take to get around than you think.

Look at a map of Scotland. If you start at Glasgow on the west coast about a third of the way up, and drive to Scrabster, the northern end of the A9, that will take you at least 9 hours too.

And how dense England is - I'm from Leicester and one hours drive (give or take) I can reach Nottingham, Derby, Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield, Northampton, Lincoln. Two and a half hours drive and it's London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford....

And if you’re a tourist, add even more time because you’ll stop every 20 miles for a stunning view, castle, or picturesque village. ;)

Driving time in Scotland is largely due to road size/design, not absolute distance. Once you get north of the Glasgow/Sterling/Edinburgh zone, you have a few “major” dual carriage ways and a lot of smaller roads. And the Highlands and Hebrides have single track, so if you’re going to a small coastal village or similar, you might be stopping every few miles to let somebody by in the other direction.

And if you're not a tourist, you'll be somewhere in the mile-long queue of cars stuck behind them, pottering along at 25mph gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles like they've just lapped the Nurburgring in a Veyron and panic-braking every time they see a sheep within 200m of the road.

Or worse, tourist in a caravan. Most terrifying part about driving in Skye is oncoming caravans with no sense of their own width.

> and can take a very long time to get from Vancouver to somewhere in the far north > due to its many mountain ranges and thousands of km of coastline.

And let's not forget the weather. In some times of the year the North of BC might as well be on another planet considering how accessible it is.

When a property is landlocked like this, you should have a right of way through other people land, isn't it the case?

Google "easement by necessity real estate law"

Ok it is created by court :/ no way I would have found the us legal term without you. In France it is automatically created, and it lowers value of your land.

State laws vary but in many cases the creation of a landlocked parcel implies the right of an easement.

The US western state concept of township, range and section for land survey and land title ownership is interesting. Dry land wheat farmers in some parts of WA own entire "sections". You can see them from space east of Wenatchee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_(United_States_land_su...

A section isn't large for a farming operation. It's only a square mile or 640 acres. Drive through the Central Valley of California and you'll pass through many much larger parcels. My husband and I own a section not far from Yosemite (as the crow flies). It's pretty rugged and remote - basically wilderness with a house and some cattle.

I can't think of any examples where they'd show up in aerial photos, but the traces of original Spanish land grants in California are still clearly in the land registry, some still undivided.

There’s a (I think “Tom Scott”) video about how these squares are accessed at the touching corners using (believe it or not) the conceit of crossing through the air using a step-ladder.

Tangentially related, Spain's coasts are public domain and therefore do not require freedom to roam: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_de_Costas_de_Espa%C3%B1a

(Unfortunately, English Wikipedia does not have a translation)

Also Portugal has no legal concept of private beach, although some Algarve hotels try to make access difficult in a somewhat misleading way.

This is a good legal overview: "Beach Access, Property Rights, and Social-Distributive Questions: A Cross-National Legal Perspective of Fifteen Countries" - https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/4237/htm

The extent of shoreline is different per countries that enforce it: https://www.mdpi.com/sustainability/sustainability-14-04237/...

California’s coasts as well!

Michigan's Great Lakes Coastlines as well.

With plenty of dark patterns by rich coastal homeowners to obscure access. Think GDPR/ePrivacy directive cookie consent practices, but for beach access.

Vinod Khosla

TIL! Thanks.

https://www.kqed.org/science/1955623/the-neverending-battle-...

This is interesting, because I definitely encountered beaches, that were private, but it has been before 2018, until a transition period changed, so maybe that changed? And otherwise I found spanish land (around Huelva) to be strictly divided by barbed wire fences with no clear way of knowing whether I entered private property or not, by following public (dirt) roads, when hiking.

Not so nice for wildlife as well.

Beach shoreline is public but sometimes there are no public footpaths specially around cliffs or rocky shoreline.

Legally though you could still access those beaches by boat or swimming and you would not be trespassing.

Well, I was referring to fences on the beach. But like I said, it has been before 2018 at which time apparently a transition period ended, so maybe (and hopefully) they are not there anymore?

