DORSET'S final 'right to roam' map will be released next week ready for the introduction of a new law that allows more access to the countryside.

Tomorrow the conclusive map will be published and the law will be enforced in central southern England from December.

It will open up more than 50,000 hectares of private countryside, including land near tourist spots such as the Cerne Abas Giant.

Under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, people have new rights to walk on areas of open country and registered common land.

A spokesman for the Countryside Agency said: "This is very important for the countryside. When the law is introduced in December people will be able to wander freely over access land and they won't have to stick to paths."

Landowners will be able to close their land to the public for up to 28 days each year.

The law is being enforced in stages over the next year. On September 19 the new rules were enforced for the first time in Derbyshire and South East England.

The changes in Dorset follow hundreds of appeals against the draft map.

Many walkers wanted access to more land and some landowners were eager to have their land excluded. Pop icon Madonna famously took her appeal against access on her estate to the High Court earlier this year, winning her case.

The chairman of the countryside campaign charity Open Spaces, Rodney Legg, was responsible for 500 of the 1,100 applications for additions to this area's draft map. Seventy of his applications were accepted by the Countryside Agency for the provisional map, published last year, and he now hopes more than 50 will make it through to the final map.

Mr Legg said: "We had already made submissions to the Countryside Commission but in the draft map there were gapping omissions of whole tracts of open space.

"I was aghast at how much had been left off them."

But he said the changes to the law were important for the area.

"For many people the changes will mean that there will be many places that they can just park their car and walk in the country," he said.

"My predecessors have been fighting for this kind of thing for a century."

After December all new Ordnance Survey Explorer maps will show the open access areas.

The conclusive map will be displayed at County Hall in Dorchester, Purbeck District Council offices in Wareham and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council offices and at Weymouth Library and online at www.ca-mapping.co.uk/mapping