Use Your Paths Update and some useful points of contact

As a result of the Group taking part in the ‘Use Your Paths’ Challenge, we polished off 5 squares in the North West corner of Gower, centred around Llanmadoc and Llangennith. This was a joint exercise between the Swansea Outdoor Group and the Tawe Trekkers Ramblers Association walking group.

As you may be aware, the ‘Use Your Paths’ challenge is an attempt to walk a number of selected grid reference squares to ensure that every inch of public right of way is walked within that particular square. The scheme is administrated and run by the Ramblers’ Association, and our own experiences highlighted a number of issues. Most notable of which was the farmer at Lagadantra Farm who prevented us from using a bridleway that would take us on to Llanmadoc Hill. Having explianed to him that a bridleway ran through his farm, he told that as far as he was concerned, no such path had existed and he had lived on the farm for 60 years.

This problem, along with a couple of others, have been reported to the Ramblers’ Association and to City and County of Swansea footpaths office.

If anyone finds a problem in the future and wishes to help preserve ournational heritage of footpaths, the email address for reporting access problems is: countrysideaccess@swansea.gov.uk and the link to relevant Council web page: http://www.swansea.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3557 .

You can also report issues direct to the Ramblers’ Association, either through their dedicated webpage at http://www.useyourpaths.info/report.php (where there is also a rather handy introduction to Grid References), or contact your local area footpaths officer through http://www.glamorganramblers.org.uk/report.html.