RIGHTS OF WAY Sin,—If Mr. Bonham Carter had read my
letter more closely he would have seen that I was writing of the purely rural parishes, which inci- dentally vastly outnumber the rest. Of course the problem is different in the vicinity of towns. As for long-distance walkers, they still prefer, say, Dartmoor or the Pennines, as I used to do when one of them. A glance at a 1-inch map will show that there are very few paths in enclosed country which are of use to them. It is obviously the duty of a parish council to obey an Act of Parlia- ment, or resign. But the brief and quite intelligible sections of this Act were not supplied to them. They received instead a memorandum, prepared by two voluntary associations, which far exceeded the require- ments of the Act, and revealed an ignorance of country parishes and of their councillors. Councils are under no obligation to obey this memo- randum, which ought never to have been sent to them. I fully agree that parish councils have not enough to do. That is why it is difficult to get men to serve on them. But let them be given something useful. It is tantalising to be told to carry out a survey of paths, which in my parish can benefit no one, when we have no money to repair them, and when the highway authority replies to our requests with courteous but unvaried refusals.—Yours truly,
PARISH COUNCILLOR.
(This correspondence is now closed.—Ed., Spectator).
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