England’s Rivers Are Apparently Private Clubs Now

There are few things more English than a river.

A river winding past an old stone bridge, sliding behind a village pub, passing beneath willows that look as though they have spent several centuries discussing the weather. Rivers appear in paintings, poems, tourism adverts and television dramas whenever someone needs to establish that England is ancient, beautiful and just damp enough to be emotionally complicated.

They are presented as part of the national inheritance.

Then you try to walk beside one.

That is when the countryside stops being a shared inheritance and becomes an outdoor version of a private members’ club. Suddenly there is a fence. Then another fence. Then a locked gate. Then a sign informing you that the landscape you have been admiring belongs to someone else and that your continued admiration may constitute trespassing.

The river keeps flowing, of course. Water has never been particularly respectful of property boundaries. It passes through estates, farms, towns and counties without pausing to consult the Land Registry. It does not know that one bank belongs to an aristocratic family, another belongs to a corporation, and the next stretch may be held through an investment vehicle registered somewhere with palm trees and discreet accounting practices.

The river behaves as though it belongs to the earth.

How terribly naïve of it.

New figures from the Right to Roam campaign have found that nearly three-quarters of England’s riverbanks are effectively inaccessible to the public. Researchers examined 89 river catchments and concluded that 71% of the banks had no public right of way within 100 metres of the water. Meanwhile, 96% of rivers had no statutory right of access to the water itself. In some catchments, including Severn Middle Shropshire, the proportion of inaccessible riverbank reportedly rises to about 90%. The Guardian

Ninety percent.

At that point, I am not sure we should call it a riverbank. We should call it a waterside exclusion zone with occasional glimpses available to passing taxpayers.

What fascinates me is how normal we have allowed this to become. A person can stand on a public road and look toward a river that has moved through the land for thousands of years, yet be legally prevented from reaching it because somewhere in history someone drew a line on a map and said, “Everything beyond here is mine.”

Everyone else apparently nodded.

Perhaps they were too polite to make a scene.

The View Belongs to Everyone—From a Respectful Distance

England has perfected a peculiar kind of public relationship with nature. We are encouraged to adore it, photograph it, write sentimental poems about it and donate money to protect it. We may watch documentaries about it in extraordinary high definition. We may purchase calendars filled with misty river valleys. We may even buy expensive outdoor clothing designed to withstand landscapes we are not legally allowed to enter.

What we cannot necessarily do is go there.

The arrangement resembles being shown a magnificent cake through a bakery window and then being told that appreciating the icing should be nourishment enough.

I find that difficult to accept because access to nature is not some decorative luxury that should be rationed according to postcode, property ownership or the availability of a National Trust membership. It is part of what makes life tolerable.

I do not always want an organised attraction. I do not need a gift shop, a visitor centre or a laminated map explaining how to experience a tree. Sometimes I want to walk beside moving water. Sometimes I want to hear something other than traffic, alerts, engines, advertisements and the faint electrical hum of a society trying to sell me a subscription.

A river does something to the mind. It pulls your attention outward. It gives your thoughts somewhere to go. You can stand beside it carrying grief, anger, exhaustion or the shapeless anxiety that modern life produces in industrial quantities, and the water asks nothing from you.

It does not require a password.

It does not collect your data.

It does not suggest that you upgrade to River Premium to continue listening without interruptions.

It simply moves.

For people living in crowded towns and cities, that experience matters. Not everyone has a large garden, a country cottage or several hundred acres inherited from an ancestor who was unusually helpful to a king. Many people live in flats, work long hours and spend much of their lives surrounded by concrete. A nearby river may be one of the few places where they can feel the physical world breathing around them.

Yet access is treated as though it were a generous favour granted by landowners rather than a reasonable expectation in a country whose natural beauty is constantly marketed as part of its identity.

We are told this is a green and pleasant land.

The small print says viewing restrictions may apply.

A Country Divided by Invisible Walls

The frustrating thing about restricted river access is that the barriers are not always obvious when you look at a map.

You see a blue line.

