My father, Gerry Stewart, who has died aged 90, was a champion of ramblers and public rights of way in Gloucestershire and beyond.
A police officer for much of his life, he went on to become an official guardian of public paths, protecting them from closure and encroachment, before devising a series of themed long-distance walks put together from existing paths, mostly in Gloucestershire but including parts of Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
The first of these was the Gloucestershire Way, for which he wrote and self-published an associated guidebook in 1996. The path proved to be popular, and now appears on Ordnance Survey maps. It was followed in 1997 by the Wysis Way, then the Three Choirs Way (1999), the Cotswold Canals Walk (2000) and the St Kenelm’s Way (2005).
Gerry was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, and brought up in the nearby village of Alderton, where he attended the local primary school before transferring to Cheltenham grammar. His father, Vic, was an agricultural labourer, and his mother, Flo (nee Gyde), a housewife.
In 1952 Gerry was called up on national service, spending his two years in the military police, first in Germany and then at the Suez Canal in Egypt. After being demobbed he became a Gloucestershire constabulary police officer in Cheltenham and served in various locations across the county.
In his youth a keen cyclist and later an enthusiastic walker, climber and mountaineer, he and his wife, Kate (nee Kent), whom he married in 1955, were early members of the Gloucestershire Mountaineering Club.
After retiring from the police force in the rank of inspector in 1982, Gerry took a position with Gloucestershire county council’s rights of way department as a footpath inspector, retiring from that job after 11 years in 1998.
He then became a local correspondent for the Open Spaces Society, tasked with keeping an eye on his former employer for any diminution of available routes.
Gerry complained for many years that the use of paths in Gloucestershire was being hampered by the shocking state of many stiles, and he successfully lobbied for many of them to be removed. He gave the county council a hard time – but all for the public good. He leaves a valuable legacy of paths in Gloucestershire that are in better order thanks to his determined work.
He is survived by Kate and their children, Genevieve and me.
