Illegal use of ROW

On or around Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:09:13 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

you can't reason with that sort, unfortunately.

well, yeah. fairly obvious what makes ruts like that if you've ever come across a working farm. There again, I've seen ruts very nearly that deep which *were* made by 4x4 abuse, also a mud wallow on a lane which I for one wouldn't attempt to drive *or* walk through - direct result of over use of byway making the drainage go wrong - water that should be running across the line of the track instead is caught by the ruts and runs down it to a low point. Sure, it could be fixed, by digging a really big ditch and putting a drain under the track. But frankly, the council are never going to repair that road. If the laners want to use it again (it's currently TRO'd) then it will require a big volunteer effort to get it usable for the council to consider reopening it. In an environment where even the main roads are, in my observation over the last 20-30 years, less well maintained than both they should be or were, there's no realistic chance that the council spend what is undoubtedly going to be thousands of pounds in materials and man-hours on repair of a road that a dozen or two people a year want to use for fun.

What *I* think should happen is that the various commercial organisations who have been and still are causing a considerable amount of the problem in this respect (I've heard of people coming from abroad to go on organised "laning" trips) should put some of their profit and some of their organisation into green lane repair days and the like. The various magazines which do organised runs could do likewise, I'm sure they can afford it. I daresay the local authorities might be prepared to supply materials as well - I've no doubt that the labour is the bit that costs - if consulted on the matter.

If the "antis" found as often as not that the bunch of people in "horrid

How did they manage that I wonder, most trucks don't have much more than about 8 inches of clearance between the wheels. 2-foot deep ruts really are tractor territory, even the pinz can only manage 16 inches of ruts before bottoming out.

That's the kind of thing the local group, FoDRoW

The local council around here are prepared to pay for materials in the form of aggregate normally, the volunteer groups then go and pick it up and lay it down, I don't know the cost of the material but the labour cost to the council is zero. From what I've seen the local group has more expertise sometimes than the council, a recent council-managed repair effort was checked out by the volunteers and they found the ruts in a lane had been filled with clay, you could push a twig into it down to a depth of a foot or so.

They certainly should, care to take bets on whether they will? ;-) I don't use them and don't buy the mags, for these very reasons, unfortunately I think they can survive without me. In Wales it's often pretty cronic apparently, which is probably a popular destination for overseas laning holidays. Mind you one of the companies that organises welsh trips does more trips on the continent, mostly Russia and similar rather than places like France.

At least the mags could run regular articles on lane repairs, each month a page on a lane repair that's been done by volunteers somewhere in the country, the repair doesn't have to have been done that month so they only need 12 repairs a year each and that can't be too hard to find if they ask readers to submit photos and details. I have no idea if any magazines already do that as I don't buy them, if not then perhaps some readers could suggest that they do.

On or around Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:09:28 -0000, "Larry" enlightened us thusly:

quite. But then messrs Telford and Macadam came along and surfaced them...

Telford, mostly, made up-to-date Roman roads, which of course the Romans made quite well previously but everyone stopped maintaining.

Macadam made much cheaper roads, which was quite innovative and apparently quite effective in the days of steel (or iron) shod wagon wheels.

and in previous times few people had leisure for wandering. The people who did have the leisure tended to have horses to ride on.

Wow, a gridlock, so we can only use the motorway network?

Martin

My ambiguity, I should have said "track". The point being rights to use the track may have been acquired without it becoming a highway or indeed the use could be permissive.

I'd been told that all rupps were being either reduced to bridleways or footpaths or made up to byways open to all traffic but as my use of the non-road rights of way network is as a walker I have not delved into it.

AJH

On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 06:59:07 GMT, "Patrick Manuel" scribbled the following nonsense:

certainly my view as well... :-(

I thought that the onus of proof changed, so that if you are driving on a RB, you have to be able to prove it has vehicular rights rather than the previous situation, where it had to be proven it didn't.

There's a lot of conflicting stuff around though!

Beats my County by 2" then and that doesn't get stuck too often, close enough today though.

AJH

Blimey, what wheels did you glue on that to give it a foot of clearance? I did think of putting some big wheels on my defender but I think I'll just use it as a utility vehicle.

How can it lose its vehicular rights if it is recorded as 'dual status', i.e. a road *and* a footpath?, you are saying it is also recorded *as* a road.

