Nicholas Crane is a writer, geologist and passionate walker.
For the “Walk 21 – Taking walking forward in the 21st Century” conference, organised by CAST – The Centre for Alternative and Sustainable Transport at the Staffordshire University, UK, he delivered a short speech in which he describes a failed attempt to cross the UK by foot walking in a straight line.
“What I wanted to do was draw a random cross-section, a scientific cross-section, and limit my raw material to everything that lay on that straight line. It was rather a tricky operation.” Walking in a straight line through a highly populated country like England has many complications. The first 2000 metres, had I stuck entirely to my straight line, would have involved climbing an overhanging cliff at Berwick-upon-Tweed, crossing a very busy golf course, climbing the vertical walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed town, crossing the roof of the police station, then swimming the river Tweed.”
(…)
“You can see if you walk in a straight line across the Black Country in central England you have many, many choices of route, that the map is very densely crowded with alleyways, roads, streets, canals, towpaths – many, many route options. The urban walker has multiple choices and that is not true for the rural walker. In this country we have a very antiquated system of public rights of way. We have, currently, no right to roam.”

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Biography Nicholas Crane:
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/sciences/geography/cast/walk21/frames.html

Source:
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/sciences/geography/cast/walk21/papCrane.html