Hello :)

[mihaitasr]

Hey,

My name is Mihai, i just moved to the UK so until now i don't have any riding buddies. As i am a pretty active biker, my first thought was to search for a forum and that's how i found this one, which seems the most appropriate.

Back home i used to offroad a lot, but i heard in the UK there is a big legal issue if you go on a unknown trail, so i decided to stick to the tarmac for the moment.

Right now i have one large garage and several bikes, but they are all back in my home country. I am planning on bringing one of the motorcycles here first thing in the spring, so until then i would like to get to know the bikers community.

[mentalboy]

Welcome to the forum, would I be correct in guessing that you're a Moldovan or Romanian?

There was quite an active bunch of off-roaders in the South West of England and I think you'll find pockets of activity in the more rural areas of the UK.
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Make mine a Corona.

[Rogerborg]

https://www.trf.org.uk/ is your source for the limited and reducing number of green lanes. Whether you can just go and rag it around the local waste ground is entirely up to how much budget your local police force has to stop you.

Best of luck, and look on the bright side: England at least has green lanes / Byways Open to All Traffic - there's nothing like that in Scotland, so it's either ride on the paved highway or on private land.
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Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
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[Ste]

You're in Crawley... there's plenty of legit rights of way around there in Surrey and West Sussex so you won't need to go on unknown trails.

[Teflon-Mike]

You just have to make a distinction between "Off-Roading" and "Trail Riding".

Britain is a relatively small country; and had continuous human settlement since the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago (though some might argue it still aint ended yet!), and has been farmed, and pretty intensively, for most of that time.

Academic debate on the origins of civilization, and what constitutes 'farming' can take you right through the late Neolithic stone-age, and Bronze age to put a date on when Civilization 'came' to Britain... if it ever has.... B-U-T.. people have been here, waving pointy sticks about yelling "Gert orf moi Laa-aand" since at least the time of Stone Henge 4000 years ago.

AND, Britain had 'made' roads and wheeled traffic before the Roman incursion 2000 years ago, which gives us a legacy of pretty well established "Rights-of-Way", or 'Roads' between what is otherwise usually private land, where we may go, on foot, or horse or bicycle, or motorbike, or car, without any-one , waving pointy sticks about yelling "Gert orf moi Laa-aand"!!

Most of that road network; around 1 million miles of it, is 'maintained' tarmac road. There's about 10,000 miles of what are commonly known as 'Green-Lanes', which are 'un-surfaced' public roads, that have vehicular rights of way on them; most though tend to be relatively short tracks, often less than a mile long, and the few (Maybe a dozen!) 'long trails', that are more than maybe 10 miles, we have left, are now are mostly better 'graded' in loose road stone, than a lot of the council maintained tarmac roads around 'town'... (I kid you not.... I've taken Land-Rovers down most of the country's remaining long trails, and had a smoother ride doing it than taking my old Leafer for its annual MOT, which on the main road into town is the ONLY place I have ever experienced a suspension failure!!!)

Problem with Green-Laning, then, tends to be identifying them; tracks you may take a bike down are seldom ones you are 'allowed' to take a bike down; most will either be farm or forestry commission access tracks, to which there is no legal right of way for the general public, or they will be foot-paths or bridleways, which are public 'paths' that DON'T have 'vehicular' RoW, you can walk down them, you can ride a horse, BUT you can't take a wheeled vehicle.....

So, practice of riding on an unmade surfaces, across raw tracks or trails, in THIS country at least ISN'T 'off-road'. Few un-made tracks or trails we have, that we might ride down ARE 'Roads'. Road traffic law applies just as if you were riding on a made, tarmac road.

OFF-ROAD riding is perfectly legal... but, as the name sort of implies, you can't really do it 'on' the public road! And anything 'off-road' is then off-road riding.. like taking a R6 round Mallory or Cadwell race-track. Yup, that is 'off-road'.. its just not off-road 'dirt-biking'.

Plenty of 'off-road' dirt biking to be had; BUT, like taking an R6 around Silverstone race track, most of the 'legal' off-roading is to be found in organised events and competition, where the organizers have gained land-owners permission to use the land, and other regulatory requirements.

Modern disciplines of 'off-road' motorcycle competition, actually started here in Britain, expressly because of this 5000 year legacy of historic 'Rights of Way'.

In continental Europe, at the end of the 1800's, the 'Grand-Prix' was usually conducted on closed public roads. Here in Britain, laws dating back to the days of highway-men like Dick-Turpin, or Robin Hood, made it illegal to obstruct the Queens Highway; Which is how the Isle of Man TT came about. That island has its own laws, they could close the roads to stage a 'Grand-Prix' race.. so we all went over there to go fast on the public road.

On the main-land, we couldn't close the roads, and until 1896, we had the 'red-flag' law; any one operating a self propelled vehicle, had to have their butler walk ahead of them waving a red flag to alert the public.. (as if the nose and smoke wouldn't!). The famous London-Brighten veteran rally is actually celebrating the repeal of that act.. when they did away with the butler and his flag and imposed a blanket 14mph speed limit instead! Which remained until about 1906, when that was repealed, and for a joyous 60 years Britain had NO upper speed limit.... just a law which stated it was illegal to undertake any 'test of speed' on the public road.... which actually remains.

So, in Britain, 'closed circuit racing' was born, and 'racing' went 'off-road'.

On Road, however, way around this was to organise 'Reliability Trials', which of course isn't a test of speed; and as motor-vehicles, started to gain the sort of reliability they didn't just 'break' of their own accord; events had to get tougher and more grueling on both bike and rider, and that meant taking them down more and more un-surfaced roads, which until the 1930's were far more abundant; but by the 1950's, they were becoming less so, and 'trials' went 'off-road', into farmers fields, where they evolved into the modern sport of 'Enduro', and 'special stages' either of speed or machine control, spawned modern Scrambles/Moto-X and 'Observed' Trials.

So, plenty of opportunity for 'Off-Road' still, in any of the varouse organised disciplines of bike sport; whether circuit racing on tarmac or dirt-riding. What we don't have is the same opportunity for 'Trail Riding' on un-made public roads, or cross-country riding, down paths or tracks or trails that aren't public RoW.
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[Ste]

[pdg]

Also, you can't ride a horse on a footpath.

You can cycle (a wheeled vehicle, no?) on a bridleway.

I can't believe someone managed to overcomplicate something by oversimplifying the rules
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Any and all advice given should not be followed - if you have to ask it means you don't know so get a man in to do it for you.

[Ste]

Cycling on bridleways is legit.

Walking a push bike on footpaths is also legit. Not sure if walking a motorcycle on a footpath is legit but I reckon not.

[Teflon-Mike]

[Ste]

You talk as if it's tricky to find byways on OS maps.

"The representation on this map of any road track or path is no evidence of the existence of a right of way" means there might be a Traffic Regulation Order in place or something else meaning you can't get through.

If you're worried that the byway might have just disappeared then you can confirm its existence by speaking the Rights of Way Officer are the relevant council.

[Monkeywrenche...]

[Alpineandy]

https://www.bywaymap.com/index.html
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The above comment isn't necessarily the truth and anyone that says it is, is only correct if it's the truth or they're bigger than me.

[Rogerborg]

[Val]

Hello and welcome Mihai!

Off road is fine, but avoid M4 in order to keep the locals happy

Especially Port Talbot part.
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[Alpineandy]

[mentalboy]

[Rogerborg]