Kate Ashbrook at the new kissing gate

A leading campaigner has put her money where her mouth is to provide a gate to help people walk on access land.

Kate Ashbrook’s kissing gate has been installed in the boundary fence on Cobstone Hill in Buckinghamshire.

The owners, the Wormsley Estate, refused to fork out for the gate after putting up fencing around the Countryside and Rights of Way access land. But it said it would allow installation if someone else paid for it.

The Wormsley Estate is owned by the Getty family, which made its fortunes in the oil industry.

The fencing was subsidised by public money under the Government’s high-level stewardship scheme. Previously, walkers could get on to the land because fences were dilapidated.

Buckinghamshire County Council agreed to put in a gate at the site, in the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, if someone gave it.

Ms Ashbrook, who is president of the Ramblers and general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, said the new gate, which bears the Latin inscription Libertas spatiandi: libertas cogitandi – Freedom to roam: freedom to think – will enable people to complete a circular walk around the hill on the access land, where the views from the top of the ridge more than 500ft above sea level, are particularly fine, she added.

The land lies just north of the village of Turville and the gate is near a windmill that featured as Caractacus Potts’s workshop in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Ms Ashbrook, who lives in Turville, said: “Now that the gate restores public access to the ridge I hope the residents of Turville and surrounding villages, and everyone else, will enjoy the freedom to walk, and think, on the hill.”

The gate was provided through the Chilterns Society Donate a Gate scheme.