Prince Charles on Countryfile lately gave a ringing endorsement of walking as a valuable and thought-provoking activity. ‘Walking is a terribly important thing for me,’ said the heir apparent, ‘I find it stimulates the thinking and the reflecting.’ HRH is not the first to notice these properties: solvitur ambulando, ‘it is solved by walking’, ‘sort it out by walking’, is variously attributed to such ancient sources as Diogenes of Sinope (born BC 412) and Augustine of Hippo (born AD 354). For decades the Ramblers have poetically spoken of the ‘refreshment of spirit’ brought about by walking, not only in remote places but indeed just about anywhere; now the medics themselves tell us that walking promotes mental health and well-being, and improves self-perception and self-esteem and mood; it can be as effective, say the Department of Health in their 2011 report Start active, stay active, as anti-depressants or psychotherapy in treating depression.
There are other benefits. Brisk walking improves circulation and the performance of the heart and lungs; it can lower the blood-pressure; it can reduce risk of stroke, and heart disease, the UK’s biggest killer. It can improve control of blood sugar in type-two diabetes; it has an important role in cardiac rehabilitation. Widespread take-up could massively lighten the economic burden caused by physical inactivity (in 2009 each Primary Care Trust spent an average of £5m on dealing with its consequences never mind the loss to businesses from absence through sickness).
No statistician, I have got most of this from a punchy document, well-verified by end-notes and the like, called The case for Walking for Health, lately published by the Ramblers and Macmillan Cancer Support. In it a former Chief Medical Officer for England is quoted thus: ‘there are few public health initiatives that have a greater potential for improving health and well-being than increasing the activity levels of the population.’ And The Times has just reported that walking is every bit as good for the heart as running or jogging. (This it learns from a study by Dr Paul T Williams, of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose findings appear in the latest edition of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, a journal whose title makes the Rights of Way Law Review sound like a bodice-ripper.)
So there you are. We could spend millions on building new gyms, so that people can drive to them in their cars for 20 minutes, walk (or run) on a treadmill for 20 minutes, and then drive home for 20 minutes (there are people who do things like that). Or, we could try and persuade the same people to walk (or run) for that full hour from their front doors. They’re more likely to be persuaded to walk (or run) from their front doors if there’s somewhere attractive – more so than the gym’s treadmill – on their doorstep. It is trite but true that more people will use paths if they find them attractive.
There occurred lately a pleasing ‘on the ground’ recognition of these benefits. In January an Inspector acting for the Secretary of State refused to confirm an order made by Shropshire County Council to extinguish a right of way on the edge of the village of Highley. A development took place there in about 1980, with a new footpath provided part-and-parcel, to pass between two of the houses. At some point not long after it came into existence, the then occupants of the two adjacent houses blocked it off to acquire for themselves privacy. Nobody complained, apparently, which, prompted by these occupants, led to the council ordering the extinguishment of the path, the lack of complaint supposedly showing that it was not needed (never mind that hardly anybody knew about it as it was never signposted; or that not everybody knows to whom such complaints should be addressed, or wants to start a row with neighbours).
Were it not obstructed, the way would have been an excellent link from this semi-urban area to the countryside beyond – which includes the Severn Valley Country Park and the Severn Way – precisely the kind highlighted as important in the statutory guidance that goes with rights of way improvement plans. Small wonder that the parish council, the Open Spaces Society and the Ramblers and several individuals requested the retention and reopening of this path. Noting its potential usefulness, the Severn Strollers – a Walking for Health scheme of this very Council – wanted it open too. Council officers could find no legal grounds for extinguishing it. But councillors made an order, just the same. Because of the objections, it had to go to inquiry before an independent Inspector. The Ramblers argued the health-benefits. The Inspector found that this was a ‘high-value’ route, a ‘clear and obvious link with the countryside’ which would ‘create opportunities to form circular walks of varying lengths’. She took particular note of its value for the enhancement of health and well-being. Consequently she rejected the extinguishment order. A good job it is that they have independent Inspectors, and that this kind of thing is arbitrated by them.
Eugene Suggett is the Senior Policy Officer for Ramblers.
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