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To: da_cheif™ who wrote (289241)	6/20/2004 11:42:43 AM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 436258

Madonna loses fight to bar ramblers guardian.co.uk Patrick Barkham Saturday June 19, 2004 The Guardian Ramblers will be free to roam across 54 hectares (135 acres) of Madonna's £9m country estate after the singer failed to establish that walkers would violate her human rights. While an inquiry yesterday ruled that the public had no right of access to 15 out of 17 pockets of land on Ashcombe estate, two tracts declared "open country" amount to nearly half the area being disputed by the Countryside Agency, and Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie. Her solicitors refused to say last night whether she would appeal in the high court against the decision. Planners said they could not consider arguments concerning her rights to privacy and property at her 548-hectare (1,370-acre) estate on the Wiltshire-Dorset border. In his ruling, planning inspector David Pinner said none of the land he declared open country was within sight of Madonna's grade II-listed Georgian mansion, and so he did not have to consider her claim that it would infringe her right to respect for her private and family life under the Human Rights Act. Mr Pinner said Madonna's claim that opening up parts of her estate to walkers would also breach her "right to property" was "effectively a challenge to the [Countryside and Rights of Way] Act itself and to the whole concept embodied within it of providing public rights over private land". He added: "It is not a matter that can be dealt with in the context of a mapping appeal and it would be beyond my powers to consider it." Jon Gambles, of the Ramblers' Association, said: "Some very significant areas of downland will be available to the public which is excellent news because it is beautiful countryside. "The human rights issue was not an appropriate thing to bring up under the appeal because the inquiry was simply designed to discuss the accuracy of the Countryside Agency's maps. I don't think her personal rights to freedom are going to be upset by this at all. She lives in a large area of the country and people can be in it without inconveniencing her. The right to roam is all about responsible walkers enjoying the countryside." The 54 hectares of chalk downland designated open country will now appear on the agency's conclusive map of open country, which the government will begin to declare open to the public on a region-by-region basis from September this year as part of its "right to roam" legislation. Almost 8% of England and Wales has been provisionally mapped by the agency as open country under the Countryside and Rights of Way (Crow) Act. The dispute arose after the agency's provisional map declared 121 hectares (302 acres) of Madonna's estate would be accessible to the public, including land close to her mansion. In only the fourth public inquiry of its kind, held in Shaftesbury, Dorset, planners said they could not consider human rights arguments but must simply judge from geological and environmental evidence whether pockets of her estate could be classified as "wholly or predominantly" open downland or semi-natural grassland, which walkers would have a right to access under the Crow Act. Madonna once said she had nothing "bad to say about the ramblers" and has maintained several public paths, including the Wessex Ridgeway, across her estate. But during the inquiry, her barrister argued that opening up further areas to walkers would jeopardise the couple's work restoring the estate as a working farm and shoot. Ritchie, a film director, is keen on countryside sports, while Madonna has taken shooting lessons