This is an editorial from the Guntrader News forum, not exactly an organisation given to talking much outside its own area, as it has enough to do with its own problems with access and legislation, but it makes interesting reading
Boats, but not cars, in the countryside
Guntrader News
11:29am, 11th February 2014
From time to time the hugely popular sketch programme, the Fast Show, would feature two characters called Simon Bush and Lyndsay Mottram. They were humorously drawn urban warriors, whose weekends would be spent (unsuccessfully it turned out) trying to set off cross-country in a vehicle, tackling the home counties landscape as if it were the Serengeti.
It was a good laugh, but unfortunately the reality is not funny at all. There is, alas, a growing number of people, nearly all of whom are men and a particular type of man at that - who believes that the countryside is best enjoyed from inside a four wheel drive, where presumably they feel strong and important.
That they can do so is because of the continued existence of by ways open to all traffic or BOATS as they are known. Most of these are old drovers tracks, which over the years have been used as public footways or by farmers getting between fields. However for some the combined impact of having a large vehicle and erectile dysfunction requires them to go out at weekends and ruin the enjoyment of other countryside lovers by churning up the ground and making these tracks more or less impassable to those on foot.
Lets hope that when the Government next has one of its bouts of conscience about matters rural, it will get around to removing this particular right of access and those who currently spoil it for so many can be encouraged to get the treatment they need.
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Riding with enthusiasm upon the ragged precipice of disaster
Does seem a rather narrow minded view given that the majority of persons owning a gun are highly likely also use a '4x4' and some would probably use the 'old drovers tracks' to which the writer refers...obviously written by a gun toting rambliar.
