Sir, - I was intrigued by Sylvia Thompson's article on the "right to roam" (Weekend, April 3rd). In it the farmers' representative expressed herself with the trenchancy we have come to associate with that lobby. She therefore hardly needed help from two of those who purported to speak for walkers.
The representative of the Mountaineering Council of Ireland (MCI) describes hill-walking as a "fad". I know I am not alone in having enjoyed this "fad" for the past 35 years. She then goes on to enunciate all the sins (real and imaginary) committed by walkers and polishes off her performance by seeming to see the MCI's function as that of mediator between walkers and landowners, and not to speak on behalf of walkers. Some representative!
If the MCI won't defend the (moral) rights of walkers, I will. The fact of the matter is that, except in the national parks, hill walkers have no legal rights in this country. Even long distance walks have been fenced off without the relevant local authority doing anything effective about it. In all cases in which there were clashes between walkers and landowners, nearly all of them about unfenced (or previously unfenced) ground in remote areas of the country, the local authorities haven't wanted to know.
The effect of clashes on local and, more important, on visiting walkers seem to be of no concern to them or indeed to any Government department. Especially for visiting walkers, one angry clash is remembered after a "hundred thousand welcomes" are forgotten. They can easily go to other countries with a more enlightened attitude. (In saying all this I am not implying that landowners haven't got legitimate concerns in many instances - of course they have.)
Ms Thompson refers disparagingly to the situation in England and expresses the hope that we won't regress to their level. I beg to differ: I wish we could. Ten per cent of England and Wales is national park, in most of which walkers have legal access (we have less than 1 per cent); there are thousands of miles of clearly marked rights of way and the government is actively engaged in extending access further. Above all walkers have somewhere to turn in case of difficulty and have someone in authority to listen sympathetically to their concerns - and where justified to do something about them. If that's a regression, I'm all for it. - Yours, etc., David Herman,
Meadow Grove, Dublin 16.