Whereas every council in England and Wales must, by law, maintain an up-to-date definitive map, councils in Scotland and Northern Ireland do not. So, if you live or intend visiting either of these you will have to do a lot more homework first.

Another way of getting to know where greenlanes are would be to join your local or national Land Rover, Range Rover or four-wheel drive club. Most clubs have rights of way officers who are willing to help you to read maps and confirm that you are on the right track, so to speak.

Remember too, that OS maps are only reprinted every few years, and therefore can become out of date very quickly. What I do is keep a list in my wallet of the map numbers I own, with the published dates alongside. If I spot a newly published version in a map shop I may buy it.

So, having marked up our maps, we can plan to go greenlaning. Within Britain, we have about 5,000 miles of unsurfaced ancient byways open for our use and it is very important that we lose as few routes as possible in the years ahead during the re-classification of public rights of way. Eventually the grey area RUPPs will disappear, leaving simply footpaths, bridleways and byways.

Unfortunately, there will always be lanes which are lost from year-to-year through erosion by the natural elements.

Having driven 'your' green lane, why not mark your yellow highlighted route with a green marker over it to identify RUPPs, BOATs and byways and highlight UCRs in blue. In future months and years you will be able to tell, at a glance, which routes you may still be able to drive and which routes you have driven.

Index [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

(c)Goodwinch Limited 2006