Yes Strata Florida is a
public Right Of Way. It is maintained at the public expense as it is registered as a ROW on public records. You can go to the ROW or highways office @ Dyfed or Powys council offices and see it recorded on the D.M and / or LOS.
Forestry tracks in general do not have
public ROW. Why not? Because its private land. Its not maintained by the public purse.
Go to the agencies I've mentioned above and see if they tell you theres public rights on those forestry tracks.
The fact that someone says its ok to drive them or that others drive them doesn't matter. They may ahve an agreement with the landowner allowing them to do that. I know of one tour company in that area that has private agreements to travel over private roads.
It doesn't matter that there were no walkers around that day either does it. Had you bumped into Emma Davies from Rhayader Police driving her LR along those tracks what might the result have been?
An S59? More bad publicity and press for Greenlaning? Who knows.
Then you come on here and give full details including your vehicles, pics and Fugawi screenshots for others to see.
It wouldn't hurt for you to read and apply Glass or CRAG's code of conduct for G'laning which might just save you a load of bother in the future
Actually in this area anyway, and I know because I've asked, the forestry does allow public access but not to vehicles. As I said in my earlier comment, we are not talking about driving through Grizedale - there are very remote forests that nobody uses, and if they do, nobody cares because its largely sensible, which is why the gates are left open long-term.
And why would I see a police officer driving around on forestry property? They have to rights there....and as I am sure you know, a S59 would only be issued when someone is contravening a closure order on what is/was a BOAT or similar.
The law of trespass on private land is totally different and as I'm sure you also know, there is nothing anyone can do other than to politely ask you to leave - its a purely civil matter. If some was threatened with a shotgun then that IS a police matter and whoever did it should be incarcerated and their firearms cert revoked.
The only recourse a landowner has (and remember in this case we are talking about forestry which has different interests) to trespass is a civil action either for for the trespasser to remove themselves or for restitution if physical damage can be proven - an interesting concept when Unimogs use the same tracks.
I'll say again, I take Craigs point but theres a time and a place, and this is a VERY remote forestry area as pointed out.
As a general point, Extremes comment about closure of Sarn is a classic one - it was shut mainly to pander to walkers and other groups because whatever voice we had in the 4x4 community went unheard, so clearly wasn't effective. I have seen exactly the same thing in Oxfordshire with the closure of huge sections of the Ridgeway, previously a 70-mile 5,000 year-old ROW...and if anyone thinks the tractors and farm machinery that used that track (and still do of course!) were not a major cause of damage then it got ignored, and the walkers won again.
The simple fact is we either aren't good at representing ourselves or are roundly ignored, in which case it doesn't much matter what we do frankly.
But we don't take that view here, we try and act responsibly - and OK we had a small mishap this time, but the reason we had to sort it ourselves was that there was nobody within miles to see or assist.
So, the Strata thing is a non-issue as its a BOAT, and the forestry thing is a simple question of technical trespass if you want to be pedantic about it, but in an extremely remote area with no other users and access left open....neither of which I can see impacts the 'reputation' of the 4x4 community as I see it....
The focus for this sort of criticism should be directed towards helping to maintain things where damage is being caused, and towards stopping the idiots who cause that damage (in the case of the Ridgeway, I'm aware of at least one prehistoric barrow completely trashed by a bunch of scramblers - how can that be held against us for crying out loud???).
