(quotes in here are from Chris Smith's 15/11/2025 20:29 talk-gb message)
First, a couple of disclaimers - I'm a member of OSM's DWG, who handle
disputes like this, and I've dealt with a few of UK access issues in
that capacity before, including some that I have local knowledge of and
some that I don't. I've also been mapping lots of similar areas
_without_ a DWG hat on and in at least one example
(https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/678188487 ) I've "managed" a path
from "being a path closed for erosion control" to "not being a path at
all". I'm also somewhat familiar with the area around Thorpe Cloud.
Here's a map of the area that might be helpful (disclaimer, the map is
mine):
https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#16/53.0555/-1.7761/H/P/N
The thick green lines are from Richard's "rights of way" tiles and show
where the public footpaths are _supposed_ to be. The red dotted lines
are OSM's public footpaths, grey dotted lines are other paths that
aren't public footpaths, and the purple splodges are for NT's "Walk
Round Thorpe Cloud" https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/19283684 ,
added by https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/NTTrailsMEE .
As an aside, at a presentation at SOTMEU a couple of days ago the NT's
GIS Data Officer gave a presentation ("Equal Access at the National
Trust" - alas that does not seem to be deep linkable yet at
https://2025.stateofthemap.eu/#schedule ) where she explained that they
were adding these sorts of paths across the country.
The final relevant bit of info about Thorpe Cloud is that it's CRoW Act
access land
https://naturalengland-defra.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/Defra::crow-act-2000-access-layer/explore?location=53.059510%2C-1.776814%2C15.38
. For background, see
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/open-access-land-management-rights-and-responsibilities
- broadly speaking for those unaware it's "right to roam with caveats",
and in addition, just because the whole area is "foot=yes" (in OSM
terms) doesn't mean that it's criss-crossed with actual paths.
Chris said:
> Eventually we came to one that was not marked like that and used it
to go to the summit. The going was quite difficult - steep and slippery
rock and the path not always clear. The result was that we accidentally
came back down by path slightly further around the hill. When I got home
and looked at the area on OSM I was surprised to find that the path we
used to go up was the only one shown.
Based on that description and after looking at the underlying OSM data I
suspect that this is https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1087364182 .
That was set to "highway=no" a couple of years ago, and also "foot=no".
Personally I'd have gone for a lifecycle tag "disused:highway" rather
than "highway=no", and strictly speaking "foot=no" is wrong because it's
CRoW Act land, but I can absolutely understand why the NT person who
made that change (a different one to the one that you mentioned) did
so. If you look at the history of
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/47072604/history you can see that OSM
thought the whole area was a work in progress 5 years ago, and "Signs
erected both ends saying path closed because of erosion and risk of
rockfall" 4 years ago.
Looking back in time with overpass, https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2fzq , I
can't see anything large that was in OSM that has been deleted, so I
presume that way that is now
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1087364182 is "your path".
To answer the subject directly:
> Do we map what exists or what the landowner wants to exist?
We map what exists, but have to consider "whether it is in any sense a
path". Here signs were put up to say that a path was closed both to
prevent erosion and to prevent someone getting killed by a rockfall.
Based on that, I'd suggest that "disused:highway=footway" would make
sense. A pedant could state that it should still have a "foot=yes" tag
because it's still all CRoW Act land, but I can't get too excited about
that.
A similar one in the Lake District was
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1086252957/history (multiple usernames
in there belong to one person who was referred to the DWG; the tidying
was done by people like gurglypipe , Cebderby and I
(SomeoneElse_Revert). That one also is set to foot=no which
_technically_ isn't correct but again I'm really not fussed about.
Going back to my recollection of Thorpe Cloud - I seem to remember that
one access (I'm guessing the north) was dodgy much more than 5 years
ago, but that it had been OK to go right across much longer ago - early
90s or so.
Best Regards,
Andy
PS: One thing that I think also has to be said is that sometimes
"alleged path closures" _aren't_ legitimate. For example, since the
introduction of "universal access" in Scotland a couple of decades ago,
there have been more than a few examples of private landowners trying to
close paths, including "for safety". One NT user got a bit carried away
in England deleting paths that they did not think should be public, and
there I tried to "fix forward" their changes to something that matched
(a) reality and (b) what they were trying to achieve. That was on
behalf of the DWG, and was very much an exception to other edits.
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