Disco 3 - Response from 5th gear.

Tractors aren't intended to dig in that much. It does no good to the soil structure. Sometimes, harvesting a crop, or dealing with livestock (and you can't just not go to the livestock) you have to travel in conditions where the tractor, or any vehicle, will do damage.

You raise a good point there - two or three "ordinary" motors pootling round has never, so far, raised any problems when I've been out laning. However, add a motor or two bristling with aeriels and all the toys and attitudes change rapidly. Apart from one celebrated occasion, comments from land owners/ramblers have mostly been - "yes/no you are on the right route", "it's those dammed mud pluggers I hate", "oh and the bl**dy bikers tearing round", "it's nice to see Series motors still being used", "you just got a 110 CSW up *there*!?". In short, aggressive looking vehicles attract aggressive attitudes. And a cheery "Good Morning" to ramblers works wonders for PR.

Richard

I want to have a word with the local idiot rambling group in the Wye where they insist on walking down narrow(ish) main roads on the road and not the pavement (on the other side of the road) and get really arsey when you nearly flatten them against the wall... They cause congestion and its massively inconsiderate and dangerous especially as they have kids with them...

They;re given pavements why don't they use them aka the Green Cross Code etc.... or does the right to roam mean in the public highway?

Dave

I always make a point of acknowledging peds on lanes and try to give a cheery hello or good morning/afternoon to them. Most of the time it's greeted by stony face stares that say WTF do you think you're doing here!

That's when they don't just blank you, as plenty do!

Unless they all had Landys parked round the corner I rather think your wasting your time here. I'm sure there are some rambling related groups you can go have your wobbly in.

No, this was pretty wet ground and was while helping the landowner to recover his stuck 4x4 (can't remember model, a Toyota of some kind I think on road tyres). He dug his tractor out and while wandering off to the barn he was cursing and swearing about how much mess it was going to make ;-)

Don't worry David, I wasn't saying that tractors are evil, they are vehicles designed to do a job that often involves pulling heavy loads over (or through!) some very high rolling-resistance surfaces. What I was wingeing about was that someone seemed to be saying that tractors cause less damage than a 4x4, which is plainly ridiculous.

When you consider that 4x4 use on green lanes is going to be most intense at the weekends, whereas tractor use will be all week long, then I'm amazed at the amount of moaning that goes on from the antis about 4x4s tearing up lanes when in my experience on most lanes it's farm traffic. Perhaps the farmers should use their own tracks rather than tearing up public tracks? It would be a pain in the arse for farmers and they've got enough of that already but it's the only way to stop the damage. I don't see it happening though, not with farming the way it is at the moment, it's probably hard enough just to pay for the fuel in the first place let alone cut new paths!

See my reply to David, and also try reading my post again without your d*****ad hat on.

Ian Rawlings had a Brain fart and thus composed the following ...

Most farmers I know, and I live in a mostly rural area, do use their own tracks to fields, or public roads which is what most 4x4 offroading or greenlaning users also agree green lanes are, or should be. They have as much right as you or I or anyone to use these lanes. Divide and Conquer is what all the friggin' tree-huggers are trying to do.

Try to ban Tractors, what else will the farmers do? Why not fight for farmers help if a green lane you know of is being cut up, they can help more than you appear to realise, I have access to certain 'interesting areas' purely by being pro-active and actually speaking with farmers, rather than being remote from them and simply assuming ...

Yes I know, there are many farm tracks out there that are not green lanes, I cross them all the time. It's just a shame that some lanes are being torn up by farm traffic and we're getting the blame!

Indeed, they own them AFAIK, they own the land but we have access rights but it's their land. The only solution I can see to get rid of farm damage on lanes is for them to stop using the lanes, but that's not practical right now as farming's in a mess and I don't see it ever happening, so we're going to have to put up with farm damage.

Of course we could just try to make people realise that farming causes a fair old wedge of the damage we get blamed for, but I don't see them ever taking it on board :-(

Successfully too. I read an article recently that was banging on about 4x4 users and how they just want to get muddy and how they will plough through rivers while ignoring bridges, how they scare off the wildlife with their revving engines, don't give people any peace at night, are organising massive pushes to open up rights of way to 4x4 use (yes they are but not "massive"), and how the noise of 4x4s has been "likened to low flying jet fighters"!!!!!!!!!

Where did I read this? Ramblers magazine? The Guardian? Treehuggers monthly? No, it was "The Field" magazine, August 2004, a magazine dedicated to shooting, hunting and fishing as recreational sports. What was that about "Fight Prejudice Fight the Ban"?