Martin

As I understand it, all ways (yes, all ways) lost their vehicular rights when the part of the NERC Act covering the conversion of RUPPs into RBs came into force on 2 May 2006. However all roads shown on the List of Streets (LoS) only (ie not on the List of Streets and the Definitive Map (DM)) and ways shown as Byways Open to All Traffic (BOATS) on the DM were exempt and therefore retained their vehicular rights. There seem to be other exceptions and a lot of confusion as to what can and cannot be driven now!

Patrick

AJH

AJH uttered summat worrerz funny about:

By my reconning that would give you about 9 inches under the diff similar to the 101 on 9.00's with 16 Inch wheels (not inc any diff guards) ?

Lee D

On or around Tue, 21 Nov 2006 23:45:34 -0000, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:

wotbut if you have diff locks you can drag a wheel that's not in contact, provided you don't hit a solid object with the diff.

What's more important is how he gets 14 inches of ground clearance from wheels that are only 2 inches larger diameter than stock! It's either portals, which would be interesting, or highly creative measuring, which wouldn't be so interesting.

Check out my other posts you won't find me disagreeing with that.

Do you really want my answer?

I seriously hope you weren't being serious with half of these, but here goes!

BBQs and picnics can be held without all traipsing down the same lane at the same time, search and rescue generally requires people to spread out not travel together, does a whole group really need to travel the same A->B at the same time, how many green lanes are regularly used by large groups travelling to work or lunch, most twitchers aren't afraid to use their legs and you'd have a hard job finding 6 tahtchers on trail bikes in the whole country let alone on the same lane at the same time.

Do you really have a problem with simple measures that reduce the impact of off roading and strengthen the case for its continuation or are you being deliberately obtuse?

Because all off roaders would be well advised to consider the actions of others that threaten their access to lanes?

Acronym or not theres no need to swear ;(

Surely I'm not the only one thats noticed that the rogues that cause the problems for other bikers or 4x4 owners tend to be the ones in larger groups. Its the large groups of bikes that tend to travel too fast and the larger groups of 4x4's that feel the need to do a few 3 point turns so that they can have an extra extra trip through the ford for the benefit of their mates with cameras.

We can apply a basic level of self policing through common sense guidelines and good practice or we can claim spurious rights to act as we wish and lose access. Which one do really prefer?

regards

Tim Jones

In message snipped-for-privacy@btopenworld.com (Tim Jones) wrote:

See the LARA Guidelines - which is pretty much what Tim is saying. It's worth noting that LARA has land owners as members, they didn't just make it up as they went along.

On the points raised about consideration, a group of us were stopped (well, chased after, on foot actually) by a farmer on a lane (one of the very few left) in Cheshire. When he'd got his breath back he asked why we had passed the TRO notice. When we pointed out it wasn't there (not that you could have seen it without a microscope, Cheshire CC only have A4, non- waterproof paper it seems), he appologised. We then had a chat about why the lane was, to all intents and purposes, closed (the TRO ran from August to May) - the problem had been that large groups of motorbikes had been using it, going by at full tilt at milking time. Not ususprisingly, this had scared the cows. In my younger days I used to help out with milking on a farm, and the last thing you want is a herd of panicking cows in a shed - not only is it rather unpleasant on the emissions level, but it's dammed dangerous for all concerned. I could see from the faces of others in the group that they had never considered this. All I'm trying to say is that when out on a lane, one should move at "country" speeds (low 2nd/3rd) - a lot of the animals, domestic, wild and Ramblers, are not used to vehicles except at feeding time. Scaring a pregant ewe out of the way might seem like fun, but to the farmer that sheep represents his income and if the ewe aborts then it's just like us having our wages docked for no good reason. Equally, that might look like a bit of rough grass to us, but to him/her it's a crop. And that stone wall we've just wrecked by taking the capping stones off (it will collapse without them) to get un-stuck costs about £35 a metre to fix. All that most people ask is that we remember (unlike the Ramblers) that with rights comes responsibility - that unsilenced V8 might sound great to us, but to most people it's just noisey (actually I think they are just noisy too - the soft rumble of a properly silenced V8 does make the hair on the back of my kneck rise though).

Tread Lightly!

Richard