L a n i n g L i f e

Read about green laning as seen through Lauren ‘Sunshine’ Eaton's windscreen at The Green Lane Association, and find out what’s hot, or not, in the laning world each month. Enjoy!

The best things come to those who wait

Please note that this was written over a week before publishing, things may change during June.

If I had a pound for every time I've been asked "Can we go laning yet?", I'd have retired by now. While I'm not always known for my patience - I'm a get it done person - I have learned over the years that sometimes the best thing I can do, especially if I really care about the future of something, is to wait.

GLASS is made up of an executive committee of enthusiastic green laners, along with non-executive officers and reps who hold the same passion for the hobby - so much passion that we give up our free time to protect it for everyone else on top of our day jobs in most cases, and irrespective of how that is publicly perceived sometimes.

We're all itching to get back out, I'm no exception either, I literally live in my Land Rover, on the road for the majority of the year. I lane daily, it's more than a hobby to me it's part of my job, and without it I'm stuck living a life I gave up in exchange for a freedom I value above what I left behind.

I get it, GLASS gets it, we all want to be back out on the lanes, but is it the right thing to do?

Most people want a legal answer, and the law is something we at GLASS know well, we are no strangers to arguing the legal toss to keep our lanes open. It's par for the course in our roles, but the law is only part of the story, what is far, far more complex is understanding and managing people, public perception, and bias.

Arguably these 'soft' issues are more impactful to our hobby than the legal side of the coin in many situations. Unless you've been involved in cases, and up to your eyeballs in public outcry, you may not have any idea just how important public perception is, but we at GLASS are acutely aware - we fight it daily. Since restrictions began my role, and that of many of my colleagues, has changed beyond the obvious.

At first, things were more complex because of the lockdown - we had to absorb, understand, and communicate an unprecedented situation to our members and the laning world at large, and find new ways of working with authorities on matters that didn't end because we couldn't drive the lanes. But at least lockdown was fairly simple, since guidelines have changed so have our workloads, and boy oh boy have they increased!

Over the last few weeks I have had to manage a large workload caused by people driving lanes since the guidelines were relaxed - press releases, appeasing local councillors, the police, land owners, and residents who have more than bias against us – thanks to an inconsiderate few they have evidence that not everyone in the laning and trail riding community cares much for the law, or the current viral advice.

I've been where most people reading this probably are now, I've been a laner who is aware that we have legal rights to drive a number of unsurfaced roads, but that others have had their rights extinguished. That's why I joined GLASS - to find out which were which, and where the legal routes are.

I didn't get involved with the organisation for many years above using TrailWise1 , I simply drove lanes on my days off and enjoyed doing so – easy, right? As time went on I realised that laning wasn't as simple as I first thought.

The more lanes I drove, and the more areas I explored, the more I encountered local ill will despite me driving legally. I also saw more closures, read more articles and social media posts about animosity between user groups, things clearly weren't as simple as 'this is a legal and enjoyable thing to do and no one can stop me'.

Rightly or wrongly and despite the law I realised a lot of people put a lot of time and money into stopping us doing what we love.

It was still many years before I took on a role with GLASS,. In that time I saw : - lanes spiked with caltrops - lanes illegally blocked with rocks, vehicles & tree stumps - drivers threatened with words and physical violence - dozens of lanes in jeopardy of closure All of this was mostly because people outside the 4x4 world simply didn’t like us.

As a laner there was little I could do myself, few of us have the money, let alone the knowledge and experience to deal with the constant threats to our hobby. I always felt safe in the knowledge that my membership to GLASS was helping those who did have that knowledge and the back-up of some serious cash. Still, I kept up with the law, I read everything available to me, and kept abreast of laning news around the UK - and this was how I ended up at a GLASS exec meeting.

I won’t go into the ins and outs of how I got an invite to this meeting, but let’s just say that a calm, collected, and most importantly educated verbal castration of a well-known and influential anti who was rallying his followers on Facebook had something to do with it. The bottom line is that a call for legal action against laners in the form of closures was stopped in its tracks by managing public perception. I agreed to the invite and attended the meeting as a member and liked what I saw.

The committee was made up of experienced, knowledgeable and motivated laners absolutely committed to protecting our lanes, using whatever it took to do so.

Over my time as a rep and exec I learned just how much public opinion really matters when it comes to laning; we can see this when we look at the current situation in the Lake District.

An anti 4x4 petition gained so many signatures that it forced the park authority to spend two years, and significant amounts of money, on an extremely comprehensive review of the situation and of the petition itself.

While the LDNPA’s report found the petition to be lacking in several ways, and found the lanes to be in excellent condition, this simply fuelled the anti’s negative opinion of the green laning community - go figure! Our old friend bias raises its ugly head again! Facts do not matter where bias is strong! The next step was a protest that I attended (without announcing my presence I must add!) in order to see first-hand what was driving the animosity towards us - it was simply blinkered bias.

Fast forward to today and the case is now at judicial review stage, the antis having crowdfunded enough money to hire a barrister to fight their case against the LDNPA, despite the authority having made no findings that green laning was harming its park. We really could lose our access to the lanes in the Lakes because people simply don’t like us.

As we can see, preserving our rights to drive green lanes is no simple task! The very last thing our community needs is those within it bringing it down from the inside.

