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<< Feature Articles >> Ridgeway Damage

Submitted by Thorgrim on Sunday, 06 March 2005  Page Views: 10601

Environment
Ridgeway
Ridgeway submitted by TheCaptain : The Ridgeway near to Waylands Smithy after sunset, February 2005, showing just what a terrible state it has been turned into. Thankfully it was all frozen, and so walking along it wasnt too problematical. Those who insist on driving their 4WD vehicles all over everything say they are not destroying things, and that walkers, mountain bikers and horses cause as much destruction. I'll let the ... (Vote or comment on this photo)
Many of us are growing ever more concerned about the damage done to the Ridgeway by 4WD vehicles and off road motor bikes. An official notice follows below, but how effective is it - the ground is still being churned up and it's all but impassable? Even the vehicles are going around the worst ruts and so creating ever widening swamps. Should the Ridgeway be redesignated as a bridlepath or do horses' hooves do just as much damage? What do you think - how can we protect this and other ancient tracks that were never designed for joy riders who have forgotten how to walk?

"Sections of The Ridgeway National Trail in Wiltshire, West Berkshire and Oxfordshire will be closed to motorised traffic from the end of November 2004 to the 30th April 2005. The Traffic Regulation Orders (TRO) are legal orders, made under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. The orders will not affect the rights of walkers, horseriders and pedal cyclists, nor the private access rights of landowners and residents.

Wiltshire County Council - is placing a seasonal TRO upon the whole of its section, running from Overton Hill to the boundary with Swindon beyond Upper Upham. Access points onto The Ridgeway from Avebury, Winterbourne Bassett, Hackpen Hill, Ogbourne St George and Shipley Bottom will also be included within the order. Short surfaced sections near Westfields Farm and Round Hill Downs near Ogbourne St George, and between the permanent TROs at Upper Herdswick will not be included within the order.
West Berkshire Council is placing a temporary TRO upon the whole section of the Ridgeway within West Berkshire from East Hendred Down to the section leading down to the A417 Streatley Road.
Oxfordshire County Council is placing temporary TROs in three locations:- in two short sections in the Vale of White Horse, west of Waylands Smithy and at Lattin Down, south of Wantage, and a longer section in South Oxfordshire east of the Thames from Britwell Salome to the A40 at Lewknor.

Information on the orders can be found upon each highway authority’s web site, signs and notices will be placed at every access point to each TRO section. Maps of the TROs will also be placed upon the National Trails web site.

The National Trails Team and Highway Authorities are working closely with Wiltshire Constabulary and Thames Valley Police and will be ensuring that the sections closed to motorised vehicles will be regularly patrolled and monitored.

Vehicles found to be using the closed sections, through reports by monitors and through the police patrols, will be liable for prosecution."

National Trails. The Countryside Agency

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"Ridgeway Damage" | Login/Create an Account | 26 News and Comments
  
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Friday, 02 December 2011
If you want evidence of the effectiveness of seasonal TROs take at look at Cambrisdgshire, many byways there have seasonal TRO on vehicles with 3 or more wheels. i.e. motorcycles are exempt. These byways are holding up well and in good condition. The byways that don't have the seasonal TRos are often rutted quite deeply.

Removing the vehicles the surface can least support at the time of year they are most vunerable works. Its a fact there is real evidence to support this.

The byways that have seasonal TRO have gates that are closed as a physical barrier to bigger veicles during this period, the TRO also allow for the council to close the gates and effect the TRO at other times to preserve the lane in unseasonal weather.

It would be great if this could all be achived without TROs, gates etc, on a volantary basis, but in ALL groups there are a selfish minority whose own pleasure has to be fulfilled over everyone else, be it cuasing excessive errosion through use at inappropriate times or wanting everyone else excluded but them based on some weak arguments like vehicles are smelly! Saddly becuase of these few, legal measures and enforcement are required.

I have nothing agaist any other class of user and all should be afforded access on a sustainable basis to lanes such as the ridgeway. All drivers / riders / walkers / famers should ask themsleves is this the right time to visit the place and balance the enjoyment / utlility they will derrive for the impact they will have. Any responsible person would examine thier motivation for being there. If that motivation is just to play in a muddy puddle please go to a pay-and-play motorpark and enjoy yoursleves. Otherwise get out there, make that journey by what ever mode you prefer, but with least impact and and a firendly and curtious greeting for anyone you encounter.

