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Stream Crossings in
and around the New Forest
For several years members of the
New Forest Group have complained about a number of “dodgy” stream crossings on
Crown Lands and elsewhere in the Forest, but very little has been done to
improve any of them. Many footpaths are shown on the Ordnance Survey maps and
they have been open to the public “from time immemorial”. Most of the ground in
the Forest is soft and boggy by nature, so Ramblers expect to have to wear boots
to walk all year round in reasonable comfort, but that should be sufficient for
most weather conditions. Sadly it isn't, especially in valley bottoms where
there are often few or no places to cross a stream or a bog safely. The
situation has deteriorated slowly but steadily over the last ten and more years
as horseriding has increased and the Forestry Commission has been dissuaded from
remedying erosion by conservation interests.
We don't want to see any further
proliferation of gravel tracks, but several stream and bog crossings need urgent
attention. Often the measures needed are minor works, like putting a pipe, or
sometimes two, in the stream bed with the bank of earth and gravel over it.
With this in mind, a preliminary list of locations where improvements are needed
has been drawn up. (Click
here to view the list.) All walkers are invited to take digital photographs
of impassable stream crossings with the date and location (grid reference) and
send it to the e-mail address below. Presentations of selected problem areas
will be made to the National Park Authority’s New Forest Access Forum at the
beginning of June, so please hurry and get your reports and photographs in by
mid-May at the latest.
Site visits to a handful of
specimen sites with representatives of the Environment Agency, the National Park
Authority and the Forestry Commission have been made to discuss their statutory
and non-statutory requirements, and Natural England plus the Verderers will also
have an important say. Hence it isn't going to be an easy matter to get the
necessary permissions, bearing in mind the very strong conservation regulations
applicable. Of course, Ramblers are conservation-minded, and preserving an air
of wildness and potential adventure is important to us, so we don't want to
convert the Forest into a suburban park as some have wrongly suggested. However
at present the condition of some footpaths is deplorable.
Let us have your photographs and
your views please.
John
Thackray: e-mail
je@thackray.org 4 Elm Avenue,
Christchurch BH23 2HJ
(Sorry,
phone calls won’t help on this subject.)
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