Great Western Coffee Shop

It may be the way that this article is written, but this protest seems likely only to stir up ill-feeling;

Mass Right to Roam protest planned in West Berkshire (http://Mass Right to Roam protest planned in West Berkshire)

I suspect that Kinder to Colour has merely jumped on the Right to Roam bandwagon - which I don't support anyway, certainly as far as West Berkshire is concerned. It has quite enough countryside available to the public, and I've seen little evidence that private land with Open Access is much used.

However, I'm very conscious that my weekday environmental work groups are comprised almost entirely of white males, with the weekend ones being better balanced with white females. In my 17 years of belonging to such groups, we've had only a couple of non-whites come along.

Tomorrow I'm working at a farm that hosts coachloads of school-children from quite a wide area. On occasion there's been a number of POC (which, judging from the article, appears to be an acceptable acronym). I must ask the manager how they react to the countryside.

Try this link (https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/mass-trespass-planned-west-berkshire-23769472) instead.

I haven't heard of Kinder to Colour, but the movement to get more non-white people to enjoy "the outdoors" is a bit older than the current "Right to Roam" protests. Steppin Sistas is a group I know of in the Bristol area:
https://youtu.be/tdQYTc2IiLQ

More power to them.

I'm with Marlburian on this one. What's more, as an amateur naturalist I am dismayed at the thought of a large scale protest at a time when the wildlife is vulnerable - breeding season for birds, crucial season for many wild flowers and the habitats of other wildlife too. Recreational pressure is a major problem for many sensitive species and habitats near urban areas.

Being alongside the Thames Path and near the Ridgeway, I do see plenty of "POC" walking them too. I expect like most users, these are predominantly from the middle classes, who get out into the countryside more (will that comment get a response?) for (I would imagine) a combination of reasons, including having the disposable income to spend travelling out of town to do so. I have not though carried out any counts mind to see if the proportion matches the national proportion of our various identifiable ethnic groups.

If you are going to encourage a greater diversity of visitors to the countryside, perhaps we should start in schools. If you don't come from the proverbial "nice middle class" background and have no family history of visiting and appreciating the outdoors, my guess would be that this would be the best way of encouraging it. And it might help with the diversity of the next generation of volunteers who will follow Marlburian into the field volunteering for environmental projects.

For heaven's sake please do not encourage this kind of irresponsible behaviour - how on earth are you going to encourage a welcome if you are going to trash the countryside with a protest like this? It will only engender hostility towards the protesters.

POC?  I'm white - isn't that a colour anymore?

Let's hope that the trespassers, of whatever colour,  don't leave any litter - and how will they cope with "personal needs" miles from civilisation?

Snowdonia: Poo on popular paths 'a danger to health' (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-61149489)

Of course the countryside can easily be accessed by train, which I've used for walks from nearly all the  stations between Oxford and Maidenhead - and occasionally Hungerford and Pewsey.

Countryside Education Trust (https://www.cet.org.uk/)

John Simonds Trust (https://www.rushallfarm.org.uk/john-simonds-trust/)

This latter one is where I work occasionally; recently it's built a hut to cater for autistic visitors.

I'm unaware that the protesters plan to "trash the countryside."

It's shameful that the report will not see the light of day. Tory ministers doing the bidding of wealthy landowners. Said landowners who receive millions in public subsidy to maintain woodland, water courses and for re-wilding.

Just 8% of the UK countryside is publicly accessible. Only 3% of rivers and their banks are accessible. No one is advocating for a complete free for all. Productive farmland, nature reserves, danger zones and the like should continue to have limited acess. But there is far too much of the natural landscape that is closed off to the public for no good reason, other than it 'belongs' to someone. Opening up this land, coupled with more education on how to responsibly roam, is the direction we should be moving in. If it takes protest to achieve that aim then so be it.

What little land we curently enjoy access to is thanks to protesters of the past. It's worth remembering that.

Possibly of interest is the item on West Berks website "Preventing the Dedication of Public Rights of Way"

https://citizen.westberks.gov.uk/prowdedication (https://citizen.westberks.gov.uk/prowdedication)

The register under Section 31A Highways Act 1980 is interesting

https://citizen.westberks.gov.uk/media/35486/Section-31A-Highways-Act-1980-Register-of-Landowner-Deposits/pdf/Register__section_316_Highways_Act_1980.pdf?m=637788798477400000 (https://citizen.westberks.gov.uk/media/35486/Section-31A-Highways-Act-1980-Register-of-Landowner-Deposits/pdf/Register__section_316_Highways_Act_1980.pdf?m=637788798477400000)

quite a few off-shore addresses. The map suggests that there is a more general need for Right to Roam in West Berkshire. At least West Berks publishes its s31 list, not all local authorities are quite so open.

Exactly what was said by one of the participants in a discussion on the term BAME on Bristol24/7 recently. None of the participants were white, btw (and the approximate consensus was that BAME was the best of a bunch of bad terms).

HYOH as long as you LNT.

Now we have FLAs to add the ever-growing list of TLAs!

