Protecting Fox Hill Footpaths

Having successfully gained approval for a new Public Right of Way within Fox Hill, we would like to apply for three more Public Rights of Way on Fox Hill private land. We need your help to protect these for future generations.  At present the landowners kindly allow the public to walk these routes but there is no obligation to do this.  From our previous application for several routes, we have learnt a lot of lessons, particularly with the help of the Ramblers Association.  

This time we wish to focus on three known popular routes as follows:  

1. from the base of Fox Hill (which is Council owned) to the new Public Right of Way along the pylon line. 
2. from the pylon line to meet the Public Bridleway between the pylon line and Highland Avenue
3. from Kent Close to join the Council land at the Dorset Way entrance. 

We believe that now the new Public Right of Way has been granted these three routes now meet the requirement for these routes to join existing Public Rights of Way, Public Roads or Council land at each end.

How you can help

To make an application, we must provide evidence that these routes have been used as footpaths for at least the last twenty years.  This evidence is by means of a form being completed and a map drawn of the route you have taken (we are not allowed to provide you with an actual route ourselves).  You do not have to have walked any of these routes for the whole twenty years yourself.  As an example, if you walked one or more of these routes from 2004 to 2013 and someone else walked the same route from 2012 to today the two together show twenty years usage.  Friends of Fox Hill will provide the necessary forms and copies of a blank map with a guide on how to complete them.  We would then collate them and look for evidence of the same route being used by different people and then make the application.  This would be submitted to the Council and landowners (in these cases there are two in total) by Friends of Fox Hill.

We are very grateful to the more than forty people who helped us with the last application that we made.  There is a certain number of historical users we need for each route and if you can help protect these footpaths by being willing to provide evidence of your historical usage or require more information, please e-mail footpaths@friendsoffoxhill.org with your details.

Here is a map of the general area we are looking at (please note the solid black lines on the map do not represent footpaths and the red hatched area is owned by WBC). 

Tony Delliston,

Vice Chair Friends of Fox Hill