To those who hurtle past in their cars, grid reference 134028 seems just another bit of the bleak moorland that divides Yorkshire and Lancashire, just north of the main A628 Sheffield to Manchester road.
It lacks the impressive scenery of other places in the Peak District National Park – no chain of cliffs like Stanedge, no reservoirs or dams like Derwent, just another patch of wind-swept heather. But, just a couple of miles from the road, where the river Don rises, so does indignation. Grid reference 134028 marks a source of protest.
Leave your car at Salter’s Brook, walk due north for two miles across the open countryside and you find the Don Well. But unless you belong to the shooting collective with rights to the land you’ll be breaking the law.
Snailsden Moor, where the Don begins, is one of an estimated 30 areas of moorland inside the boundaries of the Peak where there is no public access, over half of all the uncultivated land inside the park.
The 1949 National Parks and Countryside Act was supposed to allow access agreements between landowners and the Peak Park authorities to give the public freedom to roam.
But, although the Peak contains over 50% of all access agreements in the country, huge tracts of land still remain out of bounds to members of the public.
This, argues the Ramblers Association, is proof that voluntary agreements over access to the land just haven’t worked and now its time to legislate for a “Right to Roam”.
Snailsden used to be owned, until quite recently, by the public. Like most of the Peak District, it is made up of a peat bog that yields tiny streams and rivers which eventually drain into Snailsden, Winscar or Harden reservoirs, previously owned by the Yorkshire Water Authority.
Then, in the mid-1980s when the Yorkshire Water Authority was privatised to become Yorkshire Water plc, it slipped quietly into the private sector.Yorkshire Water claims that its hands are tied over Snailsden, despite committing itself to opening as much of its land as possible to the public. Although technically they own the land, the shooting rights have been sold off to a Sheffield businessman, John Sinclair, who has the final say in who can wander on the land.
“The most pathetic thing,” says Terry Howard, spokesman for the local Ramblers Association and pressure group Sheffield Campaign for Access to Moorland (SCAM) “is that there’s a fence running right the way along the land, all the way to Holme Moss” “You look at it from a distance and it all looks like one piece of land, but there’s a barbed wire fence running down the middle.” Land on one side belongs to Yorkshire Water. On the other side of the wire it is owned by another privatised utility, North West Water. Yorskhire’s patch is private, but public have a defacto right to roam over North West Water’s bog, despite a similar shooting collective also using the land.
The shooting community defends its rights to close off moorland. Wildlife, and the natural habitat the Ramblers claim to love, would actually be damaged by a ‘Freedom to roam’, according to the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC). They cite examples of award-winning regenerated moorland being torched by careless bird watchers and nests of birds trampled by parties of schoolchildren. “Even a responsible walker coming onto moorland heather causes problems because it’s such an at risk habitat,” Lesley Ferguson, of BASC, said, “Shooting actually preserves the heather. You need to ensure that it’s managed properly and you can’t do that with open access all year round.”
The BASC believes that everyone will be best served through voluntary agreements rather that a statutory right to roam. “We are not against access to the countryside, we just need a bit less militancy from either side.” she added.
Yorkshire Water appears to agree; one of its reasons for refusing access to Snailsden moor is that it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) and an area specially protected by the European Union. But Terry Howard claims most of the Peak District is a SSSI or an EIA, including huge chunks of National Trust land over which there is a right to roam. “Landowners just use wildlife as an excuse. “The landowners should really be addressing other landowners that plough up their land or bulldoze tracks and car parks across the moors, not the odd walker that might stumble across some wildlife.” “The Peak Park authorities accept that there’s no conclusive proof that people will disturb the wildlife” he said.
The Peak Park is the most visited national park in the country and finding a bit of solitude is increasingly hard.
A right to roam would disperse visitors over all the park, argues SCAM. Pressure on “honeypot” tourist attractions would diminish. But Yorkshire Water rejects this idea: “I can’t really see what the problem is. Most people will use existing paths and tracks over the moors that are already there,” says John Davies, the company’s area conservation manager. “Trying to trample over heather moorland is basically hard work. Very few people actually get out of their cars and onto the high moors anyway”
Although there may be an agreement in the pipeline for a concessionary footpath across the moor, nothing has happened so far. The ramblers’ impatience is growing: a mass trespass across Snailsden moor is planned for May to show the depth of feeling the issue arouses. “People need somewhere to go and have time to reflect and get away from all the crap” says Terry. “It’s all part of the spiritual side of getting out onto
the moors.”
Dom Perry
