WalkingRiver Test near Mill House

Local Footpaths

The Test Valley is a beautiful area to walk around, with lovely river scenes and many pretty villages. We, in Longparish, have over 20 miles of footpaths. They are identified by numbers. We have a map of them in the centre pages of our Village Handbook which shows the path numbers. You can see it here (PDF 369K). The Handbook also has some ideas for short walks around our village.

Footpaths maintenance

The County Council is responsible for the surface of footpaths. Landowners must make the path good if agricultural operations interfere with it and are resposible for ensuring that paths are not obstructed by vegetation coming in from the sides or above. We are lucky that landowners in the village generally take their responsibilities for footpaths seriously and look after them well. In addition we have a team of volunteers who look after particular paths and others who help with one off jobs. The parish council has two brush cutters and various other tools and always needs more volunteers. Training is given where necessary. If you are able to help please contact the chairman of our parish council footpaths working group. See this link and scroll down.

Longparish footpaths Leaflet

Our footpaths leaflet, "Exploring Longparish" was published in July 2007 with help from HCC under the Small Grants Scheme. It has been so popular that we published a second, updated, edition in April 2009. Click here to see it. NB it is a 1MB PDF so it may a take a while to load. It gives details of four walks around the village and a map showing many more. The County Council have featured two of them, The Riverdance Walk and the Forton Loop, on their website. You can get a copy of the leaflet in the pubs, the shop or the church.

Some of the walks suggest using the village hall car park. There is are links to maps of where it is at the foot of the village hall page.

As time permits, we plan to publish more information and photographs about these and other good walks in the parish. If you'd like to suggest one or have some pictures we could publish please use the contact form.

You can see all our paths on the HCC site which shows definitive rights of way. Just follow this link, follow the link to online maps, click on "Start Using Rights of Way Interactive Map"and enter Longparish in the search box. You can zoom in and out to see as much detail as you like.

Your rights and responsibilities

We all have the legal right to use our footpaths. But rights bring responsibilities as well. You can see more information in The Countryside Code. There is a special section for Dog Owners. The County Council have also published some very helpful information about dogs.

Reporting problems

Hampshire County Council are responsible for footpaths in the county. This page explains how to report problems.

The Test Way

The Test Way goes through Longparish. It is a 46-mile footpath from Inkpen Beacon, nearly 20 miles North of the village, to the mouth of the Test at Totton, near Southampton. For more details, see the Test Way area of the HCC site.

Lots more Hampshire walks

If you'd like to see lots more Hampshire walks try this external link.

RUPPs BOATs and Restricted Byways
Alex Lewis, Senior Rights of Way Officer gave a very useful presentation about the restricted byways to the March 08 Parish Council meeting.  She confirmed that there is no right of way for cars or motor bikes on restricted byways.  You can see her notes here.

New Paths on Hurstbourne Estate
In exchange for deleting a small section of footpath near Papermill Farm, Mr and Mrs Tacchi of Testbourne Farm Partnership have

  • dedicated a much longer stretch of path between Britwell Priors and Tufton; and
  • established a new permissive right of way between Whitchurch and Hurstbourne Priors.

The new paths are now all open. The view over the river at Tufton is particularly nice. The permissive path means that it is now possible to walk safely between Whitchurch and Hurstbourne Priors. And you can combine the new paths and existing rights of way to make a circular route of about six miles. Here is a map showing the new paths. It is a PDF of 1.2MB so It may take a while to load.

The parish council supported this proposal because the advantages of the new paths outweigh this disadvantage of the loss of the Papermill stretch.

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