This rudimentary вЂњpoulticeвЂќ soothes the pain, cooling away the beesвЂ™ poison as it dries. You run blubbering back to your fatherвЂ™s cabin, where your stepmother receives you, sees your stings, and immediately mixes a paste of baking soda and water to place upon your beestings. ItвЂ™s a sunny summer afternoon, and you happen to walk through the wrong copse of trees and pick up three bees on your right arm. Imagine youвЂ™re ten years old, itвЂ™s the early 80s, and you and your family live off the grid as gardeners and homesteaders. In the meantime, if you want to get involved with discovering lost ways in your area, have a look at our guide to researching historic rights of way.How can we at SHTF Blog claim to offer a The Lost Ways review in an unbiased way? Because we connect the lessons therein to our own lives, not to some greater vision of survival in general. We need to simplify the system for upgrading rights of way. Making it easier for people to get out on a bike and be active would have huge benefits, both for public health and for the rural tourism economy.Д«ut right now, weвЂ™re missing the opportunities that already exist on the ground. You can see more details about these routes on our lost ways story map. However, we believe itвЂ™s not practical to wait 15 years for the map to be corrected, so we have included these sections where there is strong historic evidence. For each one, either we have submitted a Definitive Map Modification Order, or there was an existing one submitted already. ThatвЂ™s why Cycling UK has decided to include these lost ways on the West Kernow Way. ItвЂ™s clear this system just isnвЂ™t working for anyone.

Under-resourced council rights of way departments have such a backlog of applications that it would take an average of 15 years to process them all. WhatвЂ™s more, there is real urgency to this now, because after the deadline of 2026 no new applications will be considered by councils. ItвЂ™s left to volunteers to dig into historic map evidence and submit an application for a Definitive Map Modification Order to change the recorded status of the route.Д®ven then, under-resourced council rights of way departments have such a backlog of applications that it would take an average of 15 years to process them all. The problem is that the process to correct these errors is complex and time-consuming. These ancient routes which used to be used by horses and carts could form crucial links in our fragmented rights of way network, where currently only 22% is open for cycling. It hasnвЂ™t just disappeared because theyвЂ™ve been marked incorrectly on a map. However, the key thing is that the publicвЂ™s right to ride on them still exists. There are thousands of historical anomalies like this in the rights of way network across England, where routes were recorded incorrectly when councils were compiling their official maps in the 1950s. The Tinners Way is one of many вЂlost waysвЂ™ in Cornwall, several of which we have included as part of the West Kernow Way route where it was necessary to link sections together. Instead, parts of the route are marked as public footpaths, while other sections arenвЂ™t recorded as public rights of way at all. ThereвЂ™s no longer a continuous right of access for horses and carts, which would have used this track for millennia. Given this rich history as a continuous route, it surprised me to see that the Tinners Way has become a bit patchy on modern maps. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland

The Tinners Way shown on a map from 1699.

Safe roads, traffic offences and the law.

What to do if you have a cycling crash?.

Getting sponsorship to cycle for Cycling UK.

The lost ways