I think there are two landowners that cover the bouldering at Anston; the Anston Parish Council and Network Rail. The area of land owned by Network Rail will be wider than just the tracks and could include Apprentice Wall. The fence isn't necessarily on the boundary so you could still be trespassing on land owned by Network Rail.I spoke to the chairman of the parish council a while ago about bouldering. He said he would be interested in meeting with the BMC as their management plan for the wood suggests they liaise with climbers to encourage a site stewardship role. I don't know if anyone for the BMC has been in touch though.
The fence does completely separate the tracks from the rock, I'd say it's fine, you aren't trespassing on the railway at all after all.
ANSTON - APPRENTICE WALL ACCESS BANNED?A couple of us have just popped down to the Apprentice Wall area to find some construction workers digging the ground up underneath and told us they’re putting a fence underneath it. They said that because climbers were posting pictures by the tracks online, Network Rail caught on and are putting up the fence to stop us climbing. 😭
Don’t get me wrong I don’t think I’m the judge, jury or executioner but from my point of view whilst the RAD remains yellow, and the lines at apprentice wall all have red crosses next to them I don’t see why people would go there and tick stuff publicly and post about it on their socials. Sometimes shaming people into not doing dumb shit is really the only way, plus who doesn’t love a good bit of drama on Instagram?
Quote from: Carliios on July 18, 2022, 01:24:31 pmDon’t get me wrong I don’t think I’m the judge, jury or executioner but from my point of view whilst the RAD remains yellow, and the lines at apprentice wall all have red crosses next to them I don’t see why people would go there and tick stuff publicly and post about it on their socials. Sometimes shaming people into not doing dumb shit is really the only way, plus who doesn’t love a good bit of drama on Instagram?What else is instagram for? As for the original point (as others have said) probably best not to aggravate things (e.g. avoid apprentice for now at least)?
Okay so in the meantime are we going to just stop climbing in the woods? Because if access to the whole woods is "fragile" due to not having a confirmation from the local council we shouldn't climb there at all, using that logic. That's not really how we all play this game, and indeed there's a lot of places we climb based on probably not all legit within the letter of the law but stay quiet and respectful and it's okay.Network Rail are bothered by safety as mentioned above, and staying on the other side of the fence is perfectly safe and therefore should be fine. The Parish Council seemingly are fine with climbing and the SSSI considerations are well known: don't top out, don't clean new buttresses, don't do gardening other than to keep existing buttresses clean and tidy.If people want to preserve access then follow the SSSI considerations and if you really are concerned then keep the crag off social media, as that's historically what has caused the issues. All my opinion and nothing more ofc
I feel like you’re conflating the two things here. I’m just talking about apprentice wall, I don’t see why it’s such a big issue to stay off one sector when there’s loads of others to climb on whilst access rights are confirmed first to ensure there’s no issues in the future?
Quote from: Carliios on July 18, 2022, 02:08:27 pmI feel like you’re conflating the two things here. I’m just talking about apprentice wall, I don’t see why it’s such a big issue to stay off one sector when there’s loads of others to climb on whilst access rights are confirmed first to ensure there’s no issues in the future?How would staying off AW help? The issue at AW was with Network Rail who may or may not own the crag and who may or may not be content with climbing on the other side of the fence and turn a blind eye. The other crags are owned as far as I can tell by the local council ie an entirely different landowner. It also seems to be the case that the Council have contradictory attitude to climbers and climbing OTOH posting notices banning climbing and on the OTOH endorsing a management plan that says they encourage climbing. My understanding was when the BMC reps attempted to get in touch with the Council in the past they didn’t respond. Maybe a situation where it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.