When you do meet a selfish, selfrightous, inconsiderate, soul of any afiliation...... kill them and use thier dead bleached bones to beat some sense into the next selfish, selfrightous, inconsiderate, soul ;-)

TheVoiceofReason


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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Sunday, 21 March 2010
also im gunna go up there to tomorrow with my 4x4 and make some more mess! wahoooo
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    Anonymous 4x4-er by bat400 on Sunday, 21 March 2010
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    I deleted your previous abusive post. We boring old retired people enjoy deleting them.
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Monday, 11 January 2010
i also am a disabled human being but classed as a lepper because I smoke, drive a 4x4 and also would love to walk the ridgeway but can't. so now my chance to see and travel the ridgeway has been removed by walkers, able bodied humans.
is this not a form of discrimination?
I broke an ancle as a child in a divet caused by a horse, whilst walking.
lets just seal up the ridgeway and just show pictures of what it used to be and save it like a museum, will we feel the same way about the m1 in a few years?.
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Saturday, 23 May 2009
I think the disabled chap has a very good point, it is completely unfair that someone who needs a vehicle to access the countryside is being denied the pleasure of doing so, and those who wish to impose their views on others less fortunate than themselves to this extent should be ashamed of themselves
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Sunday, 26 October 2008
this site is a waste of time because anything you put on here that is anti walking they take it off,try it you wont be herd here.
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    Re: Ridgeway Damage by Andy B on Sunday, 26 October 2008
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    Most of your comments were offensive or abusive. The one that wasn't is still here.
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Monday, 16 October 2006
I smoke, hunt and off-road. In today's society apparently I'm about as welcome as a hedehog in a condom factory.

Yep!
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    Re: Ridgeway Damage by expatpete on Monday, 16 October 2006
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    So do I but have no problem as only do them where they do not cause damage to people -property -or the environment.
    Smoke outdoors- big game fishing ( catch and release) and blast an ATV up and own the beach , all traces are gone by the next tide!

    Just enjoy but dont spoil things for others- OK

    Like the hedgehog comment - personally "a piranah in the jacuzzi" is my favourite !!!

    Pete
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Aluta on Sunday, 15 October 2006
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A wood near me had been heavily used by foot traffic for decades. Then a couple of years ago bicycles began using it and for the first time areas of plants were being damaged. Then about a year ago, people began going in with off-road vehicles. Within a short time, broad swaths that used to be green were churned-up mud. Whole populations of some species of plants in that wood have been wiped out, and it has gone from looking peaceful to looking ravaged.

In my opinion, the manufacturers of such vehicles should be held financially responsible for damage done by them. They should also buy and maintain grounds for their use. Right now they happily pocket the profits they gain by the destruction of our public hegacy, while the conflict goes on only between the robbed public and the users of the vehicles. People buy these things innocently, thinking they can take them out and use them, with no sense of the destruction they wreak. Manufacturers should be required to educate the...

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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Sunday, 15 October 2006
I smoke, hunt and off-road. In today's society apparently I'm about as welcome as a hedehog in a condom factory.

Am I the only one who is starting to get slightly annoyed with this silly nonsense of banning everything that isn't fasionable? The Ramblers association has 139,000 registered members. Thanks to the CROW act and in particular the ridiculously expensive 'right to roam', they now have to right to wander wherever they please. I for one am certain that 139,000 walkers are doing an awful lot more damage to the entire countryside than the 5% of land that is open to MPV use
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Nick- on Tuesday, 26 September 2006
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These 4x4's are just part of the cult of selfishness and greed is sweeping the UK and the rest of Europe (not to say the rest of the world also....) 4x4's are bad enough on tarmac roads and lanes, being often agressively driven , and putting user's of small cars (a 106 in my case) at increased risk, in the avent of an accident...

As for their using the ridgeway...Well the horses and walkers have been using it for centuries, scrambling bikes and 4x4's have not. I remember very well visiting a hill fort in 1986 near Llangollen (Moel-y-Gaer I think ) and being confronted by dozens of stinking scrambling bikes, wearing a nice route through the fort's defences...(maybe that's been stopped since then...) One goes to the countryside for some peace and quiet, not to have to listen to other peoples 'enjoyment'.... (And I have no axe to grind with farm machinery---they are just doing their job)

To sit in one's air conditioned landcruiser, and drive along the ridgeway, must be one...

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Re: Ridgeway Damage by hailstones on Sunday, 07 May 2006
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I have a disability as well and one of my pleasures is to have a ciggy! I am made to feel like a leper and am just wondering if they will ban it there, and various other places as well. I've had many odd experiences to do with what one can and cannot do and exasperation is a term that comes to mind.
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Sunday, 07 May 2006
How about me?

Disabled, the ONLY realistic way I can enjoy the great outdoors is courtesy of an off road vehicle. I personally would like to see a lot more of the country than is possible from a layby full of 38tonne, 55 foot trucks and portakabins dishing out stale grease!

I am taxed, £200 a year, (supposedly for the upkeep of roads), Insrured (taxed on that). pay tax on fuel (twice), pay tax on tyres, pay tax on the actual purchase cost of the vehicle (twice).

Heck in the course of a single year, purely motoring related I possibly pay more in taxes than is spent on the upkeep of any one byway open to all traffic. Therefore I propose that I personally instead of paying all those taxes I take responsibility for the upkeep of the ridgeway, and the first thing I will do is ban one particular user group, that one group that demands any other group be banned!

