Right to roam As the pandemic has highlighted our need to engage with the great outdoors, a £1million study is being launched to look into our countryside rights of way. Professor Glen O’Hara of Oxford Brookes University working with Dr Clare Hickman of Newcastle University will research how the 140,000-mile network of paths have been established and how they are maintained and used across England and Wales. Access to these routes has been brought into focus as there is a deadline of January 2026 to register all historic paths under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The Ramblers are running a Don’t Lose Your Way campaign to identify and officially map as many useful rights of way as possible before they are permanently lost to the public.