HUNDREDS advocating for the right to roam will stage a large-scale trespass in Dartmoor this weekend.

Campaigners will gather at Vixen Tor in Devon on Saturday for the Trespass to a Forbidden Island event.

To highlight the absurdity of the current law, the group will cross a piece of private land to reach another piece to which there is a right of access but which no-one can enter without trespassing.

The Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000) gave people a right to roam over landscape types such as mountains, moorland, heathland, downland and commons.

But many of these are highly fragmented and surrounded by areas where the public has no right of access. 

Campaign group Right to Roam says there are about 2,500 of these “access islands.”

For Saturday’s trespass, campaigners have been asked to creatively imagine how they will get to these areas and some are set to bring a boat to “sail” to the island.

Right to Roam spokesman Lewis Winks said: “The absurdity of access islands is a clear example of why our current system of access rights in England is broken.

“Often, people don’t know where they have a right to go in the countryside.

“It’s ridiculous that the public have to trespass to reach these fragments of land where they have a legal right to roam, all because of our piecemeal approach to access in this country.”

There are no access islands in Scotland, Mr Winks pointed out, where a default right of access to most land and water was created in 2003.

“With political parties pledging to increase access to nature in England, it’s vital they learn from the mistakes of the past and look instead to follow successful examples like Scotland,” Mr Winks said.