Below is an article written by Brian Thompson, who is TRACs ROW consultant and the TRFs national ROW officer.

The atricle will appear in TRAIL the TRFs mag soon.

Were the Byways are

"For trail riders post NERC its a bit of a lottery where you can find all the lawful green lanes .In a few counties its a wipe out. I understand the south west is especially bad. Dorset for example with only 15 miles of Byway and not many UCRs is a dead loss. But some counties are rich in existing Byways. More than enough for many weeks of riding all on different lanes. According to Defra there are 4500km( 3000 miles to me) of existing ,safe, guaranteed Byways in England & Wales. (give or take the 10% that are illegally obstructed and the 3% subject to a TRO !) So where are all these Byways you might and do ask ? The official list of exisiting Byways as supplied by Defra in 2005 is based on figures supplied in l997 by IPROW and is as follows; Wiltshire 630km,( top spot !) followed by Cambridgeshire 400km, Oxon 290km, Hants 226km,Essex 194km, then in descending order...... Cornwall 178km, Suffolk 166km, W Berks 154km, Herts 137, Surrey 134km, Cumbria 107km, Northants 105km, Northumberland 100 km( 2004 figure), Leics 74km, E Sussex 55km, Devon 50km, Staffs 50km, Beds 47km, Worcs 47km, I o W 47km, N E Somerset 46km, Norfolk 40km, (Englands 2nd largest county) 40km, North Yorkshire( Englands largest county) 39km, Lake District National Park 26km(but then these are some of the best Byways in the UK), Durham 35km, Lancs 30km, Herefordshire 22km, Yorkshire Dales National park 21km(just a mere 16 miles !), Dorset 20km, Shropshire 18km, W Sussex 16km, North Yorks Moors National park 15km, Cheshire 11km, East Riding of Yorkshire 9km, Bucks 6km. Glos,Notts Warks,Kent and Derbyshire all have under 3km. The grand total (1997 England only) is 3812km. How many more have been added in the last 9 years I do not know. So we see that the south of England has by far the lions share of Byways. The total for all the 18 northern counties(a line from the Mersey to the Humber) is a mere 440km. I am guessing but the difference between the l997 total of 3812km for England only and the 2005 total of 4500km for England & Wales , is that there are perhaps 600kms throughout Wales and that 200km have been added in England betwen l997 and 2005. Dont expect the Govt to know. I have seen some wildly varying figures from Defra. Very few counties have made Byways based on their duty to do so based on the evidence. One that does a few ( the Yorkshire Dales National Park) has met with powerful objections.. The vast majority are as the result of a proper claim under the l981 Act by the TRF and in view of the inevitable hysteria that takes place whenever a Byway is proposed, very few actually get made in order to have a quiet life at county hall and not upset those with clout in the shires ! So you well might ask how come Wiltshire has 630km of Byways and Gloucestershire,Kent, Warks etc have NONE ! The same laws and duties apply. Of course they do. And what ,has the TRF been doing these past 35 years to get NO Byways at all on the Definitive Map in these counties ? Thats not fair. For example I myself made 150 Byway claims from l977 to l989 yet less than 40 have actually been dealt with. Some of my user witnesses are now deceased ! Over 100 STILL gather dust in council files and by dint of extreme hard work in 2004 (again) most of these are again still valid. Whose fault did you say ? In Derbyshire we have put in 100 Byway claims. None have yet been processed. Derbyshire also has a good number of UCRs and it is those that keeps this a very popular trail riding county . The lack of Byways therefore in some counties is not the whole story. In North Yorkshire for example with a mere 39km of Byways ,there is also 530km of UCRs. The situation varies a great deal from county to county. Needless to say the idea behind making Byways is to make it known to everyone that this green lanes has conclusive vehicular rights. By any reckoning the will of Parliament in l968 and l981 has miserably failed. Except in a few counties we are left with a very patchy network and the chances of adding more Byways are not too high, though the TRF will fight them all the way. Certainly a TRF member in the county of Wiltshire is very fortunate indeed. And a lot of credit for this must go to the TRFs Bill Riley who has worked tirelessly for 30 years getting Byways on the map. What TRF workers like Bill Riley and Alan Kind(Northumberland) have achieved is astonishing. Wiltshire are also known to be pro Byways. That helps too. Lucky too are those riders who live in Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Hants. Anyway the situation in some areas is not at all gloomy. So make sure that all the exisiting lawful green lanes in your county are open and free from obstruction. Survey every one and do this one per year !

BRIAN THOMPSON Nat RoW Officer 17th Feb 2006