Kate has been general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, Britain’s oldest national conservation body, for 37 years.  She campaigns for public paths and access, and in 2002 she personally won a case in the court of appeal against East Sussex County Council, which failed to reopen an illegally obstructed footpath.  She is a trustee, and former president and chair of Ramblers GB, former chair of the Campaign for National Parks, and former member of the board of the Countryside Agency.  Her hobbies include learning birdsong and finding illegally blocked paths.