How wide should a bridleway be? Some may not be bothered if it gets to be close to the span of the M1. Advice on this from the bureaucracy - in this case DEFRA- is nearly always framed in terms that are applied to farmers and their land and there's an assumption that anyone reading may be wanting to grow crops. The farmers are told they should leave a width uncultivated of 1.5 metres for a public footpath and 3 metres for a bridleway.
There's a different perspective that is commonly ignored and that's because nobody wants to accept they have any duty outside what contributes to or is influenced by 'the economy', that well-known blight on the land Should all managers just simply ignore what's demonstrably ugly because there's no definition of it in economic terms? It also goes beyond the look of the thing and affects the wildlife, and I define wildlife pretty broadly here as in any vegetation or animal life that chooses to live here. The ground that is being churned up and damaged is a habitat for something and those who ignore the ready-made route which is firm stone and less than 3 metres bear a responsibility.
Not far from here Sheffield Wildlife Trust's mindless operatives were logging recently. I insist that this was done because they couldn't think of anything else to do. I wrote this and I repeated it to its Chief Executive and Chair of Trustees. Of course there was a denial. But they did not give me a credible explanation why ten mature trees were destroyed on a slope where trees help to a) combat the spread of bracken, and b) contribute to the upland absorption of rainwater thus reducing the run-off that is often seen on this bridleway eventually finding itself in the streams.
How much better if those workers had been planting native trees and shrubs at the side of this bridleway to discourage horse riders and mountain bikers from going off to the side. But SWT have been responsible for this site over 12 years and shown no interest before so we should have no expectation they will respond to requests now.
As a historic route an argument could be made for keeping the bridleway to the width we can see further down. It simply looks better that way.
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