My father, Gerry Stewart, who has died aged 90, was a champion of ramblers and public rights of manner in Gloucestershire and past.
A police officer for a lot of his life, he went on to change into an official guardian of public paths, defending them from closure and encroachment, earlier than devising a sequence of themed long-distance walks put collectively from present paths, principally in Gloucestershire however together with components of Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
The primary of those was the Gloucestershire Method, for which he wrote and self-published an related guidebook in 1996. The trail proved to be common, and now seems on Ordnance Survey maps. It was adopted in 1997 by the Wysis Method, then the Three Choirs Method (1999), the Cotswold Canals Stroll (2000) and the St Kenelm’s Method (2005).
Gerry was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, and introduced up within the close by village of Alderton, the place he attended the native main faculty earlier than transferring to Cheltenham grammar. His father, Vic, was an agricultural labourer, and his mom, Flo (nee Gyde), a housewife.
In 1952 Gerry was referred to as up on nationwide service, spending his two years within the navy police, first in Germany after which on the Suez Canal in Egypt. After being demobbed he grew to become a Gloucestershire constabulary police officer in Cheltenham and served in varied places throughout the county.
In his youth a eager bicycle owner and later an enthusiastic walker, climber and mountaineer, he and his spouse, Kate (nee Kent), whom he married in 1955, have been early members of the Gloucestershire Mountaineering Membership.
After retiring from the police drive within the rank of inspector in 1982, Gerry took a place with Gloucestershire county council’s rights of manner division as a footpath inspector, retiring from that job after 11 years in 1998.
He then grew to become an area correspondent for the Open Areas Society, tasked with maintaining a tally of his former employer for any diminution of obtainable routes.
Gerry complained for a few years that using paths in Gloucestershire was being hampered by the surprising state of many stiles, and he efficiently lobbied for a lot of of them to be eliminated. He gave the county council a tough time – however all for the general public good. He leaves a useful legacy of paths in Gloucestershire which might be in higher order because of his decided work.
He’s survived by Kate and their youngsters, Genevieve and me.
