hi hi right now we are stood on a piece of land which we're completely entitled to do so but
it is also illegal for us to actually get to it so how exactly did we get here
so let's give a little context to what we're doing today and for that we're gonna need one of these
our trusty os map more specifically the one in 25 000 range rather than this one which allows us
to view the all-important open access let's magic that up on screen now so this is os maps via bing
maps you can access this free of charge by going to bing maps and changing the tab in the top right
corner simply zoom in and set the level and the 1 in 25 000 will automatically be selected depending
on the zoom an open access area is a landmass that has either been shaded orange or has an orange
perimeter and what that means is you can walk around here albeit with common sense just as long
as you respect the wildlife and everything around you there may be a few local restrictions like
dogs on leads etc but it's all good so what's the difference between open access and right of way
so a right of way is the line that you have the right to move along an open access bit of land
is an area of land that's been designated by the countryside and rights of way act that you
have the right to be in or roam on so this piece of land that we started the video on
is indeed an open access pair land yes it is but there is a catch it is not next to a road or come
to think of it any other right of way so again the same question how exactly did we get here oh god
we have to sequence again aren't we i'm not sure we can legally answer that question
no you're probably right not without admitting or not admitting we may or may not have trespassed
to get to that point can you hear that sound that's a keyboard it is indeed
the sound of some of our viewers smashing their keyboard right now and saying one of two things
number one but trespass is not against the law it's a civil matter indeed but it's still a little
bit wrong point number two you should come to scotland we've got the right to roam yeah indeed
you do stop making us jealous so effectively we found a little bit of land a little island that
effectively no one can go and visit indeed an open access bit of land which you can walk on but you
cannot get to but surely that's quite a rare thing isn't it you'd think so but i don't think that's
the case let's do the mass just for wiltshire and see how many of these islands are actually on
so it turns out from that little piece you just saw there there's quite a few of these islands
in wheelchair so we thought let's come out and see if we have a look at them we're not really
quite sure what to expect and we're right now on a very old ridge rate and someone that will
probably explain that better than i can is our mate headley now hedley's a landscape photo i
want to say landscape photographers am i summoning you up for my under under playing i have lots of
different names i don't i try not to use drone pilot because that puts me into a category of
people hating me well that yeah i understand exactly what you mean from that um so that
so basically people can find your work which we admire very much half the reason my head is with
us today uh on your website which we're gonna put in the doobly-doo below so hedley join us today on
our little venture to try and find some of these islands to try and find out exactly the point is
we've done some mass hedley have you any idea yourself how many of these islands there are and
and what size of the land we're talking about i know not off the top of my head but no
no no and we didn't we didn't either until we we thought okay well this is actually scan the
os maps and see what we can find turns out there's about five million square meters in just wiltshire
so i wonder how many there are in the county where you live have a look on your rs map and
see if you can find out but in the meantime we're on our way i have no idea where we are this would
have been a continuation of the ridgeway after the sanctuary right so you've got uh adam's
grave behind us yep nap hill and we're just coming up to bones like across this world never
really seen the ones like once and it's a rather impressive structure so that's just up ahead of us
at this juncture i guess it's quite an important juncture must have been in pre-medieval times
so we're heading to our first open access bit of land of the day
and we're just about to cross this what we think is a really important junction from from
pre-history let's call it does that sound about right yeah so this would have been a mixture of
trading routes and uh droving paths as well but you've got one styke here it's a very large wide
ancient track which we should be getting to right now it should be here
this looks like some embankments here but i still think we're probably on the old ridgeway
as well yeah so what we're walking on is a ridgeway yeah yeah and here i'm guessing this
is it looks like a huge embankment and a big old ditch outside oh that looks amazing look at that
he's a bit excited
so we found the the crossroads where the wands like what that when's that i believe it's what
one's dying some people say the ones like but i think it's just one's one zombie one's like
it's huge i've seen this before in the west woods when we were with david nash and it was
maybe half this size perhaps but presumably if let's say worst case it was all like this
look at the embankment and yet the embankment's gonna eroded quite a lot so we're gonna be
less less of an incline than what it was so picture this as worst case and this could be
miles long this goes into marlborough um savannah and who knows how far it goes that way
it's huge and we're just saying that the tools well there weren't any tools clearly because
this is pre-roman we're going to be talking antler yeah pics and stuff like whatever
you've got to hand basically i guess you know branches or whatever in areas it's up that way
actually it's a double ditch so you get two lots of embankments as well so i almost feel
like this is defensive not root but who knows i guess i guess so yes well it could be both yeah
so we've just come through the trees on the ridgeway here and it just opened up this beautiful
valley which just so happens to be the valley we want to get into because it's open access
now this is example that we're going to use was about five or ten meters away
so it's quite a close one so the open access five or ten meters away from the
the bridal the pathway that we're walking along now we think the owner of this land is a chat
