From time to time the hugely popular sketch programme, the Fast Show, would feature two characters called Simon Bush and Lyndsay Mottram. They were humorously drawn urban warriors, whose weekends would be spent (unsuccessfully it turned out) trying to set off cross-country in a vehicle, tackling the home counties landscape as if it were the Serengeti.
It was a good laugh, but unfortunately the reality is not funny at all. There is, alas, a growing number of people, nearly all of whom are men – and a particular type of man at that – who believes that the countryside is best enjoyed from inside a four wheel drive, where presumably they feel strong and important.
That they can do so is because of the continued existence of by ways open to all traffic or BOATS as they are known. Most of these are old drover’s tracks, which over the years have been used as public footways or by farmers getting between fields. However for some the combined impact of having a large vehicle and erectile dysfunction requires them to go out at weekends and ruin the enjoyment of other countryside lovers by churning up the ground and making these tracks more or less impassable to those on foot.
Let’s hope that when the Government next has one of its bouts of conscience about matters rural, it will get around to removing this particular right of access and those who currently spoil it for so many can be encouraged to get the treatment they need.