Any regular reader of this column will recall that I have previously written in it about BOATs.
I hasten to add that it is not due to any eccentric nautical concern on my part. The BOATs in question are distinctly landlocked: they are “byways open to all traffic”.
Some while back, 4 x 4 and trial bike enthusiasts began to claim the right to drive their noisy vehicles along green country lanes – bridleways and droves and the like – on the grounds that these byways had been open to all traffic since time out of mind.
A glistening piece of new legislation was prepared – with the intention of putting a halt to such capture of our green lanes by the internal combustion engine.
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the House of Commons, we managed to arrange things so that what had once threatened to become an avalanche of applications for BOAT status was reduced to a relatively small handful.
Unfortunately, however, due to a peculiarity of timing, a rather overweight proportion of the remaining and potential BOATs were in West Dorset.
Currently, this is causing quite a stir in Leigh where two otherwise peaceful and tranquil green lanes are classed as BOATs, and have been regularly chewed up by the fearsome spinning tyres of the 4 x 4s and the trial bikes.
What makes this particularly galling for the parish council and other locals who have been trying to preserve the ecology and beauty of their rural surroundings, is that considerable scholarly research amongst old maps and fusty records has revealed that there is, at the very least, an open question about whether these particular green lanes were ever used by the horses and carts that would have turned them into byways open to all traffic in years gone by.
But applying to have a BOAT de-BOAT-ified is a major undertaking which can take years to accomplish – and, in the meanwhile, the powers that be are insisting that, while these green lanes still count as BOATs, they need to be maintained in a fit state for the 4 x 4s and the trial bikes to roar up and down them.
So, amazingly, as we head into the age of austerity, the guardians of the rights of way are seeking to persuade county councillors to authorise tens of thousands of pounds to be spent putting down a hard surface where once there was turf and weed and bramble – all in the cause of enabling these large and noisy machines to shoot up and down, to the consternation of the local population.
People are always asking me, these days, what (besides the cost of politics, of course) we can safely save on. May I propose this particular, ludicrous and anti-ecological expenditure as an immediate candidate for saving? Let’s at least find out whether these droves at Leigh are really BOATs before we go spending money on something that would be better not done – and, in the meanwhile, keep the droves free of motorised traffic.