I really like the concept of open beaches.

“You have to respect the interests of other people, care for the environment and take responsibility for your own actions.”

My experience is the (few) individuals that struggle with this (leaving litter, leaving gates open, trampling crops, letting dogs into animal pastures, interfering with other peoples recreation) really do spoil it for everyone and irreparably damages relations with landowners

It's often easy to avoid the worst offenders, though. Place a few trash bins close to popular camping spots, and then more people will clean after themselves. Have a spring in the gate so it always closes itself. Make a marked path that is easy to follow that avoids crops. Etc. etc. Most people behave if you make it the most convenient thing.

Out of interest, where are you commenting on?

I agree it's true there's always a risk of these "tragedy of the commons" style issues with bad individuals, but this kind of access is a fairly long established tradition in Scotland and it seems to work reasonably well (although other commenters have mentioned a few exceptions where by-laws were put in place for trouble spots, but thankfully those are targeted in location and time of year)

Seems there’s a bit of this happening in the most remote northern section of Scotland (where the NC500 route was established). I’m sure some of the complaints are just NIMBYs who don’t want any change at all, but given the state of some of my local parks (DC suburbs, USA - trash heaps and poo piles all over in 2020/2021), I’m not surprised careless tourists are mucking up the Highlands.

https://gailantheabrown.com/2021/08/12/poo-potholes-and-park...

This should be the norm everywhere assuming non-landowners are fewer than landowners shouldn’t it? Failure to have freedom to roam/freedom of access either means a lapse in democracy (wildly popular thing never politically proposed for some reason) or some weird constitutional quirk making it hard to legislate.

Do you mean the opposite? In Scotland, something like 400 people own 50% of the land. 16 of them own 10% of the total land area.

Yes - too late to edit that one lol.

A reminder the seashore below high tideline has always (as far as I know) been public land, and remains so under this code. Dunes and bird nest area and SSSI have restrictions as do airports, military and nuclear installations (the latter may have imposed restrictions out to open water)

Some places in Scotland like Gruinard island were restricted due to Germ warfare experiments until comparatively recently.

Norway also has this. “Allemannsretten”

As does Sweden.

It’s been customary law in Sweden since pretty much forever. But interestingly it had no explicit foundation in written law until 1994, when a short passage was added to the Swedish constitution: “Everyone shall have access to nature in accordance with ‘allemansrätten’” (“Alla ska ha tillgång till naturen enligt allemansrätten”).

Similar in Norway (though not added to the constitution) - it was for very long considered so obvious as to be unnecessary to codify, as pretty much the only area of Norwegian law treated similarly as in common law jurisdictions.

Which becomes even more interesting when you find out that allemansrätten is never defined in law.

As does Finland.

I truly wish we had this south of the border. The public footpaths in the English Midlands seem hedged in by one Private Land No Trespassing sign after another.

We don't? I always thought we did.

You can put up a sign, but that doesn't change the law. It's like when people put up "Your car will be towed if you park here" signs where they'd _like_ you not to park, doesn't change my right to park there (does increase my chances of doing so though, because they couldn't just ask politely).

There's no right to roam in England & Wales in general; there are specific rights of way, but most land is privately owned and trespassing on it is illegal.

No it isn’t. Trespassing in England and Wales is NOT illegal.

If you’re asked to leave you have to but trespass itself is not a crime, it’s purely a civil matter.

See the opening sentence from the CPS website:

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/trespass-and-nuisance-...

The point of right to roam is it isn't even a civil matter: one can roam private land, and can't be asked to leave solely on that basis.

That’s true and it would be much better but we still have more rights than many people would tell you.

E.g. you have the right to “rest” on land adjacent to the side of a footpath or bridalway. Now the definition of “rest” is undefined because that’s how common law works.

So you can probably make the argument resting includes camping over night (when leaving no trace) until someone proves in court that it doesn’t.

Here’s another fun fact: you can also legally ride a bike on a “footpath” so long as you discount when you come to pedestrians. That one was clarified in Hansard but people blindly assume that they don’t have that right without checking.

