I ask because I checked and I was very surprised, and then I checked my second nearest and I was amazed.
A lot of this comes down to definitions. Footpaths are everywhere - between buildings, through woods, across fields - but only some are officially classified as Public Rights of Way. These are paths on which the public have a legally protected right to pass, and have to be designated as such by local councils through inclusion on a definitive map. Some unrecorded routes may also be public paths through common usage, but for today's post I can only consider those appearing on council maps. Let's start closest to home...
Tower Hamlets
There are no public rights of way in Tower Hamlets. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 exempted London on the basis that it was overwhelmingly built-up land, an exemption which still applies to the 12 Inner London boroughs. If you check an Ordnance Survey you'll see it's true, there are no red dashed lines anywhere from Camden to Greenwich or Woolwich to Hackney. A campaign was started in 2010 to get the Inner London boroughs to produce their own Definitive Rights of Way Map but none have yet done so. This doesn't stop anyone walking up an alleyway or crossing a recreation ground, of course, but to track down an official public right of way I need to go to Outer London...
Newham
Newham has a Definitive Rights of Way Map, and better still has an interactive map on its website to show them all. This confirms that a lot of the paths I thought might be public rights of way actually aren't. The River Lea towpath is a permissive path. The Greenway is a permissive path. We walk along them thanks to the goodwill of the owner, which in the Greenway's case is Thames Water, who technically could withdraw access rights at any time. But I did spot a genuine public right of way less than half a mile from my home and it's here...
This is Three Mills, the tidal mill on the Lea, and a splendid place for a walk. But the public right of way isn't a riverside stroll, it's just this short run of cobbles which took me precisely one minute to complete. The public footpath starts halfway across the footbridge, because the other side is in Tower Hamlets where public rights of way don't exist. It continues above the millrace between the House Mill and the Clock Mill, then stops suddenly outside the entrance to Three Mills Studios. Here it meets the permissive path round the outside of the studio complex... which has been stopped up since March 2007, which just goes to show how easy it is to lose access to an unprotected path.
This 100 metre tiddler is my nearest public footpath. Ridiculous. But when I scoured Newham's map further I really struggled to find red dotted public rights of way, only green Permissive Paths and purple Other Routes (publicly maintained). Nothing in Stratford, nothing in the Olympic Park, nothing in Forest Gate, Plaistow or Canning Town. Eventually I spotted another one over by City Airport, and had to double check the map to confirm I wasn't seeing things. My second closest public right of way is here...
This is Connaught Bridge, a crossing point between the Royal Victoria and Royal Albert Dock. Pedestrians aren't welcome on the overpass so an alternative route exists at dockside level. The public footpath starts beside the end of the runway, close to a Caution Jet Blast sign, then ducks under the concrete roadway and crosses a cantilever footbridge. Fabulous view of Docklands at the far end of the water! But the public footpath then meanders along a hatched service road outside the DoubleTree Hotel, miserably overseen by Private No Parking signs, before passing the Premier Inn and stopping dead outside the Fox@Connaught. It took me barely four minutes to walk it end to end. It could hardly feel less like a public footpath if it tried.
Checking the map, it appears that Newham has only four other public rights of way.
• One's along the Thames foreshore facing Gallions Reach, a formerly desolate outpost now being overshadowed by flats. If you've ever walked the last section of the Capital Ring you'll have walked this way.
• A second runs alongside Langdon Academy playing fields and ends up beside a grim embankment on the North Circular. I've only walked it once, and let's just say I quickened my pace.
• A third cuts between the sheds on Beckton Triangle Retail Park, first alongside Harveys then across the car park to PC World. Fifty years ago this was Gooseley Lane, but there's no modern excuse.
• Finally a much longer public footpath exists around three sides of the City of London Cemetery in Aldersbrook. One side is part of the Roding Valley Way. I have never built up the confidence to walk down it.
Newham's six public footpaths, to be frank, are monumentally underwhelming. But they're still better than...
Waltham Forest
Although councils were supposed to have a Definitive Rights of Way Map in 2008, Waltham Forest missed the target. They managed a Rights of Way Improvement Plan, but this mostly recognised a series of action points without an actual outcome. One issue is that the three boroughs which merged to form Waltham Forest had very different footpath legacies. Walthamstow recorded 111, Chingford two and Leyton none at all ("There are no routes recorded for this area as it was considered to be so fully developed as to make a survey inexpedient"). It reads as if Waltham Forest put their predecessor's plans in a drawer and forgot about them.
Waltham Forest's RoWIP mentions that the borough now has 15 PRoWs, but doesn't mention where they are. No official map has ever been published. In 2017 a resident tried to extract the list in a Freedom of Information request, but all the Information Officer could say was "Public Rights of Way data referred to is recorded and retained in paper and PDF (extracts) format only at time of writing. Such data can be made available - by prior request - at any of the borough's libraries of offices." For all I know my second nearest public footpath is in Waltham Forest, but I have no easy way to tell.
And all this matter because a race is on. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 decreed that any pre-1949 footpaths not recorded on official maps on 1st January 2026 would cease to carry public rights and could be stopped up. The Ramblers Association has been running a lengthy campaign to hunt down England's missing footpaths, with lockdown giving local research a bit of a boost, but several thousand miles remain at risk. Some of those might well be in Waltham Forest, but who's to know?
Redbridge
Redbridge has an exemplary public footpath record. It has a plan, a Definitive Map and an interactive map on its website with all 160 public rights of way shown and summarised. I even used it once to write a particularly niche blogpost about five Ilford footpaths, it's that comprehensive. If I lived in Redbridge I'd know precisely where to walk.
But within three miles of my home, to my knowledge, there are only two public rights of way and they're both highly disappointing. I hope your nearest footpath, wherever it is, inspires you more.
