LANING LIFE

by Lauren Eaton

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!

Don’t be busy, be productive!

Being busy means doing stuff, being productive means getting stuff done! And that is exactly what we have been doing here at GLASS recently.

This means that this month’s column is going to be a brief one, because time is short. It will also cover some of the same ground I spoke about last month, but that is because we are in the midst of a very important matter, and we really do need your input…

Never a day goes by when we are not busy, or productive, but 2022 has seen GLASS productivity explode into new levels. This has happened for several reasons – we’ve now got two full time staff members and three flexible part timers for the first time ever, and we’ve begun those roles by being handed a potentially huge challenge we could not ignore - The Landscapes Review, not to mention a number of legal cases.

At the moment we are at a point where a lot of what we’ve been working on isn’t out there in the public realm yet, but that will soon change as we pass deadlines and legal cases are decided upon. In the meantime, we can share some information on what we have been doing in the wake of the Landscapes Review (LSR), accompanied by some photos of the most awesome landscapes my 4x4s have taken me to as a reminder of what we’re fighting for, the rest you’ll just have to wait for!

Our last column was all about the LSR, if you have not read it you can catch up here. Please do as we really need you to respond to the current public consultation, the deadline is only days away on April 9th.

While the LSR itself is not a bad thing, it talks about inclusive access for all, championing equality of opportunity, and the benefits that increased access brings to countryside users. Great! Until you click the public consultation link and discover that a whole section of questions appears to have been designed to encourage a negative response about the future of motorised access. Quelle surprise!

It’s one of those 'surprising but also not surprising' situations. While the questions appear to be incongruous with the core message of the LSR, which reads like a utopian, all-inclusive, countryside paradise, where all user-groups frolic with gay abandon through our green and pleasant land without any hinderance to their chosen method of propulsion. Being motorised users we always expect a but, and although we had to wait right until the end of the utopian ride of the Review content, we got one - there was a sting in the tail of that pretty sweettalking document.

The Review and consultation are not a straightforward matters to get to grips with. The Review is a weighty tome of a document, followed by a not-so-short and simple questionnaire, so we have been beavering away creating advice guides on how to approach your response.

We are used to ploughing through the most tedious documents ever created so you don’t have to, but we do need you to pick up the last piece of the puzzle and follow the guides we’ve put together to submit your response.

» If you are a laner or trail rider, we’re doing our best to represent you! - you can find advice tailored just for you here (see the actual mag for this and the following clicky links).

» If you’re not a laner, but believe that access to the countryside should be for ALL, and not just the 'all' that includes everyone except motorists, or are concerned about the repercussions that potentially not being able to use a vehicle to access your nonmotorised pastimes may have on your hobby, advice specifically for you can be found here.

» If you’re a motoring club that is looking for guidance on how to respond, we’ve got you and your members covered here. » If you are a response organisation who uses your vehicle and your time to help your community when it really matters, firstly we salute you! Second, we’re doing our bit to support you through this here.

» If you’re a business in the motoring world who are concerned about how reducing motorised access to lanes will affect your customer base and turnover, we’ve got your back here.

In total we have directly communicated with 35,000 decision makers, authorities, organisations, clubs, businesses and individual people in the course of the last few weeks, and that doesn’t include social media and mag reach.

I’ve written in excess of 70,000 words during the process, so, if anyone asks, “What’s GLASS doing about this?” there’s an answer for you to pass on.

You can also add the following:

- We have written a brief open letter that is available online so please share the link in any way you feel appropriate. This letter explains what laning is and what GLASS does, and most importantly explains what some anti-access organisations do (and don’t do) when it comes to the rights of way network. It is an attempt to bring some equality of information onto the unequal playing field we operate on against anti-access types.

- Being a disability positive organisation who is proud to support hundreds of people with additional challenges to outdoor recreation (myself included), we have written a letter to public functionaries (councillors, authorities, officers) who we believe are peddling a discriminatory message about our hobby that could have a negative effect for those with protected characteristics. Discrimination is not big, it’s not clever, and it’s not legal in the UK, but it is still happening despite all the current 'inclusivity' posturing going on at the moment.

- We have written a technical response to the LSR, so you don’t have to! What matters when it comes to your response is YOUR experience and what matters to YOU. This is your chance to have your say on your recreation time, we have you covered on the rest.

- We are working closely with all sorts of other motoring, rights of way, and access organisations to forge a new era in collaborative working for the benefit of all users.

- We are working on new videos. Keep an eye on our YouTube channel for new content!

- And last, but by no means least, we are working on a suite of papers that comprehensively cover the work GLASS and its members do, the benefits of our hobby, the threats and opportunities to inclusive countryside access, while championing real people, real stories, and real evidenced information in the face of quite a lot of hot air coming from more biased sources.

While all this is going on we are forging ahead with a considerable amount of legal challenges to some of the most notorious lane cases across England and Wales, and creating new resources that will educate, inform, and support our work while championing genuine inclusivity when it comes to outdoor recreation.

Phew! I’m exhausted just listing all that! Although after months of working crazy hours a week I probably should be, and so I’m taking my first week off since I began working for GLASS (I’ll be back by the time you read this). It might seem an unusual time to pick, but this has been planned for good reason, the next few months are going to get even busier, sorry productive, than ever.

Even a workaholic like me needs some downtime, especially in the face of some of the most important stuff we’ve faced for a very long time. So, I’m off to blow the cobwebs off with a Range Rover, a dog, and a lovely bloke in a kilt.

We’ve done all we can towards the LSR at this point and there’s a short lull in the work required for our current legal cases.

I’ll be back in time to polish our response with fresh eyes before the deadline, whip up a response to the Traffic Regulation Order Review consultation (don’t fret, that’s nothing to worry about and may actually bring us some benefits) before cracking on with the next steps in our legal cases, starting another, and finishing the mammoth paper I’ve been working on for some time…then starting the next one. Maybe I should have taken two weeks off!

If you would like to help you can!

Your stories, experiences, and the benefits you get from laning are just as important as the technical legal arguments. Recreation and access to green spaces is vital when it comes to good physical and mental health, it improves opportunities for social engagement, and is undeniably a factor in quality of life.

If you would like to use your experiences to further the cause, please send your stories and photographs in. If you are a GLASS member, we’ll use some in the Green Lanes mag and/or here at The Mud Life. You don’t have to be a GLASS member; personal insights are really useful when compiling papers about our hobby based on user experiences and evidence. Your stories really do matter and have an influence where it counts.

We will soon be sending out some questionnaires for people to fill in to gather data on specific subjects, but we’d also like to know anything you’d like to tell us about why laning is beneficial to you. Our lovely Sue is going to collect them all for me, her email is admin@glass-uk. org

While we have been through some trying times over the last couple of years, rest assured that when it comes to the threats to our hobby your interests are being fought for. In the meantime, go forth and explore!

That’s all from me this month folks! Happy laning! Lauren x