An interesting thing I didn't know until today

[ursus arctos]

I should have made that distinction clear.

Though the CA law is still much, much more roaming friendly than the US "standard".

And the military bases are a rather San Diego area-specific issue (though the Presidio in San Francisco could be dicey before it was decommissioned)

[San Bernardhinault]

Oh yeah. I'd still rather deal with the military police at Naval Station North Island than some random dude if I was strolling across his ranch in Oklahoma.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I think a lack of right to roam would really annoy me. I spent a lot of my teens and twenties hiking around various different parts of the UK. I don't do it as much as I'd like to now but whenever we go on holiday in the UK, we always do at least a couple of walks that would be less enjoyable without good public footpaths.

Climbing over turnstiles and getting chased by cattle is almost a rite of passage in the UK.

Very true, though occasionally you can run into trouble. As a young teen I was with my family in Cornwall, we were walking along the cliff-top when confronted with a bloke (farmer?) with a shotgun. He claimed it was private property. I don't know if that was the case, but we didn't wait to find out.

[Balderdasha]

Yes, it's a possibility. I've been on exposed hilltops while farmers have been shooting pheasants or grouse and that's a little unnerving.

Cattle can also be problematic. There are, on average, four to five deaths in the UK each year due to being trampled by cows. Compared to about ten deaths from sharks worldwide each year. I'm always quite wary of cattle and like to know where the nearest fence I could hop over is if I have to go past a herd.

[tee rex]

I thought I'd heard before about how Hevesy and Bohr dissolved von Laue and Franck's Noble Prize medals for future recovery, and indeed I had - I'd read it some years ago (in less detail, to be fair) in Richard Rhodes' utterly superb book The Making of The Atomic Bomb (at p329 of the 25th anniversary paperback edition). If I had to name the best 5 non-fiction books I've read in my life, that would probably be the first title I'd select.

The topic has moved on but having dipped into this thread I just want to add: ditto to the last sentence.

Richard Rhodes is still with us, I'm reading his book Energy at the moment. Another good source for "interesting things I didn't know until today", e.g. Turpentine comes from pine trees.

[S. aureus]

Public footpaths might be the thing I miss most from the UK. And the unlikelihood of being shot if you accidentally stray from them.

[Satchmo Distel]

The topic has moved on but having dipped into this thread I just want to add: ditto to the last sentence.

Richard Rhodes is still with us, I'm reading his book Energy at the moment. Another good source for "interesting things I didn't know until today", e.g. Turpentine comes from pine trees.

Turpentine camps in Georgia, N Carolina and Florida often used forced labour, starting with slavery then with convict leasing. A squalid business.

I believe it started with the British and their naval needs, with production moving farther south as the pine forests were exhausted. There were camps in the old Manatee County: around Sarasota and Venice.

Murder and lynching were not uncommon and were used by bosses as forms of intimidation. Robber baron capitalism built the state.

[Hot Pepsi]

Is there any sort of "right to roam" law in the US? Any protected public footpaths? Or is that heresy?

Not really.

Like most things in the US, it's a confusing patchwork of local, state and federal rules and agencies.

In Pennsylvania, for example, there is open/wild land maintained by single municipalities, parks departments - which are often collaborations between multiple municipalities (PA has way too many municipalities) as well as state parks, state game lands, state forests, and one national forest. We don't really have any National Parks per se. Stuff like Independence Hall and all of that is run by the NPS but we don't have any big parks like Yellowstone et al.

There are also big bits of land owned by universities or private entities that are open to everyone with certain rules. The woods where I spent a lot of time as a kid and now go with Tonka is owned by the university. It used to be owned the the railroad. There's no railroad there any more, but that right of way is a nice bike path now.

In general, in all of those places, walking is always permitted. There will be rules about hunting, of course. Backcountry camping is permitted in some places but not others. Or, as I once found out the hard way, requires a permit that, before the internet, wasn't isn't simple to get.

In the state forests, the rules usually vary by the trail as opposed to the area of the forest. Some trails are open to mountain bikes, and some are not (but it's not heavily enforced) and some trails are open to ATVs and snowmobiles and some are not. In general, most are, however. Dogs must be on a leash on some trails, but not others, etc.

And, as has been mentioned above, some public trails cross private land. That can be contentious, as mentioned.