(Hike your own hike, leave no trace)

I do find myself thinking that the campaign is linking two separate issues in a way that may be counterproductive, appearing to confirm some people's views that non-white people are all troublemakers who don't belong in the countryside. It's already triggered some predictably unpleasant comments on the Get Reading website and no-one has trespassed yet!

Ralph, you have put into words the feelings of unease I had / have about this protest.  I am passionate about equality ... and about environmental issues ... and about openness (be it of speech or access) but I fear that combining them into a single campaign in the way this one is doing (as I understand it) seems destined to combine the forces against any of the three into a united unhealthy (IMHO) opposition.

As an aside, online newspapers who don't curate their below-the-fold comments sections - and who require registration before a visitor can flag a comment - said online newspapers can get in the bin. Reach, I'm looking at you. Editors who run blatantly divisive and inflammatory articles - yup, in the bin too. And escalators on the London underground, lined with ancient LCD screens putting out about 200 watts of heat each into the *heat saturated environment* §§ of the deep tube - in order to display photos of the ex-president of the USA and an ex-newspaper editor with a very questionable approach - yup, in the bin.

Mark

§§ The 'hot LCD versus London Underground air temperature' issue. The energy use aside, this isn't exactly rocket science, yes?

I often despair at the apparent mentality and the evident illiteracy of many people who append comments to news articles.

Yesterday I briefly mentioned the original article to a guy who arranges educational visits to the countryside for young people and he said that those who showed the most enthusiasm were often of colour because they didn't otherwise have the opportunity to leave their towns.

About ten years ago, I drove a Spanish lady living in Inner London from the station to my house and she exclaimed with delight at the greenery as we passed the entrance to a relatively unexceptional council park. At that time I was including  well-known London parks (Richmond, Regent's, St James's) on my visits  to the Capital and found them very pleasant, and on weekday afternoons not busy. If one really wants to visit open spaces, it's easy enough to do so if one makes the effort. She herself lived near Battersea Park.

To return to the Mass Trespass, I repeat my contention that there's already plenty of  countryside, certainly in West Berkshire, open to the public. I walk about 600 miles a year and have a mental list of routes that I would like to take that amount to far more than that.

I do concede that there are a few private tracks that I would like to take for the sake of convenience.

It's... complicated. Footpath networks are often larger than the formal network of rights of way, and when the network collapses to include only the formal ones its easy to lose a few essentials. I'm thinking here of a former workplace with a footpath connection that shortened the walk to the local station to  three quarters of an hour.

Not a right of way, the footpath's now blocked by a leisure development. The former workplace will now be housing (but perhaps not the sort of housing for people who would value a footpaths-and-quiet-roads route to the local station). The diversion, as I found last spring adds perhaps half an hour and involves use of a fast narrow rural road with no pavement.

On the other hand... thinking of a local footpath which takes, for a short distance, a very intrusive route through the somewhat precipitous garden of a rural dwelling, along paths, practically through their kitchen and up a flight of stone steps... it's on a valuable but minimally used route between villages and though the people in the house understandably tried without success to have it diverted at one time. It's still open... fast forward to the c21st and someone puts together what they hoped would be a big organised charity fundraising walk routed around engaging local footpaths... and of course they included this one. (The outcome, this being 2020, Covid killed off the event which is just as well otherwise the stone steps might have caught out a few of 'em.)

Mark

Somewhat OT, but I do hope tht those who expound equality and diversity on this forum and others are of similar mind when travellers set up on a patch of land near them.

This content has been deleted - grahame

I find this intriguing. As somebody who remembers the “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish” signs appearing on “Rooms to let” advertisements, and as someone who remembers the colour bar that Bristol Omnibus Company had in the 1950s and 1960s, and hearing reports even today, of people being less likely to be offered job interviews if they’ve got a foreign-sounding surname, it appears that there is still work to do.

Some 30-odd years ago I was sitting in a pub with a local opinionated individual was holding forth about some travellers who had just moved in to a car park close by. Says he “crime has increased by 300% in Chippenham since those b****** turned up.” I asked for the evidence - had he seen the crime book? Did he know of any cases personally – not hearsay, but evidenced? The answer of course was no, although not stated as a one word straight answer!

I also mentioned that there was a joke doing the rounds at the time in Bristol. “Where do tyre fitters go for training? “ They go to watch a bunch of 6-year-old kids getting tyres off on Hartcliffe estate... There are good and bad in all communities. But generally we don’t tar ‘em all with the same brush

These days racism and sexism is completely non-PC and often illegal. But never mind all that – we are still allowed to be beastly to the gippos, and we don’t do it by halves, do we...

I'd add that many people living in vans and busses are not from "travelling communities" but in fact stay in one place and work a steady job. Their reasons for living in a vehicle are purely financial.

Very OT. ::)

Right back to the start of the thread - it has done so here too, and brought some WAY off topic responses, which have been of considerable concern to our moderator team.

There are big, big topics raised here - which are a long, long way from issues of trains, track and travel planning which is the forum's focus. It's not our main direction, so I am locking the thread for the moment - personally, I am (literally) at sea  and with a limited connection and view, and it may well be that others on the moderator team who have better access and knowledge come in during the day and take this further.