Near Highwood Hill, Barnet – 5/10

This is indeed a rather sad sight; it is clear from eroded ground to the side of the stile that many people are choosing to go around it rather than navigate it. Whether this is down to the laziness of people, or a substandard design is a very emotive debate that could rage on for a very long time, as there would be strong arguments from both sides – as while this stile is certainly by no means the worst stile out there, but it is also far from the best or easiest to navigate.

The structure itself is solid and symmetrical, but the main let down is the step; not only is the fact that it is a sole step genuinely lets down everything thing else in a big way, but what makes things worse is the fact that it is painfully small and quite low down, making it quite understandable that so many have decided to just go around. Sadly, it is quite clear from the ground that most decide to go around and because of the poor effort made with the step (one of the integral elements of any stile) this stile is likely to find itself being redundant and eventually succumb to nature taking over in the very near future.