IN CHOOSING the voluntary way over giving people the right of access to the countryside, the government is putting the onus on landowners to allow it or face laws that will compel them to.

This threat ought to be sufficient to ensure that landowners come up with more than token proposals for opening up their estates to the public.

So, too, will the government's assurances that people will not be able to roam through cultivated farmland, woods or enclosed grazing meadows - though livestock farmers may be worried that it has yet to decide whether walkers will be able to take their dogs with them.

But if the right to roam is to be enshrined, not in law, but by voluntary agreement and if it is to work successfully, it must be honoured and respected, too, by its beneficiaries, the public. For while it is a fact that walking is a booming pastime and that most ramblers do respect the countryside and its codes, there are a minority who do not.

This may occur mainly out of ignorance, rather than malice, but it is often easy for non-rural people to regard the countryside simply as a scenic or challenging environment, rather than the working environment, with many sensitive areas, that it is .

Thus, for a voluntary system to work properly and satisfactorily for all sides, it must be underpinned by as much regard for the countryside's "factory" function as for its role as a leisure resource.

This may mean farmers and estates providing maximum access, but it must also be understood by the public that the right to roam cannot ever mean total access.

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