Moel y Gaer Hillfort. Wikipedia Commons photo; Attribution: Eiran Evans
A CAMPAIGN has been launched to crack down on illegal off-road bikers who are wrecking North Wales heritage sites.
Moel y Gaer hillfort is just one of a number of historic locations across North Wales under siege from bikers and 4x4s carving up the countryside.
Now the Heather and Hillforts project has launched a “Don’t leave home without it” campaign to fight back.
Project leaders want farmers, ramblers and others who enjoy the countryside to carry a police telephone number with them – or even store it into their mobile phones – to report the vandals.
Summer has arrived again with the same problems of 4×4′s and off road bikers tearing up our green track ways in the pursuit of a noisy and incredibly damaging hobby that reduces these tracks to a rutted mess; even worse, thin soil is worn away leaving rocks unprotected…
Denbighshire County Archaeologist Fiona Gale said: “Twenty years ago a grass track about four feet wide ran up here along the ridge but now in places it’s more than 15 feet wide and the heather and grass have been ripped away by the bikes and rain has then washed the surface away exposing the bare rock.”
… read on
Perhaps the advice of using your mobile to report such illegal activity needs to be underlined once more till this idiotic practice is outlawed once and for all.
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28/06/2010 at 20:27
Jennifer Ritzler
Re youtr comments
“Perhaps the advice of using your mobile to report such illegal activity needs to be underlined once more till this idiotic practice is outlawed once and for all”
Surely this activity is illegal anyway, therefore the current law just needs to be enforced?
29/06/2010 at 14:15
heritageaction
The following Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act gives some of the restrictions, but I suspect that it is up to the local authorities to restrict access to vulnerable green lanes…
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060016_en_7
29/06/2010 at 15:25
Don Petrie
The term ‘Greenlane’ is a misnomer as it carries no legal credence. In this case, it does not appear to be a route that allows vehicular access anyway and therefore any vehicle using it is breaking the law.
Regarding vulnerable ‘Green lanes’, if they have vehicular rights, then they are in fact ROADS and the highways authority has a duty to maintain them, in the same way that a surfaced road with potholes needs to be repaired.
29/06/2010 at 20:28
heritageaction
You are right of course this is not a ‘green lane’ but a green track way, the issue though, trail bikes and 4x4s, the damage is the same on both.
A local link; http://www.ridgewayfriends.org.uk/FRhistory.html
30/06/2010 at 09:00
Don Petrie
The simple fact is that if you have a road and it is unsurfaced, the surface will suffer. All those lovely country lanes much beloved by Sunday afternoon drivers were ancient sunken trackways. The reason they are sunken is due to eroision caused by horse and cart and the subsequent water run off.
If an unsurfaced road is popular enough to carry traffic levels that cause damage then it needs to be treated like any other road and needs a proper tarmacced road surface as per other country lanes. No more damage, no more need to use to use a 4 wheel drive to traverse the route and the problem is sorted once and for all.