No ”legal” access to land or most waterways (strangely, a beach is considered a road here!) at all in New Zealand, one can only be on roads (carriage-ways) or ”public” land; this makes it difficult to camp when cycle-touring, have sometimes to clamber over a fence into a field after dark. No gentle rambling through the woods here—well, there aren‘t any woods, only a desolation of grass, Monterrey pines and Monterrey cypresses.
As i know the farmer with the bordering farm i have no problem foraging and travelling through this farm (actually, they live quite a distance away as have thousands of acres), this giving me access at the end of the road to the Misty Mountains.
And i’ve often been harassed by paranoid farmers when parked on a country road: once i had to threaten to push their vehicle across the road as they were blocking my way out of a camp near a river (i had a small four-wheel-drive truck with a canopy on it covering a six foot tray, and it had strong bullbars hehe). I’ve also been harrassed by paranoid farmers whilst cycling!—once during a full moon night-ride my having a rest on the berm of a steep road, and as i was starting to ride off a motorquad (please don‘t use the term ’quad bike’ as it is an oxymoron being short for ’quadracycle’ and ’bicycle’!) suddening from behind rushed up the road and cut me off the rider claiming that he didn‘t know what the blinking red light was (bicycle tail-light): he was summarily blasted by my anger. I’m fiery, which isn‘t appreciated in NZ land of suppressed emotion: it’s like living in a wardrobe with sleepy little Hobbits…and no way out to Narnia.
*************
Adding more to this thread, i thought that the origin of the right to use certain walk-ways and bridle-ways is from common law, and comes from when folks would cross country to go from one village or town to another as being quicker than by carriage-way—this possibly being quite ancient.
Once most folks had land in common; the idea of title to land (ownership) is Roman, and this has been used in the British Isles and elsewhere to confiscate land claiming that they didn‘t own it —which is true, but ignoring the cultural context that no-one owned it— from those whom had been using it for millenia. No-one bought the earth in the first place! The earth is not of us we are of the earth.