Walking on Water: What Happens When Public Paths Are Washed Away?

This photo has been on the cards for a while now. It’s one for posterity. The river, as rivers do, is steadily eating away at the bank. Sooner or later—perhaps next year, perhaps in ten— that electricity transmission pole will keel over, and Holmes Bridge, if it is still standing, will connect to an island in the River Leven.

Which raises the question of what will happen to the Public Footpaths. On this side of the bridge, the path splits—one route follows the fence line to Ayton, the other clings to the riverbank towards Easby, which has been steadily eroding for years. The ‘official’ Right of Way, as mapped out seventy years ago, has almost certainly been claimed by the river.

When a Right of Way falls into a river, does it vanish along with the land? I suspect the answer is not that simple. One might begin with the notion that a Right of Way exists only over land; if the land disappears, so does the right to walk across it. However, footpaths and highways do exist across fords, along riverbeds, tidal shores, causeways, and even across Morecambe Bay.

So if the ground becomes boggy or unstable, walkers may get wet feet but remain technically on the route. If the land collapses several metres below, the Right of Way still exists, though following it may require mountaineering skills. However, if the land is swept away by the river, especially in flood, is there then no longer any land for the highway to exist upon, and the right is presumably lost?

In practical terms, as the bank erodes, people will keep walking on what little remains, edging away from the drop, hugging any fence or electricity pole until these, too, succumb. Then they will start walking beyond the fence. If this shift happens gradually, the County Council might even manage to formalise the new route—if, that is, the public walks it ‘as of right’ for long enough. In theory, that is twenty years, but given the rate of erosion, the route will likely shift again before the paperwork catches up. And so the cycle repeats.

One imagines that such arguments would eventually be settled in a Court of Law, assuming they have not been already. If precedent exists, it is probably thanks to a wealthy landowner who found himself short of acreage, his lost land conveniently deposited downstream on someone else’s property. But that is another legal rabbit hole best left unexplored.