Ramblers
"We owe so much to Joan for devoting her life to the Ramblers.”
Name: Joan Deacon
Current role: Ramblers Isle of Wight volunteer
Length of service: 42 years
Joan co-founded the Ramblers Isle of Wight group in 1967 after becoming disheartened by the neglect of the path network on the Island. Clearing barbed wire from routes, reinstating ploughed or overgrown paths, Joan re-established a comprehensive network of paths and bridleways. By working alongside the local authority, approximately 530 miles of rights of way were added to the definitive map – and thus protected under law. By the 1980s a usable network was becoming a reality and so Joan set about promoting it by writing the first of her trilogy of walking guides to the Island. Since then copies have run to 60,000. Joan would always revise these booklets herself, updating changes to the path network, until she was diagnosed with IBM (inclusion body myositis) which meant she could not walk as far. Yet she is still very much involved in protecting rights of way; most recently working on the Ramblers coastal access campaign, to ensure a protected coastal route around the whole of England. Joan has been a group secretary and served on the Ramblers Wessex Area Committee for many years, and is still representing the Isle of Wight at the age of 73.
Joan received a certificate of achievement from the Ramblers in 2009, to mark 42 years of voluntary service. Ramblers trustee and former Chair, Kate Ashbrook said, “Not only has she encouraged and motivated volunteers but she has also done a prodigious amount of work on the [Isle of Wight] paths. They are in a very different state now from when she first set foot on the Island. We owe so much to Joan for devoting her life to the Ramblers.”
