You do wonder about public footpaths that mysteriously just end just short of another footpath, or just short of a lane
It was a young Rights of Officer, who explained the reasons for these sorts of anomalies to me probably nearly 15 years ago, he explained the political and circumstantial circumstances of the time in those postwar years and how they contributed to these nonsensical anomalies. I then realised how much I knew about this as I got pitched onto National Farmers Union County Executive at a very young age.
Very few people seem to realise that it is because landowners did not wish to allow reasonable access to our countryside that we have to have Rights of Way, ironical now as spend so much time bellyaching about them.
This example here shown in Streetmap a RoW footpath ends at a parish boundary, third bar up is the 1:25k OS map, which shows the black dotted line denoting a parish boundary. south of the boundary is one of the Shrewsbury Borough Council, the footpath enters a privately owned estate from the town, but that is where the RoW ceases, and that parish came under the authority of the then the Shrewsbury and Atcham Rural District Council, whose chairman was an Estate Agent known to act for at least 7 estate around the town, all with a incidence of RoW, which linked the town to the countryside. I found some correspondence line some years ago which linked this man to the Berwick estate, where the RoW ceases.
On Saturday I will be with a Lady, who will be celebrating her 100th birthday, she was the daughter of a tenant of that farm, and she remembers the owner of the estate, grandfather of present owners, insisting he had to keep the pathway open as it was a right of way. She remembers many people walking along it in the 1920's from a large house on the other side of the estate.
Not long back from a tough 8 mile walk, some of which was over farmland and trackless heather moorland - and to get on the hill I sneaked through someone's garden, as suggested by their neighbour!
I had a similar experience, having walked across 0.5mile steep field, to find an overly expressive array of privacy defence, a neighbour called out, "Just walk through his garden, he's at work all day, but don't come back this way, late afternoon when he is back. If he would unlock the field gate there would be no trouble for anyone."
Why the landowners lobby so hard against access, when the growth of the leisure industry is boosting the rural economy, is pure contrariness. PD is probably correct in thinking that they will be seeking to stop little used RoW. That is why they are desperate to get past 2026, without the full implications of the corruption of the Definitive Map becoming fully exposed.