Posted by Robert Dilley on August 27, 2002 at 15:09:09 from 65.39.15.64 user rdilley.
In Reply to: Re: question about a map in CC posted by Bruce_A_Clarke on August 27, 2002 at 09:22:04:
Quite large areas of the Norfolk Broads are owned privately and are closed off to the public -- usually, as noted, by chains across their entrances. When we spent a week on the Broads some years ago there were whole broads and parts of some others we could not visit.
I am not aware of any UK legislation guaranteeing access to water, fresh or salt. Large sections of lake shore in the Lake District are privately owned, as are islands in the lakes (remember the Swallows' anxiety at tying up to an island in the dark in SA). Only some of the small tarns are completely off-limits (at the 1988 AGM TARS obtained special permission to visit the Octopus Lagoon -- Allan Tarn -- as it is on private property). There are lakes where you cannot put a boat without the owner's permission: just as, throughout the country, there are rivers where you may not fish without the permission of the owner of the fishing rights.
Canada had legislation that reserved a 66-foot "chain allowance" around the shoreline of navigable waterways -- the principal purpose was to allow boats in difficulty (or the survivors of shipwrecks) to get ashore anywhere without penalty. However, this did not apply to non-navigable waters, and small lakes and streams could be closed off to the public.
More recently, in Ontario at least, it seems to have been decided that this provision is outdated. Presumably it does not fit the current ethos which places private interests above public good. Certainly my rural municipality, which has a lengthy shoreline on Lake Superior, has been selling off its chain allowance to private ownership. Even before that, public access to the shoreline was hazardous -- attempts to enforce the right to walk along the shoreline were likely to be met by fences, territorially-inclined dogs, or cottage owners brandishing shotguns. Shoreline developments are supposed to provide for public access at intervals. Inevitably these areas are swamps or inaccessible rocky areas. Now, developers can buy themselves out of even this requirement by making a cash payment "in lieu" to the municipality. As a result, large sections of the Canadian shoreline is being completely sequestered from public access (a lot of it by US-owned property).
Incidentally, the Broads may be a special case in that the lakes there are not natural features but flooded mediaeval peat-cuttings (my Cambridge thesis advisor was one of the international team that demonstrated this in the late 50s -- see the rather ambiguously named publication "The Making of the Broads"). Maybe that makes private ownership easier.