The point is, things are usually legal unless there’s a law and legal precedent to say otherwise.

> If you’re asked to leave you have to

Really asking: Wouldn't a "no trespassing" sign be considered an ask to leave?

What if the trespassers just ignore the sign, and walk on/over the privately owned land without the landowner ever becoming aware of it? How could the landowner sue the unknown trespassers when there wasn't even any evidence of their trespassing?

What about a security camera?

What about a security camera? What can the landowner do if they've already left the private land without committing any crimes?

Yes, that's what I was asking. Your previous comment indicated the homeowner needed evidence in order to sue for trespassing. But it seems there was no crime committed after all.

"Not criminal" doesn't mean "not illegal". Breach of contract is a civil matter (in general) but it's still normally described and understood as illegal.

Last summer we hiked the Bruce Trail in Ontario, Canada, and discovered for myself that the local laws are NOT so free and permitting. You can't just set up camp anywhere you want, only on predefined campsites and trails. Without that freedom camping is -much- less fun.

In England we have this weird legal gray area around wild camping.

It’s not strictly speaking legally protected but it’s not illegal either.

Trespass in England is definitely not yet a crime[1].

Apart from a few specific areas like Dartmoor where wild camping is specifically legal it amounts to, you can camp where you like but you can’t damage anything doing so and if you get asked to leave you have to.

If you don’t leave when asked to by the land owner only then it becomes a criminal matter.

The whole process becomes even murkier because it’s often hard to know who actually owns the land. A random member of the public can’t ask you to leave.

It turns out that land owners don’t often want to admit they own the land.

The whole thing is a bloody mess but can be summed up as, it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission so leave no trace.

1. I say not yet because several wealthy Tory party donors have campaigned for years to change the law.

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/trespass-and-nuisance-...

I would love the right to wild camp in England. That said I do wonder how well it would stand up to our much higher population density. The current system does kind of work despite its lack of rules or clarity. I think our trespass rules are a good compromise.

I've heard this argument before but there are plenty of remote, sparsely populated places in England (e.g. Dartmoor, the Peak District). Yes, wild camping in more densely populated areas might be a problem, and England has more of those due to its higher population density, but similar places would in practice be off-limits in Scotland too.

These rules are the artifact of a different era and economics.

I've lived at two Bruce Trail trailheads, and thankfully, most people are responsible. The problem where I am now is that these laws and rights of way were made when the population was much smaller. We get loiterers, "kids" but really people in their 20s from nearby suburbs with subwoofers in their cars parked at the trailhead and yelling. Rock faces on the trail are covered in spray paint, and not the grafitti art people are so sentimental about.

I could really see a revolt against these old rights as societies change. They were made for a different time culture where there was a recognition that what made them beautiful and desirable was our respective absence and invisibility. "Leave no trace" is a pretty refined value and it's not universal.

On public lands, it varies a lot in the US depending on popularity. In popular wilderness areas and national parks, it's pretty common to need a backcountry permit to camp at a specific location--and in some cases these are very hard to come by. In other cases, especially BLM land but often national forests as well, you can camp more or less where you want to.

To clear out the possible confusion: it's not about cellular network roaming.

It's about the freedom to navigate freely on private land because most of Scotland is privately owned.

I doubt anyone was confused....

I don't speak English natively, I am much more used to roaming when referred to telco usage abroad than when referred to its original meaning.

I doubt it's just me, but I'll be quite happy it is.

You are right. I just read it…

We also have freedom to roam; is this a civil vs common law thing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)

It's more a nordic country thing (plus some other european countries). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

France, the home of civil law, does not have it.

On the other hand, we have a recent but strong law ensure coastal paths along the sea or ocean. Such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_34

We take it for granted and the restrictions when traveling abroad are always surprising.

Who is "we" in your comment?

People in my country, one of {Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland}.

easy on the PII there

says a handle whose birth year is likely in the range 1961-1975? :P

cf https://youtu.be/L8pKkpxD7ws?t=36

Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVZJYtq-jYs

Same in Norway

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