Rights of way marking

There are several points worth making here.

Firstly access rights on paths is only really important in England and Wales, in Scotland there is no concept of Rights of Way but there is also a very general right to roam, so you can basically walk any path in the countryside.

in England and Wales your best bet, if you're worried about permissions, is to use Ordnance Survey mapping - to which you have unlimited access on this site, including at 1:25K, so long as you are logged in.

Having said that in our experience there are three problems with OS mapping:

1. OS simply omit many paths on which you do have a right to roam in England and Wales but which aren't rights of way. OSM is considerably better for these sort of paths.

2. Even where paths are shown they're often not as accurately drawn as OSM. Paths are desire lines, especially on open ground, and so they move about over time but OS only survey them infrequently, if at all. So often the path no longer goes where OS have it marked.

3. Just because a path exists on a map and is marked as a right of way by OS does not mean that it is a legal right of way (see OS's disclaimer about this on their maps - you need to refer to the Definite Map at the relevant county offices to be sure) and, more significantly, even if it is it may no longer exist on the ground or be impassable. In the days when I was roaming in southern England and relying on OS mapping I had several bad experiences relying on OS maps in this regard.

So overall my recommendation when thinking about walking in a new area would be to survey it beforehand if possible using whatever resources you have to hand. Our aerial photography is very helpful in this regard and we also find Geograph photography can be useful (and is available from within the app if you're a supporter).

By vicarage on 09/05/21 at 7:55am

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, though aerial photography is no use for access decisions. But it does not address the point as to why this site does not pick up the OSM access details, which are more practically useful than the OS ones. I would rather use this site than go to a planning office.

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By TallPaul on 09/05/21 at 10:50am

We have no plans to include access rights in our rendering of footpaths in England and Wales because:

1. The data on OSM in this regard is poor - not least because they're hampered by copyright restrictions (the Definite Map and Definitive Statement are copyright of the relevant local authority) so it can't be relied upon. And note my earlier remarks about paths on the ground often taking different routes to the path marked in the Definitive Map.

2. The data on OSM in this regard is incomplete - so if we did render footpaths as public rights of way in England and Wales then, by implication, those not so marked would appear not to be public rights of way ... but in reality they may well be.

The consequence of this for us is that we would be criticised both for showing paths as rights of way when they're not, and for showing paths as not being rights of way when they are. This is exactly the same situation that OS is in but it's far worse for us as we have less reliable geodata to work with.

Our recommendation would be to use all sources of geodata when planning a walk: so look on OS (at 1:25K) for indication of rights of way if you're walking in an area where it matters, use WayMaps for better mapped (and more) paths for planning your route¹, use aerial photography and Geograph to assess the state of the path and how much it seems to be used, use Google Street View to look at the path where it intersects with roads, and so on.

1. A route describes where you are intending to go, point by point. For more information click here.

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