How about Byways? Or BOATS? Find out now!
(This doesn’t include Scotland because rights-of-way things are different there.)
On the excellent Bridleways.uk website you can filter England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s rights of way network by type of track. Footpaths, bridleways, restricted byways and byways open to all traffic (BOAT). You also browse it by county*.
*although I’m not sure whether ‘county’ is the current word, maybe ‘local authority’ is more accurate?
The site is essentially the work of one person who rides horses: “Having recently started horse riding, I found it difficult to find good routes to go hacking. Being a nerdy software developer I decided to create UK Bridleway Finder to help me and the equestrian community find hacking routes in their area.”
With bicycles having essentially the same sort of rights-of-way access as horse riders, this makes the website very useful for us lot too.
Being something of a right-of-way nerd myself, I’ve spent probably a bit too long on Bridleway.uk over the festive break. Mainly confirming my suspicions that my county of residence (Lancashire) is pretty poorly served by bridleways (427 miles), especially in comparison to the amount of footpaths blanketing the county (4463 miles).
Anyway, I came away with a couple of interesting thoughts. Firstly, which counties have the most bridleways, and secondly whatever happened to the Trail For Wales campaign?
While I badger the bods over at Cycling UK for a Trails For Wale update, here’s the top 10 counties for bridleways, byways and BOATS:
Top 10 counties with the most bridleways, byways and BOATs
- North Yorkshire, 2229 miles
- Westmorland & Furness, 1494 miles
- Northumberland, 1395 miles
- Hampshire, 898 miles
- Lincolnshire, 849 miles
- Norfolk, 815 miles
- Nottinghamshire, 700 miles
- Devon, 658 miles
- West Yorkshire, 646 miles
- Cumberland, 529 miles