The case of the 'missing' Lodore Falls footpath – the National Park responds
Last week on Twitter/X, we posted about the case of a disappearing footpath outside Lodore Falls Hotel, and asked the National Park to clarify what had happened to it. Here's what they said...
The path – indicated in orange as a permitted path on the 2011 map, below left – runs alongside the lake road past Mary Mount then south to Lodore Falls Hotel. On the current edition of the OS, below right, the path north of the hotel boundary is shown as a Right of Way. South of the boundary the permitted path has disappeared.
So what has happened to this ‘missing’ piece of path, which would keep pedestrians off a busy section of the lakeside road? Did we lose access rights during the Falls development? And is there any chance of reinstating it?
Nick Thorne, Senior Rights of Way Officer at the Lake District National Park Authority (Countrystride listeners will remember him from CS#62 - Grange-over-Sands) sent us an email which clarifies why the north section was upgraded, which indicates the 2011 southern path was actually an OS error, and which tells us how to push for completion of the ‘Round the Lake’ walk… Over to Nick.
Now you see it, now you don’t: OS from 2011 (left) and current edition (right).
Dear Countrystride
Thanks for contacting us via X about the path at Lodore Falls Hotel.
There are two sections of interest.
Firstly, there is the ‘northern’ section. This was a path created by the National Trust on their land some decades ago as a ‘permitted path’ (see below). In c.2008 we began a project with the National Trust to dedicate a number of permitted paths and make them formal public rights of way, as part of the Trust’s Centenary celebrations. The project included a couple of roadside paths at Derwentwater, and the one in question was kindly dedicated to the public in perpetuity by the Trust in 2012.
As your current OS map extract correctly shows, the dedicated public footpath stops at the southern boundary of the woodland – which is where the land ownership changes.
We send all our confirmed Public Path Orders and Creations (the legal mechanism by which the rights of way network is changed) to the Ordnance Survey, so they can replicate them on their maps. Unfortunately, they do sometimes make errors - as they did here by showing the public footpath continuing southwards through the field. We received a complaint about the ‘Private’ sign a few years ago, and raised the error issue with the OS, so I’m pleased to see that they have now corrected this. So, that’s one query cleared up – the path through the field has never been a public right of way. And so no unlawful actions have taken place with signage or ‘closure’.
Permitted paths
Permitted paths are ones that the public are allowed to use purely by permission of the landowner. They have no legal status and can be closed or the permission withdrawn at any time. The OS will show permitted paths when they are formally notified by the highway authority that there is some form of long-term licence agreement in place, or by the major landowners such as the National Trust, United Utilities or Forestry England. The OS have done a lot of tidying up in the last 15–20 years as they realised that they had a lot of errors and legacy paths that no longer existed.
OS map from before the most recent update, showing the footpath through the Hotel grounds as a right of way.
I know that the OS used to show a legal right of way through the field – as above - but when we were working with the National Trust in 2008–2012 there was no indication that this path physically existed or was used at the time. Indeed, a quick look on Street View confirms my memory.
Streetview image from 2009 – fenced boundary – no sign of a path.
This fence then deteriorated and was eventually replaced with a gate. Our records from 2016 when we were looking at things shown by the OS as permitted paths say “Nothing known about this path. No longer appears to exist on ground.” I cannot recall whether we had any discussions with the owner of the field either in c.2008 or 2016, and cannot find any reference to doing so. That’s not to say we didn’t (indeed it’s unlikely that we didn’t have at least an initial contact with them) – just that we have no records of anything.
So, the comments on the thread about a path existing and being removed must refer to something relatively short-lived. It was certainly not a formal permitted path where the landowner was officially allowing the public to use the route with their permission, and it had no involvement from the highway authority. And in that respect, the landowner would be fully within their rights to put up a Private sign and stop people from using it.
One post refers to long usage establishing a public path. This is correct, but it would need 20-years regular usage for this to happen, and given that there is photographic evidence of it not existing in 2009, and more recent evidence of a private sign – that 20-year threshold wouldn’t appear to have been met.
Planning
A few posts refer to planning and planning conditions. Conditions can only be imposed on planning permissions if they make the difference between an application being unacceptable and acceptable, and as far as I can see none of the permissions granted would have actually required a footpath extension to make them acceptable in planning terms. I can see people’s thoughts that it would be nice if an applicant had ‘offered’ a footpath as part of the package – but that’s a different thing altogether.
Desire for a path
We agree, it would be good if the landowner wished to dedicate a path here. However, it isn’t always possible to achieve such a thing. We currently have an ‘Active Travel’ project collecting the public’s views on where new access would be useful – and I have added the suggestion of extending the public footpath southwards to this.
Path behind the hotel to the Falls
My understanding and recollection of this was that the path was for hotel guests, and that there was an honesty box for payments to use the path by others. Such an arrangement means that this in effect was also a permitted path. And I believe that this has since been removed as well.”
Nick Thorne, Senior Rights of Way Officer, Lake District National Park Authority Nick.Thorne@lakedistrict.gov.uk
So… Where does that leave us?
Firstly, it would seem that unless local Rambling types can supply clear evidence of historic (and continued) usage of a path through the hotel grounds, then as Nick says, the landowner is fully within its rights to stop people from walking along the (probably mistakenly marked) permitted path of old. That notwithstanding, it would seem that more people are using that section of non-path now as they did in 2009.
And secondly, the best chance of getting the hotel owners – presumably Lake District Hotels, owned by Kit, Charles and Daniella Graves (they also own Armathwaite Hall Hotel) – to create a new permitted path (or, better, a dedicated right of way) to take traffic off the road and fill in a key gap in the ‘Round the Lake walk’ will be by persuading them that: a) it’s the right thing to do; and b) it would be a nice PR win.
