Quote:
The Peak District National Park Authority has agreed to a full-scale review of their off-roading policy, after siding with complaints from local residents and campaigners about the damage done to unsurfaced routes in the Park by motor vehicles. The move comes just weeks after the authority ordered its first blanket ban on 4x4s and trail bikes along a country track between Chapel-en-le-Frith and Edale, to halt severe damage encroaching any further into wildlife conservation areas near Rushup Edge.
More at http://www.walkmag.co.uk/news/off-roaders-...le-review/

This is an emotive issue made all the more so by most of the interested parties taking very entrenched views about each other. Some of the pros and cons are perfectly legitimate, others much less so as can be seen from the response to the "Walkmag" article.

The Peak District has changed enormously from what it was when I grew up there as a young nipper - people visiting in cars was an extraordinary sight to which we used to look and stare. Bicycles, coaches and trains were the norm. Then Dr Beeching came along and the transport social modal was changed forever.

The PD Authority is right to apply a temporary blanket ban on all but essential and emergency services 4x4 vehicles, but only and if, it develops a permanent response that embraces the needs of all users of what is a "park for the nation".

You cannot disenfranchise one segment(s) of the community simply because you are predisposed to a vehicle fitted with four wheel drive traction. Vigilantism and despotism have no place in the decision making provision of recreation.

Unfortunately there is extremism in every camp, walkers that believe there is absolutely no place in the countryside for vehicles and a few 4x4 drivers that have no use for responsible driving.

I have seen the damage caused by irresponsible walkers deviating from footpaths, damaging the side areas and ending up with footpaths the width of a lane or create a new shortcut. I have also seen vehicles deviate because the challenging mound off track is more interesting than where they are suppose to be.

It is the few in both camps that cause the animosity between us, I am both a walker and a soft roader and believe they both can co exist.

these areas of countryside are too precious to be chewed up by four wheel drive vehicles.

they are scenic, peaceful parts of the country and should be preserved for ever.

Iain

ps and the last thing I would want to see, smell, or hear is a bloody four wheel drive while I was enjoying the scenery !!

if each camp respected the area in which they were then they should be know issues

just another anti 4x4 witch hunt Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Count me as an extremist
Come the revolution Ramblers will be the first against the wall, yes before politicians.

What is wrong with 4x4 driving over a hill, sure they may leave tracks, I personally don't see the "beautifull" countryside, I see a manufactured, manucured, waste of space. In England the countryside is a manufactured vista, stop farming and it will quickly revert to it's natural state.

I believe nature is there to be defeated not enjoyed, no one climbs Everest for the view, they climb it to beat it.

Where I work the majority think that running, rambling, cycling are gods given right, they constantly moan that people go up Snowdon on the train, and that somehow devalues the effort they have put in walking/cycling to the top

Glad got that off my chest - no it's not tongue in cheek Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

This thread could run and run. Whatever the merits of the argument, once a TRO is in place it is unlikely to be removed. Forum members can help by sticking to public rights of way (at least one member has posted a detailed account of a trespass, albeit not deliberate, on private tracks!) and by sticking to the generally agreed codes - see http://www.laragb.org/pages/vr.html and http://www.glass-uk.org/. It seems ironic that most of the damage in the areas I know best is done by farmers, shooters and mining vehicles, but we are cthe ones who usually get blamed.