I've been really enjoying "Rivers with Griff Rhys Jones" on BBC1 lately, despite the series' somewhat unimaginative title. In the first programme and in some of the publicity leading up to the series, good old Griff highlights the issue that while in Scotland anyone is allowed to row along any stretch of waterway as long as it is navigable, the same is not true in England: the landowners of land alongside a publicly owned river are allowed to place restrictions on how the river itself is used. This is of course both shocking and wrong - public should mean just that.
I've just read a letter in the Radio Times from a certain Derrick Hale of Derby , who likens rowing along a river next to his land to parking your car on his drive. What a stupid analogy; the equivalent of parking a car on his drive would perhaps be mooring a boat on his river bank. The motoring equivalent to rowing along a river is closer to cycling along the road past his house - something that nobody should have the right to stop.