called colonel david carson mbe let's see if we can get inside because actually the pathway
is right next to the open access bit land so maybe this isn't a great bit of examples
and as we um as we approach here's a gate so example number one we can get in it seems
we're now in this wonderful bit of open access land over there is a post i want to show you and
ask you a question and down in the valley there's a steep drop off ahead of me down in the valley
there are the whole bunch of sass and stones which have uh i assume gone there through glacial action
our friend david nash will tell us a bit more about that
i did a video on a roman road i can't remember what number it was maybe 100
160 about a month ago and i found on an old trackway
a post so here ahead of us it looks like it's another one just in the middle of this bit of land
i mean my immediate thought was yes a fence post but as hedley points out
it looks way too complex you've got um countless bolts through it these look like rollers they do
don't they whatever it's very very old and there's no there's no real context
because there's nothing else here is there i do i have absolutely no idea so um
we're going to do what we often do which is ask ask what is that
we've just parked in a lay by off the main road there
and we found this track so where are we off to northern right so this is spot number two
on our little journey now this island is more of an island so number the first one went through
just up on the up on the bridge a beautiful spot earlier it was right next to it now the legal
stance is if the pathway is right next to the open access bit of land you can legally climb the fence
yeah however this one is 150 meters thereabouts from the actual pathway so who knows what we're
going to find that's kind of a problem video yeah let's have a look at this and see what we'll find
but so far so good so far so good we're on the pathway this is all good we are now just east of
mulberry and if i haven't already put up the spreadsheet we did earlier i'll put it up now
i'll try to make this a downloadable format somehow i need to really sort my website out
speaking of websites on the way here in the car once again we've been checking out hedley's
drone pictures um so do and every bit of dronage you see in this video is hedley's drone work
and i always just thought you know what drone work you just put a drone in the air
fly around a little bit and i'll stick it in his overlay some of the stuff that head
is done with his drone today i need to go on some kind of course or something so have a look
at hedley's website because it's great and go and buy some prints and stuff in the meantime
i'm going to capture it i'm glad i had that cake earlier
moment of truth because what we're looking for now is say a t-junction um but it's not
see the pathway goes left without shadow dot pathway goes left and now on to our right 200
meters to our right is the open access beta land the island that we can't get to we think
so as a group of free people whether this makes it into the edit or not i don't know
as a group so if it is something's happened as a group of three people we've taken the um the mob
rule decision to um to go down a route that we're not really supposed to go down but we're heading
towards the open access bit of land now what we've done is we've taken the closest point to a pathway
and we're actually on a bit of land which looks like a road or a a purpose-built kind of road
and we've also passed no signs no fences nothing at all that i've seen
if you guys say i've seen anything either if ever you needed a signal
as we approached the bit of land where we are allowed but are not allowed to get there
by what we're doing right now a distant roar of thunder to add to the tension in the background
all right here's the weirdest thing in the world uh the biggest curiosity which we want
to highlight in this bit of woods right now i think technically i'm trespassing but if i stand
here i am now absolutely in open access land i'm legally allowed to be here
these two however are still trespassing so how does that work oh no just rebecca is trespassing
how does that work why is this island a thing it shouldn't be a thing there should be some kind of
permissive pathway here we're not having a go at landowners by making this video
because there is one more thing we need to mention
and that is a definition of downland because when the countryside rights of way act came
into force in 2005 it classified some of these areas as downland but defined
downland as only being unimproved grassland now that excludes semi-improved or improved grassland
leaving a lot of these islands a bill proposed by caroline lucas and the green party set to
change this which would hopefully join up some of these islands with a number of rights of way
so whilst we're in this area there was one more island we wanted to look at
but this one was quite some distance from a right of way so frankly because we chanced our luck
already today we thought we just used the drone to get this on instead it's just there in the tree
somewhere next to the abandoned village of henset yep that's a story for another day coming soon
so we've been paul hedley and rebecca we've been asking the question today of can you get
to some of these mysterious islands at least in wheelchair and i'm sure in your counties
especially in the south of england you may find that there's quite a few as well have a look
let us know in the comments below how many of these islands have you got in your county
um but for the meantime we will say goodbye we will also remind you to
go and have a look at hedley's website link in the doobly-doo below um and we'll bid you
very well and see you this time next sunday 5 p.m british summer time for a short while
uh outtake or something for the purpose of fairness the bit where we film this intro
is a little knoll you know what they could have used that to measure how much the earth weighs
you could measure how much the earth weighs and therefore inadvertently by accident design
contour lines using this hill stop completely deviating sorry
so there is actually a style so we were a bit um sneaky in filming the intro to this video um
right i'm looking at you rebecca this pole i know but we did for the purpose of the video we
we made that point that's very true but actually you can get in that place where we actually were
legally although we didn't realize at a time because of miles away from where we were goodbye