An Accidental Path?

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 24 Sep 2021

While the tramlines shown to the right of here on the large scale map don't any longer seem to represent anything on the ground, bushes and small trees - some of which are showing at the top right of the picture - occupy the land in the middle of the lines for their entire length. The ground they occupy was part of a road a very long time ago, appearing on late 1700s and early 1800s maps, but no longer in use by the time of the first OS map from the 1850s - by then it is just shown as grass in the middle of two walls or fences. The short grass path is presumably completely unrelated to the old road. It may just be a random coincidence, but may also have been formed by sheep and cattle on their way to get round to the other side of the bushes. The land here is part of a very large untended field in the centre of a circular hard path route. There is a sign when entering the field from the North, warning of the dangers of livestock. I usually find these kinds of signs both bossy and unnecessary (unless warning of the presence of a bull of course). But in this case it is justified. There are often cattle in the field; combine this with the large number of people from nearby Murieston, an area of Livingston, that regularly walk their dogs round the path that circles the field - a lot of whom will not have had that much experience of walking in the country - and you have a potential problem. It must be at least a two minute jog from the centre of the field to the nearest section of path.

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