Farmyards, fields and gardens
Routes through farmyards are often troublesome, both for owner and user. If the owner wishes to make a diversion, this must be referred back to the local authority. It is usually better to have several rather than the minimum of waymarks in a farmyard, as they can be obscured by machinery, stacked fodder and so on.
Great care must be taken that waymarks show clearly which side of a hedge or wall a path takes, or damage to them is likely to result as walkers climb over when they reach a field corner with no gate or stile.
Well kept stiles are the best form of ‘waymark’ in cultivated land, but arrows are also needed if the network is complex.
Woodland
It is in woodland that waymarking is most valuable, because routes are often winding and not easy to follow, and animal tracks and other paths may make a confusing network through which the right of way is not obvious. Once off the right of way, it is of course difficult to relocate it. Waymarking may initially have to be done as ‘blazes’, so that each waymark is visible from the previous one. Future maintenance can then select out the important ones, as use becomes established.
In some scrubby woodland or coppice it may be difficult to find branches wide enough for painting a clear arrow. In these cases, a single band of colour painted around the branch is the best solution, and will be understood as long as the waymarking is continuous.
Large fields, downland and heath
The problem here is the lack of suitable objects on which to place waymarks. It is especially difficult on large arable or pasture fields, where waymarking posts are not practical because they get in the way of farming operations. Where the field rises away from the walker and no boundary is visible, the route is difficult to follow even with an initial waymark to start the walker in the correct direction, as one soon veers off without a visual target to aim at. On arable land, the best solution is for paths to be reinstated after ploughing, or not ploughed at all, according to the legal restrictions on the path. Permanent pasture or parkland can be marked with posts, but these must be very firmly embedded to avoid being disturbed by stock.
Urban areas
It is not easy to make waymarking both sufficiently conspicuous and acceptable in villages and towns. There is usually no problem finding one’s way into a village along a public path, but paths out are often difficult to find, and are not easy to distinguish from private paths. Signposting is probably the best method, including signs leading, for example, down side roads to the statutory sign at the junction of the path with a metalled road. This is not practical for linking all paths, but is useful on through routes, and ‘unofficial’ long-distance or recreational routes (official ones should already be clearly signed).
For the Cotswold Way, permission was gained from Gloucestershire County Council to paint white arrows on the risers of kerbstones, using road-line paint. This avoided having to get separate permissions from numerous landowners, and the system was easily followed by walkers. Disadvantages are that arrows need frequent repainting, and they can be obscured by parked cars.
Mountains and moorlands
There is some controversy over the subject of waymarking paths in the uplands. Waymarking is difficult to do both unobtrusively yet effectively, as there are few suitable objects on which to paint arrows. Cairns, which are ‘non- directional’ waymarks, are the usual method. Waymarking can tempt the ill-equipped walker, who may follow a line of cairns without map or compass, and then become lost when a mist descends. On the other hand, it can be claimed that cairns are an important and traditional safety feature in helping to keep people to the path on dangerous ground or in difficult weather conditions.
Ideally, all walkers in the uplands should be equipped with a map and compass, and be able to use them to keep to their route even in mist. In the absence of this, it is perhaps necessary that certain paths are continuously cairned if there are particular risks to safety. Tradition also plays a part, and if paths have been marked by cairns for many years without evidence of tempting the ill-equipped, there is no reason to remove them.
The placing of cairns on summits, cols, and at path junctions seems acceptable visually and functionally, as they act as confirmatory signs of a path’s destination, not its route. They do though have the disadvantage of acting as targets and attracting erosion and litter. The extent of erosion is seen at some mortared cairns and trig. points, now left perched on plugs of uneroded ground.
It is suggested that in choosing whether to waymark an upland path, the following principle is applied: If the cairns or posts are to be used to waymark a route across an area where there is no physical or legal reason why people should walk along any one line, it is better not to erect waymarks because:
- They will tempt the ill-equipped.
- They are intrusive features in the landscape.
- If they are followed, a path will be trampled where it may be better that walkers make their own way and cross an area without a path being formed.
- They may not be reliable, as they can be moved, damaged and repositioned.
If the area is one where it is necessary for physical, legal or safety reasons that walkers should follow one particular line, then waymarking will serve a purpose by helping to create a path and keep it in use. The summary of this is that if you want a path made and kept to, waymark it; if you want access with no paths, don’t waymark.
