Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 27, 2002 at 17:33:20 from 213.210.23.86 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: question about a map in CC posted by Robert Dilley on August 27, 2002 at 15:09:09:
In England and Wales, and, I think, Scotland, the foreshore is generally reserved to the Crown, by custom rather than by legislation, unless it has been alienated (in a few cases, it has been - usually by monarchical grant in return for a favour - sending ships to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in one case!) The "foreshore" means the area between high and low water mark. In East Anglia, where I live, there is usually, in addition, a public footpath along the top of a seawall, as trodden by the Swallows in SW.
There is a general right to navigate, wherever the tide flows, which must, exceptionally, have been abrogated in the case of some of the mediaval peat cuttings which compose the Broads.
I have been told that there is no more complex branch of English Law than that of rights to fresh water, whether for abstraction or for navigation, but in general there is no public right of access to, or navigation over, fresh water. Generations of water millers, fishermen and bargemen have seen to that.