The Area and its Problems
The Dales National park and the Nidderdale Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB)
THE PROBLEM
(See the Glossary
page for fuller explanations of the terms used below.)
Nobody knows precisely how many green lanes in the Dales
are legally open to motor vehicles. This may seem strange, but English highway
law is obscure and intractable. When national parks were founded, back in 1949,
it was envisaged that the network of green lanes, which until then had carried
chiefly local, agricultural vehicular traffic, would sink gently back into the
landscape and would be used only by farmers, cyclists, horse-riders and
pedestrians. Highway authorities were expected to concentrate their efforts on
maintaining the tarmacadamed motor roads, and to apply to the unsealed green
lanes only the minimal maintenance necessary for the classes of users that were
envisaged. However – and this is where a great opportunity to protect the
countryside was missed – vehicular rights on the green lanes were never
formally extinguished. So, with the advent of modern recreational motor
vehicles – 4x4s and motorbikes built to cross rough country - the network of
green lanes became vulnerable to claims that, because the lanes were once open
to horses and carts, they are still legally open to convoys of 4x4s and
motor-bikes, even though most of the tracks themselves are still in pretty much
the state they were in when the only wheeled traffic was pulled along by a
horse.
The Natural Environments
and Rural Communities Act (NERC) 2006, goes a long way toward ending the
archaic rule that said that if a horse and cart, centuries ago, legally used a
route, 4x4s and motorbikes can use it now, no matter what the character of the
route. But the NERC Act does not solve
the problem completely. There are still miles and miles of green lanes that are
still vulnerable to motors. There is still plenty of work for YDGLA to do.
Just how many green lanes
in the Dales will eventually have to be recognised as bearing rights for motor
vehicles is unclear. One set of green lanes, known as ‘Byways Open To All
Traffic’ (BOATs) certainly do bear rights for motor vehicles of all types. There are approximately 31 kms of BOATs in
the Dales National Park, and a few in the Nidderdale AONB. More BOATs may have to be created if
recreational vehicle users’ applications that escaped the NERC Act are
successful.
A second, much more
extensive set of green lanes, known as ‘Unsurfaced Unclassified County Roads’
(UUCRs) may, or may not, bear vehicular rights.
There are hundreds of kilometres of UUCRs in the Dales. The precise rights-of-way status of UUCRs is
unclear – that is why they are called ‘unclassified’ – and until the status of
each of the routes is established, case by case - a process that will take
years - , vehicle user groups will insist that they are entitled to use all of
them. Without waiting for the
determination of the rights on UUCRs, 4x4 and motorbike users go right ahead
and drive and ride along them. In
determining the precise rights-of-way status of any particular green lane, the
authorities may not take into account the lane’s beauty, its capacity to withstand
the passage of motor vehicles, its tranquillity, or the amenity it offers
non-motorised users. All that counts is
whether, once upon a time, it was legally open to horses and carts. If it was, then it must now be acknowledged
as being open to motor vehicles.
The problem of illegal
vehicular use is intractable too. The uncertainty of the legal status of many
routes, coupled with the difficulties of police enforcement, gives many
recreational vehicle users the confidence to go pretty much where they please:
some vehicle users will nose down any inviting track, or will traverse the high
fells, well away from any track at all.
In some areas – Blubberhouses Moor is a good example – large areas of
open moorland were turned into what looked like moto-cross circuits, stripped
bare of vegetation by the repeated passage, round and round, of motorbikes. And
wherever a steep and challenging hillside adjoins a track, many vehicle users
will leave the track in search of the thrills that steep gradients give
them. The authorities have had to place
huge boulders or fences alongside some routes to dissuade vehicle users to stay
on the right of way. (Blubberhouses Moor,
we are pleased to say, now has a traffic regulation order on it, prohibiting
recreational vehicles.)
4x4 and motorbike use of
green lanes is not a minor, fringe activity, restricted to just a few
enthusiasts, using just a tiny handful of routes, on low-powered machines. On
one day in 2002, for example, over a hundred motorcycles were counted on the
green lane that descends from Deadman’s Hill, into Coverdale, from Nidderdale.
It is not unusual to see vans or trailers parked at the roadside with
motor-bikes, used expressly for cross-country riding, being unloaded and ridden
off into the hills. And because the fell-sides in the Dales are predominantly
tree-less, the noise of off-road vehicles echoes literally for miles,
disturbing the peace and tranquillity that the National Park and the AONB were
set up to preserve. The damage to the tracks themselves, as anyone who has seen
the green lanes at first hand will know, is shameful. The NERC Act may have
brought a reduction in the numbers of 4x4s and motorbikes in the Dales, but
there are still plenty of motor-cyclists and 4x4 users whose only idea of a
good day out in the Dales is to ride and drive their vehicles along green
lanes.
Some examples of the
problem:
Moorhead lane, looking
westward across to Helwith Bridge.
These photos were taken
from exactly the same spot in Ribblesdale, ten years apart (1989 and
1999). Agricultural use of this lane has
remained constant during this decade.
The number of off-road vehicles has sharply risen. The consequence is plain: in some places the
surface of the track has been cut down more than a metre below the 1989 level.
Motorcycles in
Dentdale.
Vehicle users’ assertions that the damage to the green lanes is not caused by
them is plainly false. The condition of those green lanes where traffic
regulation orders have been imposed, prohibiting recreational motor vehicles,
is instructive. Vehicle users regularly
argue that any damage to green lanes is caused not by them, but by farmers, or
the weather. But on lanes where
non-essential motor vehicles have been excluded, and where everything else stays exactly the same – eg agricultural use,
the weather, the level of maintenance – a spontaneous natural healing can
be observed to have taken place. (See the posting for
Recreational
vehicular damage to
Gorbeck
Road is a typical example of what has been happening to green lanes in the
Dales. Gorbeck is a fine route, connecting Ribblesdale to Malhamdale. It has historically never been surfaced along
its central moorland section and is, as the photograph shows, entirely
unsuitable for motor traffic. Agricultural vehicles rarely use the route. Yet
at a public enquiry, the inspector’s conclusion was that enclosure awards from
the late 18th and early 19th centuries show that the
route was indeed open to horses and carts, and that, consequently, the route
must now be acknowledged to be open to modern motor traffic. This was particularly unfortunate, for the
route was chosen to become part of the ‘Settle Loop’ of the Pennine
Bridleway. The Park Authority spent a
great deal of money in bringing the route up to the standard necessary for the
passage of horses and mountain bikes.
Furthermore, using the powers conferred on it by the NERC Act, the
Authority imposed a traffic regulation order on the route, prohibiting
recreational vehicles. This order not
only protected the fabric of the route from damage by vehicles: it guaranteed
the peace and tranquillity that is one of the Park’s most-prized special
qualities, and which is jeopardized by the presence of motorbikes and 4x4s. The
order was welcomed by the general public, but in July 2009 the vehicle users’
organization, LARA, succeeded in getting the order quashed in the High Court,
on a legal technicality. At once,
vehicle users returned to the route and made a mess of it. The Park Authority responded by taking into account
the judge’s strictures, and re-running its assessment of the route. The result is that a secure, unchallengeable
traffic regulation order, prohibiting recreational vehicles is now in place. The route now looks much better than it did
when the above photo was taken. Gorbeck
Road is now safe from all recreational vehicle users, save those who
deliberately and flagrantly break the law.
(See Latest News for the full
story of Gorbeck Road.)