On 24 April, 1932, a group of young workers decided to stake their claim to the English countryside by staging a mass trespass. The result was arrests, prison sentences – and an outcry that is credited by many as shaping the rural access we enjoy today. BBC News looks back at the uprising on the uplands – and asks what the future holds for roaming rights.

Just over 90 years ago, a typed notice began to circulate among the workers of northern England.

It called on people to join a Ramblers’ Rally – a mass trespass – on Kinder Scout, the highest point of the Derbyshire Peak District.

Benny Rothman notoriously received a prison sentence for his part in the trespass

At that time Kinder – and much of the moorland around it – was kept exclusively for grouse shooting by its owner, the Duke of Devonshire, and his gamekeepers patrolled the land to see off walkers.

The rally resolved to challenge this situation.

Organised by the British Workers’ Sports Federation, a Communist-influenced group, it extended a “hearty welcome” to the “young workers of Eccles”, whether they had been rambling before or not.

The notice extended a hearty welcome to those who wanted to join the rally

Hundreds of men and women saw the advertisement and decided to join the gathering, planned for 14:00 BST on 24 April.

Among their number was Benny Rothman, a young mechanic.

Broadcaster Stuart Maconie has called for the subject of the trespass to be taught in schools

In a BBC interview in the 1980s, he said: “It was possibly a naive idea that if enough ramblers went on a ramble, no group of keepers could stop them because there would be more ramblers than keepers.

Five walkers – including Mr Rothman – were charged with unlawful assembly and breach of the peace and, at Derby assizes, were sentenced to between two and six months in prison for their part in the “riotous assembly”.

The outcry that greeted the sentences has been credited by many with starting a movement that led to the foundation of Britain’s national parks with the first – appropriately enough – being the Peak District in 1951.

Belinda Scarlett who manages the Working Class Movement Library, the home of the Benny Rothman archive and other archive material relating to the trespass, said the event was “one of the most important examples of direct action of the socialist and communist politics of the 1930s”.

A deadline to register forgotten historical paths in England by 2026 is set to be scrapped by the government.

There was a cut-off to apply to record rights of way through private land which existed before 1949 but did not appear on official maps.

Campaigners said the change meant important and useful paths could be “protected for future generations”.

The government said it was introducing measures to “enhance the way rights of way are recorded and managed”.

Using historical evidence, people are able to apply for rights of way which have existed in the past to be added to official maps, giving them legal protection.

The 1 January 2026 deadline to apply to record paths was introduced in the Countryside Rights of Way Act 2000 by the then Labour government.

After that date, historical routes would no longer have been able to be added to official maps, meaning public rights of way would have been lost.

The Welsh government has previously repealed the cut-off date.

The coronavirus lockdowns created a cycling boom in England, with record numbers of people out on their bikes to get exercise and fresh air. 

However, official data from the Department of Transport also shows that many more cyclists died on rural roads in 2020 than in the previous two years. 

89 people lost their lives on countryside roads last year – up by almost 50% from 60 fatalities in 2019. 

In 2018, 48 cyclists were killed on rural roads.

This was despite fewer vehicles using rural routes, and a marked drop in the amount of traffic during the pandemic restrictions. 

NFU Mutual – the specialist rural insurer – is launching a campaign designed to improve the safety of those using rural roads.

Overall, including car drivers, horse riders, and pedestrians, two-thirds more people, just over 3,100, were killed using roads in the countryside than roads in the cities.

Between 2018 and 2020, there were 3,115 fatalities on rural roads in England, and 1,880 on urban ones. During the same two-year period, almost 30,000 people were seriously injured on rural roads.

As the temperature drops and the dark takes hold, NFU Mutual has joined forces with British Cycling and the British Horse Society to launch a campaign called Respect Rural Roads, urging those travelling around the countryside to take more care.

Fly-tipping incidents in England increased last year, with household waste accounting for by far the biggest proportion of the problem, which has been worsened by the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

From March 2020 to March 2021 in England, 1.13m fly-tipping incidents were dealt with by local authorities, an increase of 16% on the 980,000 reported in the previous year, according to data released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on Wednesday. Higher numbers of incidents were reached in 2007-09, but the way the data is collated has changed, so direct comparisons with years before 2018 are not possible.

