[Talk-GB] Removing all stiles from bridleways

[Andy Townsend]

On 14/12/2020 20:57, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> A barrier=stile on a long-established UK bridleway is 99.9% a mapping 
> error. Bridleways are open to horses and bikes, and so stiles are 
> forbidden - PRoW officers are pretty hot on this.

That may be the case in the comfy Cotswolds but I'm not sure that 
necessarily the case everywhere else in the country. :)

Actual steps on bridleways are common enough that I had to add a 
rendering for them at map.atownsend.org.uk (see 
https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=19&lat=54.417701&lon=-0.525549 
).  I might have recently mentioned 
https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=21&lat=54.0087259&lon=-1.0201263 
(a bridleway with an electric fence across it) on this list as well.

There are plenty of signed bridleways where horse access might be 
difficult for other reasons:  I set horse_scale=demanding on 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/762748920 , but on balance it should 
perhaps be a higher value due to the difficulty in negotiating the 
descent.  A subsequent mapper added bicycle=yes there - that's entirely 
correct, but the depth of the mud and the thickness of the trees would 
would be a challenge to even the keenest MTBer.

With regard to this alleged stile, the previous tagging and location 
would suggest to me a barrier=horse_stile (mentioned earlier in the 
thread) on the bridleway rather than a barrier=stile off it, but so much 
here needs remapping or at the very least rechecking (the stream differs 
greatly from the imagery, at least one of the bridleways looks like a 
track to me, no designation tags) that personally I'd just stick it in 
the "needs survey" bucket.

Best Regards,

Andy


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