Walking Class Heroes: Pioneers of the Right to Roam

The twentieth anniversary of the Countryside & Rights of Way (CRoW) Act in 2020 provides a good opportunity to look back on the doughty band of campaigners who fought for so long to give ramblers their cherished right to roam. This century-old battle brought to the fore a number of larger-than-life characters who were prepared to go to extreme lengths--in some cases even imprisonment--to reclaim the right of access which were taken from the people by the hated Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This book describes the life and work of twenty of these "wilderness warriors", retelling the battles they fought against seemingly intractable politicians and the Establishment and includes memories of personal encounters by the author with many of them.From the nature-loving romantic poet John Clare and access pioneers such as Tom Stephenson and Benny Rothman, to present-day activists and writers such as Jim Perrin, Fiona Reynolds and Kate Ashbrook, Walking Class Heroes