As the above example shows it doesn’t take a serious incident or any actual law breaking or damage to rally people against us, public perception is enough which is why GLASS continue to push the message that laning during the current viral threat is really not a good idea.

While many stick to the hope that some legal clarification that explicitly mentions laning will suddenly appear - which it won’t, I really must stress that - the majority understand that just because something is legal it doesn’t mean that we should do it, after all it’s legal to marry our first cousin, but most of us don’t.

There are still people dying, many park and local authorities have asked us to stay away for now, some have enforced TTROs which clearly show us that we are not welcome yet.

If we choose to travel long distances we’ll find Wales closed, no toilets, car parks or shops open on route in England, and we may find ourselves in the media being made an example of just like several already have.

Opinion is all well and good, and everyone has a right to express theirs, but when it comes to what is best for the future of our hobby, protecting the relationships with authorities that have taken years to build, and most importantly protecting ourselves and others against a potential health threat, we have to think outside ourselves.

We are all in this together, and the needs of the many, and the future of our hobby, far outweigh our own personal opinion.

While the country is trying to rebuild, and GLASS is trying to protect our lanes against new threats, be a part of the solution and hold off just a little longer. Things will be changing soon, you haven't got much longer to wait!

With the re-opening of Salisbury Plain in mid-June, and the re-start of Motorsport on the 4th July, albeit with many new guidelines and working practices, there will be a new message from GLASS in the very near future. We are currently taking advice from various sources to ensure we do this as safely and legally as possible.

Everything seems geared towards the positive at the moment, so next time you hear from me I shall be bringing good news! In the meantime stay safe!

Lauren x GLASS Media and Communications Officer

For more information on green lanes visit: www.glass-uk.org

To join GLASS go to: www.glass-uk.org/join-glass.html

Lauren has written some words on a subject that has blown up a bit on social media at the end of May, and we thought it should have it's own pages, so read on.....

The Parkamoor Problem

There has been lots of talk on social media about the Lake District National Park Authority's recent management work on a well-known lane in the park - Parkamoor. They did their legal duty to maintain a public right of way rather than bow to anti pressure to close routes in the park - this pressure often being based (rightly or wrongly) on the need for maintenance.

This is a good thing for laning, GLASS always maintain the message that 'closure isn't management', because it isn't. Closure doesn't maintain a RoW to a standard where all users who have rights to be there can do so safely, it doesn't stop illegal usage, only those who adhere to the law. Closure costs money too, in fact it can cost large sums of money especially if opposed, money that would be better spent on maintaining RoWs for people to use rather than extinguishing public rights. And that's exactly what was done in the LDNPA - it was maintained which potentially saved it from pressure from antis to close it.

This was not a GLASS initiative; we had no part to play or prior knowledge of the works. But we support any authority who does their legal duty (their job), and in doing so takes pressure off our rights to continue to drive a lane.

We're working on some huge projects in North Wales at the moment, everyone knows it - The Wayfarer, Happy Valley, Carn March Arthur, and Horseshoe. Three of which are currently closed due to maintenance work being required.

On Happy Valley and Carn March Arthur there are water holes large enough to swallow a 4x4. The Wayfarer has a 'dangerous' area of water erosion that appeared after the horrendously wet winter, the sleeper section is a complete mess, and the bridge needs structural work. Horseshoe is open one way but requires some drainage work as the nearby water course is used to supply local residents who do not have a mains supply.

This work is being applauded by the majority of laners, just as work on Strata Florida is, without it people understand that calls for closure would gain strength, so it would seem odd that the work at Parkamoor isn't.

Maybe the reason is that Strata, the Wayfarer, HV and CMA are temporarily closed makes a difference? People have had a taste of what could have happened instead. Parkamoor never was closed, but the work that has been done has prevented any likelihood of that happening, so should be appreciated.

Laning isn't about testing out the capabilities of a vehicle, or changing the landscape of an area, far from it in fact, it is the practice of driving unsurfaced public roads, and just like surfaced public roads local authorities do have a legal duty to maintain them to keep something as close to their original character as possible, if they didn't we would all have far less to drive than we do today.

This is particularly true in the Lakes. The LNDPA in the face of massive public backlash against laning that spans years, have maintained that they will not single out one user group (vehicular users) and ban them from the park. Over the last few years, the LDNPA have spent tens of thousands of pounds repairing routes, not to mention on comprehensive reviews and reports on the impact of laning in the area - the culmination of which supported maintaining vehicular rights within it.

This could change with the upcoming judicial review. Antis have raised serious money to argue the findings of the LDNPA's report in continued efforts to extinguish vehicular rights, and the LNDPA have taken that case on. The work, time and money the LNDPA have spent to protect our rights to drive in their park is astronomical compared to many areas. Rather than biting the hand that feeds us in Cumbria over losing a few axle twisters, we really should be applauding them for preserving our rights to be there for years to come.

I'm going to summarise with quote one of my favourite bands, the Rolling Stones:

"You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need."

Not all laning projects will be popular, but if we want to continue driving them then we need to focus on what simply has to be done to protect our hobby, whether or not we personally agree with it.

In the case of Parkamoor some didn't get what they wanted, but they definitely got what they needed - the lane open for all - they simply haven't realised that yet.

Lauren x GLASS Media and Communications Officer