Channel 4 news piece on off-roading

I don't know if that's the same one that was on the news as I can't watch windows video files on this machine and am away from my main system, but I assume it is.

Such is popularist media I guess...

Good show, by the way, did you record it Ian? (I missed it).

I'll happily put it along with the other stuff to do with GLASS and YDNP at:

If you can code it or let me have a VHS tape.

Super, thanks, now archived at:

so Mother"

Sounds like bollox to me, yon farmer wants sommat better than his present tractor if things are getting that bad, damn it modern tractors are pretty goo off road almost as good as 2CV :)

You know the most damage that ever was done to roads was back in the days of the horse and cart, ask Blind Jack of Knareborough if you doubt me (mind you you'll ave to be good with a oija board to do that)

What do you expect from a part of our great county who have tried (or have) stopped city dwellers to buy houses in the dales. They charge us over the odds to visit attractions and then want us to go home without going anywhere they can't charge. I wonder how they would feel if we banned all country folk from buying houses in Leeds etc.Do we complain when they sh*t up all the roads with their tractors.If i Covered the road outside my house with cow dung the council would fine me and make me clean it up. Its not their countryside its our countryside ..

Feel better now!

Adrian Ford

In the GLASS magazine there was a story about a local rag that published pictures of a farmer standing in foot-deep ruts moaning about landrovers, and pictures of a local pay 'n' play site presented as the damage caused to green lanes in the countryside... There's a lot of it about. The local GLASS reps complained bitterly and finally got a letter published, with all the bits about the fake pictures edited out of course.

More worrying is the three or four incidents of lane sabotage in the last 6 months that have been reported to them and the police, with metal spikes and planks with nails being left in puddles and mounds of earth placed at the sides of the track to force people to go through the puddles where the traps are. Add to that the barbed wire strung at chest height across byways and it adds up to a pretty dismal picture. Pictures to illustrate the articles were supplied by the police who are investigating.

Rampant discrimination in our "just and tolerant" society, who'd have thought it eh! Freedom of speech for religious loonies but not harmless off-roaders. There are some bad eggs of course, but a tiny minority. The most trouble I have when laning is trying to find the lane through the thick grass that's grown on it through lack of use!

Watch the video again with sound on, the stuff they say is very annoying.

An observation I may return to at some point... (b'grit, slobber on the keyboard agin...)

so Adrian Ford was, like...

Actually I read this report the opposite way. Not as the Dales people wanting to get rid of the nasty city-dwellers, but as a city-dweller (female, ethnically-different journalist) going out to the countryside, finding the odd rut in a lane and getting her knickers in a twist over "damage" to what would otherwise be a pristine Beatrix Potter landscape. Most farmers I know wouldn't worry about a few ruts, unless they were enough to stop them going about their work - it's the city dwellers who see a muddy track and assume it's someone's "fault".

Yes, it's *our* countryside, but take it as it is, not as some idealised playground for the lefties in Hackney who want to get back to "real living" and roses around the door, as long as it isn't too smelly and we can still drive the MachoHardWarrior Sport GSX up to the door without getting it dirty. Oh, and can you stop that cockerel crowing so early - we had a dreadful drive down last night, and a bit too much of that rather nice Merlot.

MY rant over!

Just to add my two pennys worth, if thats ok, the ruts looked much wider than normally possible with a Landy, even a nice new one with 235's fitted. What I am trying to say is that I wouldn't be surprised if it was the farmer himself who had churned up this green lane just to get himself on telly. Should go down well in his local tonight? As for his comment about the ruts being too deep, surely he must know not to keep driving in them as that makes matters worse, especially in the snow which was one of his concerns. I was taught to straddle these kinds of ruts?

But it's the left wing Guardian reading do gooders that want to ramble without seeing a 4x4 for miles. This island of ours is big enough for everyone to enjoy as I can go to Scotland or Wales in my Landy and not see a Guardian reader for miles and days on end? Or another person at all for that matter?

so Larry was, like...

Agreed. Don't you find that they stick in the treads of ATs much worse than MTs? I ran over one last week and he's still going click-click every wheel revolution.

so Jason was, like...

Of all the miles of off-tarmac tracks in the UK, something like 95% are for walkers and horses only (and I'm OK with that). But they want to ban us from the 5% we have!

Someone will be along any minute with the correct figures.

I came across a bit of a scare story at the local Neighbourhood Watch meeting. The claim was made that the crooks would get at the houses in a new estate by running up to the back gardens in 4x4s.

Why not, I asked, check with the farmers about locking the field gates?

"Can't do that, Right to Roam."

As an ex-farmer, I boggled slightly. I limited myself to telling them that right to roam didn't apply to arable land.

The bit about opportunists walking off with "white goods" from garages also seemed a little at odds with reality, but shifting a washing machine is something that perhaps is an experience that this guy has missed.

And I can well remember the country side as it was thirty and forty years ago, ruts and all.

I don't know what this mythic unspoilt past they are pining for is. Lorrys have to get produce from farms, all sorts of heavy machinery has to be moved about,

Who does the most damage to the countryside, I will tell you Rambers.

I wouldn't dispute the figure.

But please don't forget that many of these public rights of way, for walkers and horses only, coincide with the _private_ rights of way needed by farmers and other occupiers of land.

The Ramblers, it sometimes seems, see a wheel-rut left by a farmer tending to his livestock, and switch to scream-and-leap mode.

"Jason" wrote in news:S9NOe.11786$ snipped-for-privacy@fe3.news.blueyonder.co.uk:

Careful. Some of us own Land Rovers.

Jeremy

On or around Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:14:33 +0100, Mother enlightened us thusly:

is it just me or is the video as dark as a dark thing in places?

Glad to see your GLASS magazine has arrived :-)

The other part of this frightening story is that it was a horse rider who found it - the horse could have been seriously hurt - possibly have to be put down, and furthermore, just after the police had removed the viscious device, a rescue team had to use the same route.

Yebut that's what the bent metal tool in your Swiss Army knife is for init?