I wasn't feeling great this weekend (man flu), so we went this morning for a short walk at Mount Stewart on the shores of Stangford Lough, a National Trust property. Impressive mansion, nice gardens, short forest walks, that sort of thing. Its nice, pleasant, good to have around. However, I just can't escape the feeling that its completely inaccessible.
Inaccessible how? Its set within the wider context of some very nice countryside. Rolling hills, forest, fields and hedgerows - every single acre of which is completely off-limits to ordinary oiks like myself - and you. Unless you enjoy walking along a busy A-grade road as a pleasant experience, then you really shouldn't try walking to Mount Stewart. No paths or bridleways lead to it. Also, no matter where you walk in Mount Stewart you're going to eventually come across a 'No Access' sign. This is wrong, perverse; an equivalent property in England would be totally connected path-wise to the rest of the landscape. Access there is taken as a given
Don't get me wrong, the Trust do great work. As well as conserving great buildings, they maintain large tracts of countryside, and keep most of it open for access all year round. In the relative desert of access that is the Northern ireland countryside, they have developed many little oasis of accessibility. Divis and Black Mountain, North Antrim Coast, Fair Head, Slieve Donard, Castle Coole to name but a few.
But it strikes me as odd that the Trust, one of the UKs most powerful environmental campaigning organisations, and one supposedly committed to increasing access to the countryside, has never (to the best of my knowledge) addressed Northern Ireland's poor countryside access situation. Why not?
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