Despite the increase in numbers, the number of enforcement actions went down over the period, with only 456,000 actions taken, compared with 474,000 in the year 2019-2020.

Developers are “gorging” on greenfield sites in rural areas to build despite a record amount of brownfield land being available for construction, a charity has said.

A report by the CPRE, an organisation that aims to protect the countryside, said there is enough brownfield land in England to accommodate 1.3 million homes.

Despite this, CPRE said “wasteful and immoral” developers are choosing to concrete over greensites because it is cheaper. Emma Bridgewater, the charity’s president, is calling for councils and planners to take a “brownfield first policy”.

“We need to direct councils and developers to use these sites – often in town and city centres where housing need is most acute – before any greenfield land can be released,” she said.

“It is wasteful and immoral to abandon our former industrial heartlands where factories and outdated housing have fallen into disrepair. Developing brownfield is a win-win solution that holds back the tide of new buildings on pristine countryside and aids urban regeneration at a stroke.”

Labour will pledge to create a minister for rural affairs in every government department on Monday, as the party pitches itself to Conservative voters in the countryside. Sir Keir Starmer is concerned his party has lost support in the Red Wall and Scotland  and will need to win back constituencies in the south of England not held by Labour since the 2001 election if it is to win a majority at Westminster. The party believes it can win back areas in the countryside by nominating a minister in every department to oversee the impact of the Government’s work in rural communities.

Rural spaces are so important. There’s the obvious stuff, which is the health angle of exercise and fresh air, and there’s the Nature cure: vitamin D, mindfulness etc. What the Covid crisis has perhaps highlighted is that Nature can be procured quite locally. It doesn’t have to be a trip to a national park! So we need to value our local public spaces. Another thing we need to look after is our Green Belt, which is constantly under threat. Our local green spaces need to be invested in, because it’s important for people to get to a space quite easily.

There’s something quite intangible about the countryside. Just looking at open fields and woodland and hills makes you feel great. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but it has a positive effect. The countryside has a soul, and people can feel that.

In 1870, country parson Francis Kilvert began a diary of his ‘uneventful life’. The result, says Mark Bostridge, is sublime

One hundred and fifty years ago, in January 1870, a young curate in Clyro, a small village near Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh borders, began a diary. His name was Francis Kilvert. He was 29 years old, tall, with a dark beard. A cousin of his would remember him long afterwards as “very sleek and glossy, rather like a nice Newfoundland dog”.

While he ministered to parishes in Wales, as well as in Wiltshire, the county of his birth, Kilvert remained lovingly attentive to this daily record of his life for the next nine years, until the year of his death at the age of 38. Eventually published in three volumes – in the years 1938, 1939, and 1940 – Kilvert’s Diary was immediately acclaimed…

Taylor’s is a good example of a fast-growing breed of boutique festivals that are popping up all over Britain, with numbers doubling in the past year to more than 18,000.

The phenomenon has its roots in America, says Paul McCrudden, whose San Francisco-based company, Eventbrite, allows users to post details of their upcoming events and manage the flow of budding participants for everything from knitting festivals to toe-wrestling.

It’s active here in the UK too, where food-themed festivals alone have risen 600% in the past four years, he says. “It’s bringing the niche and the underground mainstream,” McCrudden says. “Anyone can create one and anyone can attend.”

That’s how Shonette Bason saw it too. Fed up with what she calls “moaning lemon suckers”, Bason decided to create her own festival based on the science of happiness. The idea was to bring as many positive people together as possible, even though Bason, a self-styled happiness guru, was aware that her chirpy disposition meant “I just irritate people all the time!” To her surprise, though, about 1,000 like-minded souls flocked to a warehouse in Old Trafford in Manchester last summer. And they were happy enough to pay £30 a pop to hear Bason’s motivational tips on ditching the grimace and staying tip-top.

Farmers Guardian last week reported on the post, which showed a map of farms and encouraged activists to descend on them.

Countryside Alliance (CA) chief executive Tim Bonner thanked those who had reported the post to the social media giant.

“Rural businesses and livelihoods have enough challenges to contend with without having to deal with intimidation and potential attacks from extremists,” said Mr Bonner.

“By working together, we can protect rural people and their businesses from these threats.”