LARA is an umbrella organisation of motoring groups put together nearly 10 years ago to

LARA is an umbrella organisation of motoring groups put together nearly 10 years ago to promote a more responsible image for off-roading. “In the old days, it was witchcraft or wolves; now it’s four-wheel-drives,” is the furiously beleaguered view of Tim Stevens, spokesman for LARA (the Land Access and Recreation Association). To find real wilderness you have to go to Canada or Alaska.”Call it, then, a wilderness-type experience. None the less, Miller said, “People still have very fixed ideas of what does and doesn’t belong here.” The Peak District Park, for instance, has done tremendous work in combatting erosion by the half-million feet that tread the Pennine Way each year – laying biodegradable mesh where the delicate peat landscape can regenerate, and creating a pathway of flagstones on the most heavily eroded sections But “People even complain about that”, said Miller. “They say they’ve come to get back to nature and they find themselves on the yellow brick road.” When you are dealing with the territory of the imagination – and millions of different imaginations – rights and wrongs, appropriatenesses and otherwise, become hard to untangle.BUT IF the imagination encompasses green laning by four-wheel-drives and motorbikes, the debate becomes stark in its simplicity. But, however rooted visitors may be to their vehicles and picnic tables, they all want, as Miller says “to know the wilderness is there”.Not, as Miller points out, that this is, strictly speaking, wilderness: “If this was wilderness it would be covered in trees,” he said, nodding towards the heather .”It was cleared in the last century and farmed for grouse The whole area is managed and drained.

You have to watch out for prejudice and try to keep the problem in proportion.”He took me to the Pennine Way, on the high land to the north. There was not a soul in sight, just acre after empty acre of great, stark shoulders of moorland. A large percentage of visitors, he said, stay within 100 yards of their cars; almost one in five never get out of them. The old-school walkers might be put off and terrified simply by what mountain bikers wear. But what the clause would create is a dramatic shift of emphasis: a flagging- up of the notion that some ways of enjoying yourself in National Parks are more appropriate than others – that some are to be promoted and others discouraged.But where do you draw the line over who’s spoiling what for whom? “The difficulty is you’re dealing with ideas as well as practicalities,” said Gordon Miller, a Derbyshire Park Ranger (and chairman of the International Rangers Federation) “Some of the problems are generational. It seems likely that then, as now, the only way for the authorities to stop activities which they believed violated the clause would be through existing legislation – noise abatement orders, traffic regulation orders, planning restrictions. But confusion is easy for naughty types to hide behind.The extent to which National Park Author-ities would be able to enforce a “Quiet Enjoy-ment” clause, should it become law, is unclear.

Off- road clubs, and commercial organisations such as Moorland Adventure Sports, go to some lengths to make sure that they drive only where they are legally allowed to. Which means you can’t rely on an Ordnance Survey map, or even the definitive maps held at council headquarters, to tell you where you are allowed to drive. To muddle matters further, under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, Local Authorities are supposed to be reclassifying all RUPPs as BOATS, bridleways, or, occasionally, footpaths. Miles and miles of green lanes are currently the subject of legal battles being waged over details of past usage. Access is confined to designated rights of way and to certain areas where the landowners have given the public “freedom to roam”. It is over the designated rights of way that the worst confusion reigns.

The classification system for unpaved roads – which show up as white on Ordnance Survey maps and are known as “green lanes” by off-roaders – is as clear as the mud four-wheel-drivers so love to get stuck in Footpaths are just for feet Bridleways are for horses, cycles and feet. But the rest of the ancient highway system is a bewildering network of RUPPs (roads used as public paths), BOATs (by-ways open to all traffic) and UCRs (Unclassified Roads) – all legally open to vehicles, some confusingly sporting illegal signs saying “Private” or “No Vehicles”. But where they have access is far from clear.In England and Wales, the land in the National Parks is owned by various interests: private landowners, forestry and water authorities, the Ministry of Defence, the National Trust and the park authorities themselves. At present, almost all the “leisure pursuits” complained about in the context of the National Parks are within the law – so long as participants keep to the rules regarding noise which cover the rest of the country, and so long as they stick to the areas to which they have access. The minute it rains I have convoys of seven or eight of these idiots roaring past my farm They come out in the snow.

They come out at two o’clock in the morning and then they get stuck and they’re knocking on the door asking me to pull them out with the tractor.” And what does he say? “I tell them,” says Atkin, “that it’s naughty.”NAUGHTY it may be, but not illegal. “If it’s wet,” said Atkin, “a farmer won’t go out in a Land-Rover or a tractor unless he has to. If we don’t need wheels like that, and we’re working the land, what do they need them for?”We drove down over a smooth, green hillside which was once, apparently, “like a billiard table” Now it was rutted with deep, black gashes. They think they’ve got a vehicle that’ll go up a lamp post, go up a tree, so they bring it out here to see what they can do They have great bloody wheels on the things.