Pathways and Connections

Walking is the original, elemental mode of travel, bringing us into contact with our earth and its natural environment of flowers, trees, animals, insects and other humans.

Paths are part of a vast history of journeys taken out of necessity, for pleasure, in despair, alone and with others. At the coast near Formby, Merseyside are the fossilised footprints of many humans and animals, made in the soft mud from over 7,000 years ago. Wolves, deer, lynx, and people, journeyed on coastal paths with purpose as we still do.

Ancient tracks criss-cross Britain, patterns of movement that have linked communities over thousands of years; some evolving into trade routes, some pre-Christian, used by people to gather for ritual celebrations: the rising of the midsummer sun, the burial of a woman warrior or a tribal king.

Keith Fromings is the Forncetts footpath warden, a voluntary but in his case a very active post. He is a footpath warden with heart and enthusiasm who believes that our wonderful network of footpaths is vitally important and that walking in open countryside in the natural environment contributes hugely to our health and well-being. 

Keith led the September 2024 walk in conjunction with Forncett Nature Matters, that started on Tabernacle Lane and flowed over the landscape via Brockswater and Gilderswood back to its beginning. He has thought for sometime that it would be nice to have a Forncett walking group every other month, encouraging the discovery of the tracks and green lanes and rejoicing in trees, birds and flowers on the way. Perhaps someone with a knowledge of local plants and wildlife would be happy to help organise this.

Keith maintains as much of the footpath network as possible with a few trusty volunteers, alerting the Highways Department of Norfolk County Council about any impediments. Frustratingly it often takes a long time for bridges and styles to be mended, for trees to be cut back and steps repaired. He is the contact for any issues found by walkers and will report them to Highways although people can report them themselves.  Keith chases up the problems if necessary. He is planning to write a pamphlet describing each of the walks we are lucky enough to have at the soles of our feet. With the prospect of huge solar farms and pylons around us this is very important.

Keith is also helping FNM and Friends of St Peters to plan the Heritage and Nature Trail around the villages.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries the Enclosure Acts allowed landowners to close or divert paths used by ordinary people for thousands of years, as they took ownership of what had been open field systems and common land. In the 20^th century as cities expanded most people in Britain lived and worked in them and tensions between landowners and ordinary people led to protests like the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass in the Peak District in 1932. This act of civil disobedience sought to show that walkers and other people were denied access to open countryside, fenced off by wealthy landowners.

Public support for open access land swelled and eventually resulted in the 1949 National Park and Access to the Countryside Act. This established legal public rights of way in England and Wales. They were brought into being by county councils working with parish and district councils, with volunteers, to organise national surveys of paths and ways. Each right of way has a written description, known as the ‘definitive statement’ that is kept by each county council or unitary authority.

Footpaths can still be added to this list when there is evidence that there has been long-term use of them by the public. In 2020 thousands of people took part in the Ramblers ‘Don’t Lose Your Way’ project to help find 49,000 miles of lost paths across England and Wales that were not, it was discovered, recorded on the Definitive Map.

There are many fascinating footpath trails in Norfolk but little space to describe them so I will mention just one, the Deep HistoryTrail running for 22 miles along the Norfolk cliffs from Weybourne to Cart Gap, where, at Happisburgh, the oldest known footprints outside Africa were found. In May 2013 they were seen as the tide drew back the sand to the sediment layer below. Before the sea washed them away excited archaeologists recorded them. The footprints reveal a group of five people, adults and children, walking south 850,000 years ago when Britain was still connected to Europe by land and this area was covered in pine forests inhabited by mammoths. They are probably gathering shell- fish and searching for berries, nuts and roots.

Resources 

You can find out more about local footpaths as well as the responsibilities of walkers and landowners here.

Norfolk CC info about the definitive map of public rights of way in Norfolk can be seen here.

 

March 2026