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    Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Monday, 11 January 2010
    totaly agree and simpathise with you as a disabled driver myself, why are we being ousted because we would like to enjoy the same things as walkers but restricted by health, and now by ramblers.
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    Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Monday, 06 August 2012
    Despite your disability, you sound like a fairly inconsiderate person. Demanding something does not give you the right to have it. 4x4's are being banned or restricted from places likes this for a definite reason. If they were not being destroyed by wheeled vehicles and were still grassed pathways, you would probably be able to take a mobility scooter along them. Now many of them are becoming completely unwalkable, and only traversable by off-road bikes and 4x4's.
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Friday, 20 January 2006
I do agree with whats happing to the ridgeway, however 4x4 arnt only to blame. Having a 4x4 myself it is getting ever harder to find places to take it to have fun,life is to short to worry about things that mother-nature can probly sort out her self, when the summer comes and drys all the mud out there wont be no 4x4s in sight so the ridge way will sort its self out.
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Tuesday, 31 May 2005
The Ridgeway is an ancient highway, used by travellers for thousands of years. It is certain that when it was regularly used by horse and ox drawn carts that the surface was much worse than it is now.
Most of the damage is due to poor drainage and this can be easily rectified using some of the taxes already levied on the vehicle users.
The people pushing for a right to roam appear to want to deny this right to everybody except walkers. If you do not like vehicles, or horses, or cyclists, please stay on the footpaths. Of course many of these are overgrown because they are not used enough!
Instead of making law abiding citizens in to criminals it would be better if the untaxed, uninsured and under-age drivers and riders were stopped - but it does seem that the police cannot prevent this on housing estates let alone the Ridgeway.
Finally, motorcycles do no more damage than horses. It is agricultural machinery that does most of the damage. Why not have a 20mph speed limit and a...

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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Rich32 on Tuesday, 08 March 2005
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If the destruction continues we will be preventing future generations from experiencing this part of our heritage and to me we simply do not have the right to do this.

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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Rick-Kent on Tuesday, 08 March 2005
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People who say "live and let live" remind me of the smoking parallel. Smokers intrude on non-smokers by their filthy habit but the same can't be said about non-smokers who do NOT intrude upon anyone by not smoking. The same must be said about off-roaders. The walkers do little damage to the paths other than in numbers and that's over a long period of time. The off-roaders do an immense ammount of damage when wet - you only need one vehicle to churn up the ground, and then the path can be a mess until summer. This is aside from the safety aspect and noise/air pollution to those on foot. And whilst there are considerate drivers, there are enough at the other end of the spectrum to be a nuisance. The question is surely, why the hell do they need to drive on the ridgeway (and similar). If they want an off-road experience, then go to somewhere that caters specifically for this type of experience.
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    Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Saturday, 25 October 2008
    why do you need to walk there youve got hundreds of miles of foot paths that are for your use only stick to them then we all would be happy plus i wouldnt have to look at all those sour faces.
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Tuesday, 08 March 2005
Live and let live.

The outdoors is for us all.

These off roaders are only enjoying their hobbies like many on here.

Snowy

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    Re: Ridgeway Damage by enkidu41 on Tuesday, 08 March 2005
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    They are enjoying their hobbies in a way which reduces or even eliminates enjoyment by others. There is no reason why they should have to use the Ridgeway.
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    Re: Ridgeway Damage by TheCaptain on Wednesday, 09 March 2005
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    I am thinking of getting a new hobby. I am going to buy a bulldozer. And I am going to knock down all building work and constructions made since, oh lets see, 1980.

    Now would that be an election winning, or popular plan ?
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Re: Ridgeway Damage by Anonymous on Tuesday, 08 March 2005
As Britain's oldests road the importance of the Ridgeway is greatly underestimated. It is arguably Britains' largest ancient monument. It needs to be properly cared for.

It would seem ironic in a way to ban vehicles from any road but the Ridgeway is simply not built to take the increasing traffic of 4X4's, let's face it it wasn't really built at all, it is organic, it grew through necessity and use, now it is being over used and it cannot cope.

I have walked it from end to end as thousands of people have and I did it partly for the atmosphere, linking as it does so many ancient sites it feels as if the footprints of our ancestors are still there. They won't be much longer if they have bee soundly squished by tons of traffic all yrear around.

The idea of banning motorised traffic from November to April is good, but doesn't go far enough. There should be a total ban, except for farming traffic on farming business for at least an entire year to allow regeneration, of course...

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Re: Ridgeway Damage by enkidu41 on Monday, 07 March 2005
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Whilst horses do cause damage to country paths (in some cases making it all but impassable for many walkers) it is by no means to the same degree as is caused by 4WD. Even though I'm a non-rider I do not feel that horses should be excluded from this path, a satisfactory state of affairs before the "off-roaders" came along. (Pity they're not all as incompetent as the Fast Show characters, Simon and Lyndsay!).

To redesignate the Ridgeway as a bridle path would have been a viable option years ago but allowing horses to retain access would not allow the ground to recover. I fear the only effective course of action would be to temporarily redesignate it as a footpath and then later to further redesignate it permanently as a bridle path when sufficient recovery had taken place.

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