I know, I've attended a few GLASS clearance days, one on the Ridgeway was attended by a farmer, he drove a tractor with a trailer and provided tools as well as helping out. He also however is a pig farmer who was responsible for some major damage on the Ridgeway and got a bit of a rocketing for it by the authorities, what's the bets that the "Friends of the Ridgeway" society's publicity shots include this damage as "evidence" of 4x4 damage ;-)

Since moving out to a tiny village in Dorset about a year ago I've also just joined Friends Of Dorset Rights Of Way who do a lot of clearance work, I've yet to get membership details but from their website they do a lot of clearance work too. I always have clearance tools with me and have chopped back a fair few (small) fallen trees and lopped off branches that are sticking out too far.

So I'm not completely ignorant of what is required.

Not quite sure what you think I'm assuming here.

Ian Rawlings composed the following ...

But that's just it .. Instead of saying it's the farmers fault they need to be stopped .. say let's join together and see what can be done. All you suggest is exactly what others are saying to try to stop 4x4's green-laning. How can you participate and encourage green-laning yet still ban a section of the community from using green lanes?

It's exactly the same as saying ban 4x4's 'cos they cut up all the green lanes, they patently don't and neither do all farmers cut up green lanes. Let's face it, some 4x4's do .. some farmers do, some horses do, some cyclists do, some walkers do, but they are all entitled to use them and they should _ALL_ be encouraged to use them more, in my opinion.

All you seem to want to do is shift blame .. "It wasn't me, it was him, stop him from doing it but let me" ...

That's not what I said, and as I also said I DO join together and see what can be done, see the bit in my previous post about lane clearances.

Didn't mention banning, and I also said that it's not practical to stop farmers using the lanes.

Oh look, something else I didn't say! Could you try reading my last post and notice that I don't use the words "all" where you do, I use the word "some". You are misinterpreting my posts for some reason.

No I don't, kindly read my posts properly. I'm not contributing anything else to this subthread as it's getting awfully circular.

Perhaps you should consider using that as a sig.

You think I'm going to read more of your nonsensical drivel?

Think you have clearly cornered the market for those. You really are quite worthless.

Here in Cambridgeshire the lanes get up quite a bit by farmers harvesting sugar beet and requiring access to field off the lanes. Once the harvest has finished, they get out the disks or the rotorvators and regrade the byway flat. Net result is that lanes can be heavily rutted from November to February/March and then March to October they are flat and easy. After all, the farmers want to be able to see how their crops are doing from the comfort of a Disco or Rangie, not a tractor....

Must have posh (read rich) farmers down your way. They all use various vintage Defenders up here. B-)

On or around Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:43:47 -0000, "BigBird" enlightened us thusly:

hey, play nicely you lot, now. we don't need to result to personal insults, so you to just say you're sorry and shake hands...

and BTW, we don't all have to agree on all subjects. Ian's made some valid points, as have you. stick at that and avoid calling names, the world'll be a nicer place.

and if you want a group that *really* damages the ground, I give you forestry felling/extraction equipment...

Defenders?

Luxury!

"David G. Bell" composed the following ...

'course .. we 'ad it tough ... ;)

Its all a moot point, it is the ramblers who do most damage, they have turned what used to be mere footpaths into broad muddy highways in the popular areas of the Lake District and Snowdonia.

I think Ramblers would do less damage if they took those heavy boots off and went barefoot.

Certainly in the grand scheme of things, there's just so MANY of them... All that methane as well ;-)

Mind you, kudos to them for the right to roam stuff, as an ex-amateur photographer who is looking to get back into it, I'm going to be breaking out the boots and backpacks sometime. I originally bought the landy to cart gear around, but the damned thing just took over!

That's a shame. My mum used to be a rambler and we still have disagreements about driving off-road sometimes, but she said one of the reasons she left the RA was because some of the people who organised walks were taking them down contentious paths through people's gardens, including one where they broke the fence and reduced the woman living there to tears. I also read one boast in uk.rec.rights-of-way some years ago from a chap who carried a machette around to hack through people's gardens, he boasted that they soon went back inside when they noticed what he was using to cut down their hedges.

I've cut a chain or two on illegally locked gates but I think I'd draw the line at carving up people's gardens. I used to live near Basingstoke and a byway ran down the side of a church and over someone's carefully tended lawn. I hopped out of the truck and walked ahead to see what was going on and found a woman in the garden, and asked her about the right of way. She said "Fine, just carry on!" so I walked back to the truck, got in, looked at her lawn and got back out. I asked if she'd noticed I was in a truck and she jumped a bit and said that she hadn't noticed, and that the lane was no longer a byway, just a footpath. It was signposted as one and marked as one on the OS maps but I hadn't checked on the DM so didn't press ahead. The lawn had been grown over some reinforced bricks so it looks like it had been used as a byway/bridleway for some time but it wasn't very long and I didn't want to shit on my own doorstep.

There are some good byways around that area (I no longer live there) so if anyone is around the Woodmancott/The Devers area near Basingstoke (Hampshire) then do explore. The Half Moon Spread Eagle pub in Micheldever is very good, although the food has gone a bit overpriced since a change in ownership but still much better than average.

Flippin 'eck I don't half type a lot! Glad I can type fast or I'd be here all day!