WALKING: A RECREATIONAL PURSUIT AND A MODE OF TRANSPORT

Janet Cuff with her daughter (photo: Margaret Slater)

Janet Cuff
Ramblers' Association
Member of the NW TAR Core Group
July 2008

Although most people think that walking in the countryside for recreation began in the nineteen thirties, the activity already had in fact a long history before that. The poet Wordsworth was a prolific walker, walking not only in the Lake District but also setting out on a walking tour of the continent in 1790. In 1879, the young Beatrice Webb, staying near Lake Windermere, was enjoying "quiet reading and long rambling walks in this lovely country". Bertrand Russell used to go for long afternoon walks with his friends, philosophising as they went along, and Gladstone was a formidable walker, walking 40 miles one day on a North Wales tour in 1855 and continuing to walk regularly until in his eighties.

These are just a few examples that illustrate that recreational walking did not begin in the thirties. Nevertheless the thirties did mark a significant point in its history in that what had hitherto been a pattern of steady growth suddenly became a 'craze', with the new word 'hiking' coming into use to describe it. Several reasons accounted for the burgeoning popularity of hiking at this time. Walkers had always used railways, but in the inter-war period, buses were added, making access to the countryside much easier. For those in work, the countryside offered a welcome change, with both office and factory workers finding stimulation there after what was for most of them a banal and repetitive weekday life. And for those in the industrial north, there was the refreshing experience of getting out of the smoke and grime of the towns into the relatively clean air of the moors.

The history of recreational walking is not of course confined to the countryside. There is a long tradition of urban walking, albeit quite a different form of walking from hiking, particularly amongst the upper and middle classes.(1) Two factors in particular can be identified as being influential in its development. One was the presence of large urban parks where people could stroll at leisure, showing off their fashionable attire and meeting friends. In London, for instance, Charles II used to walk in St James's Park, for exercise and conversation, as did many of his subjects, including Samuel Pepys, as the park was open to all. In the 1660s, Charles added Green Park, which soon usurped St James's position as the fashionable parade for social display. The use of these parks continued and increased over the years, and in Victorian and Edwardian times more urban parks were created or private ones brought into public ownership. Heaton Park in Manchester, for instance, came into the ownership of the City in 1902 when the 600 acre estate was purchased for £230,000 from the 5th Earl of Wilton. The other factor was the development of the railways in Victorian times and the consequent growth of seaside resorts, where people could take long walks along newly constructed promenades and piers for their health and recreation.

The types of recreational walking described above, both countryside and urban, still exist today, albeit in somewhat different forms. The Ramblers' Association, founded in 1935, now has over 140,000 members and organises programmes of walks all over the country in the same way as it always has done. One difference, however, is that, since the National Parks and Countryside Act of 1949, paths are now recorded and shown on Ordnance Survey maps as public rights of way, making route finding much easier.

Another difference is that many more rural or semi-rural walks are available to those wanting something less strenuous, the more recently created country parks often offering made-up paths for such people or for family walks. Urban walking, on the other hand, has experienced something of a decline and has shown much more of a change than countryside walking. People no longer regularly go to their local park to socialise and display their best clothes, although quite a few will still take a short Sunday afternoon stroll there, especially those with families. However, one use of parks that is still very prevalent is dog walking, dog walkers probably being the most frequent users of public parks today.

So much for recreational walking, but what of walking as a mode of transport - walking for the purpose of getting from A to B, whether it be from home to work, from home to the shops, from home to the bus stop or whatever? Until fairly recently, of course, people walked these journeys regularly, either because there was no other form of transport or because they could not afford alternatives. In the countryside, workers would often walk quite long distances to their place of work, to their local church or to the nearest pub, which is one of the main reasons why nowadays we have such a wonderful network of paths to plan our countryside rambles on- they are paths that have been used for centuries, although for a different purpose. In towns too, people used to walk to reach places they needed to get to, and did so until well into this century. Those old enough to remember the nineteen forties and fifties will have personal memories of this. In the author's case, recollections include being walked by as a child by a parent to a cinema on the other side of Hastings and a mother-in-law who used to walk daily from one side of Gloucester to the other to her place of work, a round trip of four or five miles

What does this history of walking mean for us today as transport activists? We would want to see a continuation of the popularity of country walking, as not only does it contribute to people's health and well-being, but it also brings people into contact with nature, thereby hopefully encouraging them to take an interest in its protection, critically evaluating developments proposed there such as new roads and airport expansion. It is of course up to walkers themselves to make sure that the paths are kept open and usable, but we can help by pressing local authorities to implement the Countryside Agency's 'Quiet Lanes' initiative, creating a network of lanes where non-essential vehicular use is discouraged and slower speeds encouraged, rendering these lanes safe enough to be used by walkers as links in the off-road network. We can also help by lobbying for adequate public transport connections, particularly from the town out to the countryside. Too often these days, walkers drive out from the town for their walks in the countryside. The Ramblers' Association has a policy of encouraging walkers to use public transport, and many of their walks programmes are organised around public transport timetables. However, when the service is scanty or unreliable, it is a challenging task.

We would also want to see a revival of urban recreational walking. It is probably too much to expect that urban parks can ever return to anything like their former heyday, except in a few cases where Heritage Lottery money has enabled extensive restoration, such as at Vernon Park in Stockport, originally opened in 1858 and now enjoying a new lease of life, having been returned to its former Victorian and Edwardian glory. They can, however, be made more attractive by good maintenance and security measures (possibly the return of park-keepers?) thus encouraging greater use for short leisure breaks, which might avoid people feeling the need to drive out to a country park. For those who do want to go out to a country park, probably on the fringe of the town, we should encourage the development of greenways, i.e. linked green spaces leading out from the town, so that some people may feel able to walk or cycle there.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we need to see a return to walking being used as a mode of transport on a significant scale. In the countryside the "Quiet Lanes" initiative may encourage people to walk short distances to local facilities rather than take the car, but as far as work is concerned, our lifestyles have changed so much that the majority of people who live in the countryside now work in towns quite a distance away; we need, therefore, to encourage the use of public transport by lobbying for such things as the retention of rural rail lines and stations. In urban areas, a major problem is that people use their cars for short journeys e.g. to the local shops, to the post office or to the pub.

We need to encourage walking for these short journeys, by ensuring that walking conditions are favourable: we should press our local authorities to keep such things as good street lighting, well-maintained pavements, and priority for pedestrians where they need to cross busy roads high on their list of priorities. We also need to fight to keep urban short cuts open, or urban paths that keep people away from heavily trafficked roads. These have always been vulnerable to closure, often because they get in the way of proposed developments, but they are now further threatened by provisions in Part 2 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which allow such paths to be closed because of alleged crime risks. The Ramblers' Association, along with other organisations such as the Open Spaces Society and the Pedestrians' Association, contests proposals for closure wherever this would mean loss of a valuable link. There are many cases, however, which do not come to the attention of these organisations and which therefore slip through the net, so probably the main message I would like to leave you with is to urge you to be alert to such proposed closures in your own locality and to contact your local authority and councillors as soon as possible in an effort to save these useful routes.

1 Footnote: Charles Dickens regularly walked up to 20 miles in the middle of the night around 19th century London, soaking up the atmosphere and observing the characters for use in his novels.