It appears to be continuous. It begins somewhere, winds through the landscape and eventually reaches another river or the sea. A reasonable person might assume that walking beside it would involve following that line.

The English countryside has other plans.

The path ends at a hedge. The next section passes through private land. The route leaves the river, climbs onto a road, circles a field, crosses a housing development, apologises for the inconvenience and perhaps rejoins the water two miles later. The walk beside the river becomes a walk vaguely aware that a river exists somewhere nearby.

This is access by technicality.

Yes, the public can enjoy the river, provided the public does not insist on seeing, touching or approaching too much of it.

I know there are legitimate considerations. Farms are workplaces. Wildlife needs protection. Homes deserve privacy. Livestock can be disturbed. Crops can be damaged. Rubbish gets left behind. Gates are sometimes left open by people who apparently believe sheep enjoy spontaneous road trips.

I am not pretending that every member of the public behaves like a woodland saint. Some people can turn a quiet riverbank into the aftermath of a badly managed festival before lunchtime. They arrive carrying disposable barbecues, plastic bottles and the unwavering conviction that someone else will clean everything up.

That behaviour deserves consequences.

It does not justify excluding millions of responsible people from vast stretches of the countryside.

We do not close every road because some drivers are reckless. We create rules, educate people, enforce those rules and punish those who cause harm. We understand that shared access requires shared responsibility.

The same principle can apply to rivers.

A broader right of access could include clear obligations: respect privacy, protect crops, avoid sensitive habitats, control dogs, take litter home and do not behave as though finding a quiet place near water has transformed you into the emperor of a disposable barbecue kingdom.

Scotland already operates under a wider framework of responsible access created by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. It is not a lawless wilderness where hikers burst through kitchen windows and canoeists claim grazing land by conquest. It is a system built around rights accompanied by responsibilities.

England, however, continues to behave as though allowing ordinary people near a river would trigger the immediate collapse of rural civilisation.

We Protect What We Are Allowed to Know

There is another reason public access matters, and it goes beyond recreation.

People protect places they know.

It is easy to ignore the deterioration of a river hidden behind private boundaries. Pollution becomes an abstract statistic. Sewage discharges become numbers in a report. The disappearance of insects, fish and birds becomes something experts discuss on the news before the programme moves on to sport.

Put people beside that river and the decline becomes personal.

They see the foam gathering near the bank. They smell the discharge. They notice that a place where children once paddled now comes with warnings. They remember when the water was clearer. They ask questions. They take photographs. They complain to councils, regulators, water companies and elected officials.

In other words, they become inconvenient.

That may be one reason restricted access survives so comfortably. A river observed by the public is a river with witnesses.

I find it extraordinary that the public can be expected to care about the ecological health of rivers while being denied meaningful contact with most of them. We are asked to defend places we may never be permitted to visit. We are invited to feel collective responsibility for landscapes managed as private assets.

It is like being told to look after a house while remaining on the pavement.

There is also something emotionally deadening about separating people from the natural world and then wondering why environmental concern feels distant. No government campaign can recreate the bond formed by walking beside the same river for years. No slogan can replace the memory of swimming in a particular bend, watching kingfishers from a bank or taking a child to look for minnows in the shallows.

Connection grows through contact.

If nature is reduced to occasional authorised visits, people begin to experience it as scenery rather than as part of their lives. It becomes somewhere they drive to, pay to enter, consume for an afternoon and leave behind.

That is not belonging.

That is tourism.

Nine River Walks Should Fix Everything

The government has pointed to plans for nine new national river walks, along with the continuing development of the King Charles III England Coast Path, as evidence that access to nature is being improved. Nine river walks sound pleasant. I hope they happen. I hope they are beautiful, well-maintained and genuinely accessible.

But nine walks are not a national settlement.

They are a sample tray.

England contains thousands of rivers and streams. Offering nine designated routes in response to widespread exclusion is the policy equivalent of handing someone nine chips and announcing that hunger has been addressed.