The biggest political fights around here, it seems, are about the game lands. Hunters often believe that their license fees are what make those possible and therefore they should have a monopoly on them, but that's not actually true. The F&G department also makes money from selling off the timber, etc. I know that the State Forest Department doesn't really get along with the gamelands people. But in general, if it's not a major hunting season, anyone can and does go hiking and biking on those lands, but should always wear orange (and put orange on their dogs).

Out west, it's a lot different because there are a lot more national forests, which don't have a lot of rules. You can pretty much hike, bike or camp wherever you want within basic rules of outdoor ettiqute. There are also a lot of National Parks, which have a lot of rules for different bits. The west also has Bureau of Land Management land which is even less regulated than the National Forests but the details are a bit unclear.

And there too, there are private/public disputes, especially WRT to cattle grazing rights. For the individual hiker/biker, one does have to sometimes decide if you'd rather argue the law and get shot, or just move along.

The west also has a lot more land owned and managed by native communities. There's a bit of that in the East - upstate New York, especially - but not nearly as much for obvious reasons.

The rules for who can access and/or fish in a particular waterways are also complicated but in the East, the general rule is that any water that is "navigable" is open to anyone with the appropriate state license, while non-navigable waters can be privatized. And there are places where the water is public but the shore is private. And whether a bit of stream is navigable or not is sometimes disputed in the courts.

Out west, there is a lot less "private water" like that. Both because a lot more of it is federal land, but also because the idea that one rich guy can keep a Gold Medal trout stream to himself just doesn't seem to be as tolerated as it is around here.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Public footpaths might be the thing I miss most from the UK. And the unlikelihood of being shot if you accidentally stray from them.

Yeah. Public footpaths and Squatters' Rights (assuming they still exist.)

[Gangster Octopus]

Squatting is now, I think, a criminal offence in England/Wales.

[Sits]

All that chat on public footpaths and stiles, with no mention of kissgates?

[ad hoc]

All that chat on public footpaths and stiles, with no mention of kissgates?

I've only known them as kissing gates

[Sits]

I've only known them as kissing gates

It’s probably yet another one of those regional variations in the UK, like all the names for woodlice and bread rolls.

[ad hoc]

Possibly. Though the Wikipedia page doesn't mention alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissing_gate

[Sits]

Mrs. S has backed you up ad hoc. Maybe my parents were outliers in calling them kissgates.

[ad hoc]

I googled kissgate but it just brought up a series of celebrity scandals

[Sits]

Even based on the nomenclature I learned, it might well be two words not one.

[ursus arctos]

Squatting is now, I think, a criminal offence in England/Wales.

Yes, as to residential properties.

https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law

[Lang Spoon]

There's no right to roam at all in Ireland (not even in the limited English sense, let alone the full legal right (on paper at least, not if some gamekeeper bastard turns a gun on you) of Scotland) between the fucking Constitution fetish for private property meaning Fermers are God and the landowner excuse of occupier's liability insurance premiums.

[Balderdasha]

One of the many things I loved about Barbados is that the entire coastline there, all the beaches, are public beaches. You legally cannot own a private beach in Barbados. The locals there very proudly relayed this fact and found it hilarious that even Simon Cowell and Rihanna had been unable to persuade the government to change its policy. So they own beachfront properties but anyone who wants to can go and lie on the beach in front of their house: https://barbados.org/barbados-beache...m#.Y5pYAqinw0M

[Amor de Cosmos]

It's the same here in British Columbia. Beaches are all public, no private or commercial ownership is permitted.

[Gangster Octopus]

It's one of the things that upset Trump about his golf course in Aberdeenshire that he wasn't able to ban folk from being anywhere nearby.

[Sits]

Sydney beaches are all public, which hasn’t stopped wealthy/celeb folk trying to prove otherwise.

[elguapo4]

More people have died from falling or jumping from the monument to the great fire of London (8) than the official death toll of the fire itself (6)

[Hot Pepsi]

This is another east/west thing in the US. My understanding is that much more of the Pacific Coast is public than the Atlantic Coast, although I can't prove that.

One thing that comes up sometimes is that a beach can be public, but the access path to it might not be. So people can get used to walking to a beach a certain way only to find out that the new owners of that path are dicks about it.