Call for east of England coast trail to address access-to-nature gap

Exclusive: Trail would help region with few areas where people can walk in countryside, report says

A new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature.

A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the countryside. This, the report says, is because of large areas of high-grade farmland in that area, but also because Lincolnshire has the largest backlog for recognition of historical but unrecorded rights of way, with more than 450 outstanding applications.