It also preserves the central problem: access remains something selectively granted rather than broadly recognised. Officials and landowners decide which stretches the public may enjoy, and the public is expected to respond with gratitude.

Thank you for allowing us near some water.

We promise not to become accustomed to it.

The same pattern appears whenever demands for greater access gain momentum. A bold principle is proposed. Consultations are promised. Landowners express concern. The principle becomes a pilot programme, the pilot becomes a handful of routes, and the handful of routes is unveiled with a logo large enough to make the entire exercise look transformational.

By the time the ribbon is cut, everyone is supposed to have forgotten the original question.

The question is not whether England can create a few more river walks.

The question is whether responsible access to rivers should be understood as a public right.

Those are very different ambitions.

One creates attractive projects that ministers can visit while wearing clean boots. The other changes the relationship between land, water, ownership and citizenship.

I suspect this explains why one is considerably more popular in government.

Property Has Rights; People Have Brochures

Whenever access reform is discussed, property rights arrive in the conversation dressed as though they are the final word in human civilisation.

I understand the importance of property rights. I am not proposing that strangers should picnic in someone’s conservatory or establish a kayaking route through the downstairs bathroom. Privacy matters. Security matters. Land management matters.

But ownership has never been absolute.

Landowners already operate within planning law, environmental law, agricultural regulation and public rights of way. Rivers themselves are connected systems. What happens upstream affects everyone downstream. Pollution, abstraction, dredging, development and habitat destruction do not respectfully remain within property boundaries.

The water is shared even when the banks are not.

That contradiction sits at the heart of the issue.

A landowner may possess a section of riverbank, but the river passing beside it is part of a living system that serves entire communities. It carries water, wildlife, sediment, pollution and flood risk across countless boundaries. Treating each stretch as an isolated private possession ignores what a river physically is.

I also notice that the language of personal responsibility changes depending on who wants something.

When the public seeks access, we are warned that individuals may behave irresponsibly.

When powerful institutions pollute rivers, fail to maintain infrastructure or preside over ecological decline, we are told the situation is complex.

Apparently complexity is a resource reserved for organisations with legal departments.

The ordinary walker is imagined as a roaming menace equipped with an uncontrolled dog and a pocket full of crisp packets. The owner is presented as a patient custodian defending the land from chaos.

Reality is less tidy.

There are excellent landowners who care deeply for rivers and work hard to protect them. There are responsible walkers, swimmers and paddlers who leave no trace. There are also irresponsible people in every group. Public access policy should be based on workable rules, evidence and enforcement—not caricatures designed to keep an old distribution of power comfortably intact.

The Class System Has a Waterside View

It is impossible to discuss access to the English countryside without eventually encountering class.

The fences may be made of wood and wire, but the history behind them is social.

England has spent centuries converting common relationships with land into formal ownership, then presenting the result as though it emerged naturally from the soil. Vast estates pass through families. Institutions accumulate acreage. Companies acquire land as an asset. The public is left with footpaths, fragments and the occasional carefully negotiated corridor.

Then everyone is told that this arrangement is tradition.

Tradition is a remarkably useful word. It gives old inequalities the warm glow of a village fête.

Restricted access affects people unevenly. Wealth can purchase proximity to nature. If I have enough money, I can buy land, rent a rural property, join a private fishing club, pay for an organised experience or travel to somewhere access is easier.

If I do not have that money, my relationship with nature depends on what happens to be available nearby.

That makes access a public health issue as much as a recreational one. The people who could benefit most from free, local contact with nature are often those with the fewest alternatives. A riverbank walk does not require a gym membership, specialist equipment or a family budget capable of surviving an afternoon at a commercial attraction.

It requires a path and permission.

Apparently permission is the expensive part.

This is what bothers me most. The debate is sometimes framed as though access campaigners are demanding an exotic new privilege. Walking beside a river is hardly a radical indulgence. Human beings have followed waterways for as long as we have existed. Rivers gave us drinking water, food, transport, trade, settlement and stories.

