Ban drivers from our green lanes

From: Michael Bartholomew, Chairman, the Yorkshire Dales Green Lanes Alliance.

IT is encouraging to see that a group has been set up to mobilise the public’s anger at the damage and nuisance caused by recreational 4x4s and motorbikes to the green lanes of the North York Moors (The Yorkshire Post, August 27).

Similar groups are springing up all over the country. The only permanent solution will be a change in the law: motor vehicular rights must be removed from unsealed green lanes, save for essential vehicles used by farmers and other people with a need for access.

Meanwhile, local authorities can do a great deal to mitigate the harm that recreational vehicles cause to these ancient and beautiful lanes.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has taken the lead by imposing 10 permanent traffic regulation orders, prohibiting non-essential motor vehicles. The 10 lanes have recovered their former beauty – Mastiles Lane at Kilnsey is an example – and are now a pleasure to traverse, on a horse, on a bicycle, or on foot.

But North Yorkshire County Council has been slow to follow the Dales example. There are a few temporary orders in place, but the council has yet to set out a systematic action plan. The council persists in the belief that unsealed green lanes, deep in the countryside, can be repaired – at great expense – and then re-opened to motorbikes and 4x4s. This belief is mistaken. Non-essential motors are fundamentally out of place on green lanes.

We can no longer drive our vehicles around the precincts of York Minster, or down Briggate in Leeds. We should value Yorkshire’s green lanes as highly as we value our cathedral precincts and city centre streets.

Green lanes are a precious legacy from the horse-drawn age. People who now drive 4x4s and ride motorbikes along them must be required to leave their motors where the Tarmac stops – and enjoy the lanes on a bike, a horse or ther own two feet. great emphasis on teaching the city’s children to swim, and the target was 100 per cent. This was almost reached, apart from those children who couldn’t achieve it due to a physical or mental disability.

I would personally like to see the number of school children who cannot swim at 11 stated on all Ofsted reports into the nation’s primary schools.

Let’s not forget one very important fact... a child may be outstanding at literacy and numeracy, but it would all count for nothing if they fell into the local canal and couldn’t get themselves out, or stay afloat long enough to be rescued.