In the UK a "footpath" is a legal right of way for people on foot. It's often muddy, goes through fields with animals, and there usually are many gates or stile

In the UK a "footpath" is a legal right of way for people on foot. It's often muddy, goes through fields with animals, and there usually are many gates or stiles [0] you need to cross. You probably could cycle over parts of it, but some of the footpaths near where I grew up are even hard to walk as the hedges between fields are often overgrown. You only have the right to walk along a footpath, any other use - including cycling - without the land owners pernission is considered trespass. Often they are hundreds of years old, so any new construction needs to allow the public to cross over them. When I was growing up, one of my neighbours did a lot of research into footpaths in the area, and uncovered a lot of forgotten footpaths. Some of them even went through people's back gardens, and as they were legal rights of way, they had no choice but to open them up (apparently there's a way to move them now for cases like this now). [0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/stile https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/stile