Lament to the Stiles no longer there

County Councils via their Highway Departments are replacing stiles in order to allow greater access to the countryside for those with disabilities and seemed to do this on the outskirts of towns and villages.  But more recently many stiles where disabled people would not contemplate being have been replaced by gates.  This is not always to the advantage of less able-bodied people. 

Hoar Frost on Stile, Berwyn Mountains 2016

There is the publicised incident on the Montgomery Canal where paths have been improved making them smoother and “level” and the stiles have been replaced with gates.  A local lady thought that it would be an excellent idea to take her two dogs on her own along the canal towpath.  Unfortunately as she negotiated her disability scooter through the gate onto the towpath her scooter tipped over on the very gentle slope of the path, tipping her into the canal from which she was unable to get out.  She was in the water for about an hour before she was found and rescued.

Stiles replaced by gates are urbanising the countryside and also directing the vast majority of walkers to where “they” want us to go!  By “improving” the paths and stiles we will all lose that sense of wilderness, aloneness, or being at one with nature that leads us into the countryside in the first place.  And it will be just one long crocodile of people looking at the back of the person in front.

Our countryside is under attack for many different reasons, more housing is required, wind farms and resultant miles of pylons, the many solar power “farms” taking up whole fields where crops should be growing or cows munching the grass.  The high speed train link from London to Birmingham but many people don’t realise that even very small things, which most of us take for granted are also being desecrated.  Okay one stile more or less does no harm but the many miles of galvanised gates across rights of way are not so attractive as the small, often hidden from view, wooden stiles.  Many of these stiles are unique, built by the local farmer or landowner with what is at hand.  Hence in wooded areas you will find the vast majority of stiles are built of wood but in areas like Yorkshire or Cornwall they were built of stone.  These stones stiles are quite often very old going back to the 17th century and beyond.

I do know that most of the gates allow access for all to footpaths but how many people will this benefit say on the top of Long Mountain by Caer Digoll?  Whichever way you access Caer Digoll it is a long, uphill walk.

Apparently the UK Government is still spending more than it receives in taxes so isn’t it time we looked at the way we are urbanising our countryside and stop replacing stiles with gates willy nilly and thought about this a little better?

UK Government, Welsh Assembly, local authorities are still obsessed with political correctness – to the cost of dozens of perfectly usable wood stiles.

On a recent walk in the Melverley area (near the Royal Hill) I discovered some unique and serviceable stiles have been replaced.  On the original stiles the top horizontal bar lifted up to the step over was not so high.  I have often wondered whether this was to make it easier to manoeuvre a small boat over the stiles as the area in question is on the Severn flood plain.  The stiles have not been replaced with gates (which seems to be the politically correct thing at the moment) but with very ordinary standard stiles.  During a conversation with an engineering friend I asked what was the best designed stiles that he had encountered and he mentioned these very stiles.  We don’t indeed know what we’ve got til its gone.

2021