Near Fordwich, Kent – 4/10

A very haphazard stile both in terms of its lacklustre design and indolent way of dealing with the barbed wire. The fact that walkers have to be very careful where they place their right hand while having to also focus on the rather tricky navigation is surely a recipe for disaster! The barbed wire trap aside, the main structure of the stile itself is just about passable, with three solid bars held together admittedly quite well by the posts, making for a reasonably stable stile. However, like so many other stiles, this is yet another example of the designer forgetting about the crucial importance of the main part that helps us navigate the frame – the step! Ideally that would be plural, but even the single step is way too low down to be effective enough on its own and is depressingly flimsy.