Steph
Thanks for reporting your experiences. I too found the Leicester Round very good. The Leicester Footpath Society and local RA are very good there.
Counties vary greatly. Home Counties and Eastern England seem to be good, but Wales and Welsh border counties are dreadful. Severn Way is a bad joke in many places and although there is an active Shropshire Way Society all the sections I have done have been hard work.
It would be good if all LDWA members reported problems and also posted here.
Maybe if challenge events used these routes it would help. Councils will sometimes clear paths if they know an event is planned.

Hi Raymond,

Sorry to read of your overgrown and poorly maintained paths on the 3 Choirs. I walked the Herefordshire Trail (next door county) a couple of years ago, and had similar experiences, despite Herefordshire CC promoting the walk for tourism the path was badly maintained, and in some cases unwalkable (particularly through fields of maize or potatoes with no pathaway cleared, and bramble and nettle overgrown sections). It seems that the West Midlands rural councils all share a lack of maintenance of long distance paths! I wrote to the Hereford Times- the local newspaper of the county of my birth -and pointed out the contradiction of a rural county needing tourism to grow it's economy beyond agriculture, so trying to promote walking tourism yet doing little to maintain it's paths. My letter caused a stir amongst the agricultural community (from which, as a farmer's son I originate) with a number of "get off my land" style replies (though to be fair, a number of more enlightened landowners regarding my comments as constructive).

Given my experiences in my home county I assumed that county council's everywhere would be similar. This year I have walked the Leicestershire Round, expecting a similar slog across broken stiles, overgrown paths and inaccesible crops. To my very pleasant surprise I found this path generally well waymarked and well maintained, with paths cleared by the landowners across most of the crop fields. So some councils are (much ) better than others with a regard to path maintenance.

One other thing regarding the Herefordshire Trail- this well routed walk was conceived and developed by the Ramblers Association and I think they would be happy to be more involved in the maintenance of the path, but I believe they have have been "warned off" from so doing. As I understand it Herefordshire CC have made a deal with a company to maintain all rights of way in the county, and that the company who have the contract for that maintenance have 'reminded' other organisations attempting to maintain footpaths on a volunteer basis that they do not have the legal right to do so! If true his means the Ramblers are prevented from doing volunteer maintenance thanks to a poorly conceived contract which the council have agreed to. Given councils share 'best practice' (and so inadvertently worst practice) it may be that Herefordshire's neighbours have similar agreements and your Worcestershire Section of the 3 choirs is similarly affected.

Doing a long distance trail 'off the beaten track' can be a challenging and frustrating experience, even when a county is promoting its trails.

Steph

Raymond, you might wish to provide up to date (ie dated) info on the roadworks and overgrowth for the LDPs database:
https://www.ldwa.org.uk/ldp/members/search_by_path.php
then enter: three choirs way
<return> key to do search
scroll down results page if necessary
click: Three Choirs Way
on right hand side menu, under Searchable LDPs Database, click: Contact us with Updates
(You're already doing the 'contact local authorities' bit.)

Iain

We did the section from Worcester to Gloucester over the stunning Malvern Hills
South of Worcester where the route crosses the A4440 the route is totally blocked by long term road works. We persuaded some one to supervise us crossing the site !
I would recommend using the Monarch Way and local paths between Worcester and Pole Elm. The paths may not be good!
Most of the route is in lovely scenery but the route is underused. Be prepared forcrops, nettles, brambles, bad styles and gates. I did a lot of weed bashing with my trecking pole but secateurs would have been handy.

It is terrible that such a nice walk is in such a poor state and I intend to write to the 3 councils, as we would like to do the rest of the walk. If anyone locally would like to bash vegetation or write to councils it would be good.