| 'campaigning to improve off-road horse riding and opening up the countryside for more riding' |
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| 'campaigning to improve off-road horse riding and opening up the countryside for more riding' |
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Garron Baines writes: It is with sadness that we report the death of Gordon Hands who was for more than half a century a vigorous campaigning voice for rights of way in our area. Gordon showed me pictures of himself on his horseback in the 1930s when I visited him at his home in Henham earlier this year to discuss his enthusiastic support for new bridleway creations between Debden and Thaxted. He was both a keen walker and for many years the leader of the local Ramblers organisation but also an enthusiastic horse rider until into his eighties. He was also a tireless campaigner for improved rights of way and showed me boxes of files of all the campaigns he had fought over several decades. He had an exceptionally incisive mind and brilliant memory and a wonderful ability to compile the most challenging communications to those in authority from whom he expected higher standards on all rights of way. The newly resurfaced route from Little Henham that many of us rode along on our Waldegraves ride on September 23 was ironically one of his final campaigns in which he served legal compliance notices on the local authority for over 2 years until they capitulated to his reasoned arguments and was completed in the week of his death. He leaves us a legacy and an example that should guide us forward. |
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