Now we stand behind a fence photographing them with phones assembled from minerals mined on several continents, because approaching the local bank might upset the established order.

Civilisation is full of unexpected progress.

Climate Change Will Not Respect the Signs

The demand for access becomes more urgent as summers grow hotter.

When temperatures climb, rivers and shaded banks can provide relief from urban heat. Campaigners argue that access to “blue spaces” will become increasingly important as climate change intensifies. Yet England is entering that hotter future with much of its river network physically close to communities but legally distant from them.

The water may be half a mile away.

Access could require a car journey, a designated site, an entry fee or the willingness to become extremely familiar with trespass law.

Of course, river swimming has risks. Water quality can be poor. Currents can be dangerous. Cold-water shock is real. Weirs and submerged obstacles can kill. Wider access must be accompanied by honest safety information, better monitoring, stronger pollution controls and public education.

But risk cannot become a universal excuse for prohibition.

Life contains risk. Roads contain risk. Beaches contain risk. Kitchens contain surprising amounts of risk, especially when I am distracted. We manage those dangers without declaring that only the wealthy may enter.

Access can make rivers safer when it comes with reliable information, designated entry points, rescue equipment where appropriate and communities of regular users who understand local conditions.

Exclusion does not remove danger.

It merely ensures that access happens inconsistently, quietly and without proper support.

I Want More Than Permission to Look

I do not believe every square metre of countryside must become a public playground. I do not want fragile habitats trampled, crops damaged or rural residents made miserable. I want a serious system of responsible access that recognises both the needs of the land and the lives of the people who share the country around it.

That means legislation with clear rights and duties.

It means protection for privacy around homes.

It means seasonal restrictions where wildlife or land management genuinely requires them.

It means proper signage that helps people behave responsibly instead of signs that merely tell them to disappear.

It means penalties for littering, vandalism and reckless conduct.

It also means accepting that ownership of land beside a river should not automatically grant the power to exclude the public from nearly every meaningful relationship with that river.

The government has promised consultation on access to land and water. Campaigners are understandably asking ministers to get on with it. Consultations have become one of Britain’s favourite methods of placing a difficult idea in a comfortable chair until it dies of old age.

I hope this one leads somewhere.

The public does not need another glossy strategy celebrating nature in language so reverent that nobody notices how little has changed. We need routes that connect. We need access close to where people live. We need rivers treated as living public systems rather than decorative boundaries between private holdings.

Most of all, we need to stop mistaking exclusion for stewardship.

A locked gate does not prove that land is being protected.

Sometimes it proves only that a gate has been locked.

Let the Country Meet Its Rivers Again

Nearly three-quarters of England’s riverbanks being out of reach is not a minor technical flaw in the footpath network. It reveals something larger about who is permitted to belong in the landscape.

England loves to describe its rivers as part of its history and identity. They appear in national stories as symbols of continuity, beauty and home. Yet for millions of people, that home can be viewed only through gaps in hedges.

I want the public to be trusted with more than a few approved routes.

I want children to grow up knowing the rivers near them—not simply knowing their names from road signs. I want people to walk, swim and paddle where it can be done responsibly. I want communities to witness what happens to their water and to possess enough connection to demand better when it is polluted or neglected.

I want nature to feel like part of ordinary life again.

That will require responsibility from the public. It will require compromise from landowners. It will require government to do something more courageous than announcing nine picturesque walks and hoping nobody examines the remaining thousands of miles.

England’s rivers have flowed through wars, industrialisation, urban growth and centuries of political change. They existed before the deeds, fences and warning signs. They will probably outlast many of them.

The public is not asking to own the rivers.

We are asking to know them.

We are asking to walk beside them without feeling like criminals for following the sound of water. We are asking for a place in the landscape that politicians praise, tourism boards sell and history tells us is ours.

If nearly 75% of England’s riverbanks are effectively off limits, the problem is not that people have wandered where they do not belong.

The problem is that we have drawn the boundaries of belonging far too narrowly.

A river should connect a country.

In England, we have somehow managed to make it another thing that divides us.