Access. More Thoughts From Mr Porter.

Brace brace brace! When we brought you Chris Porter’s ever so slightly controversial take on the state of Access Rights in the UK it sparked a whole new area of debate on the area. We heard from a Policeman and then from a Rights of Way Officer with their take on how the situation stands and where the future might lie for more fair and increased access to the Rights of Way network for mountain bikers.

 

However, Chris has been fired up again by a recent debate on our forum regarding a feature we shot in the Cairngorms More commas than the last one though ;]

EROSION AND IMPACT

I did have a giggle when reading the access articles on the subject of erosion and impact. Especially the bit about the delicate, mountain landscape of the Cairngorm plateau…
There is not one single acre of the British Isles that is ‘natural’, where ‘natural’ should be understood as ‘not influenced by humans’… That would include the Scottish Mountains too…
If we want to reduce our impact on the planet then we should simply stop breathing out CO2 and die. The human being as a species is way too successful at breeding and staying alive to be compatible with nature and riding a bicycle on a path in the cairngorms isn’t really going to be the figurative straw on the figurative camel’s back that pushes these mountains into the abyss of environmental destruction.… (That sentence has been structured without commas but with apologies to Matt at Singletrack). One could argue that by partaking in a risky activity and exposing ourselves to risk of death, we MTBers are actually doing the world a favour?

Take Easter Island as an illustrative example. Mysterious and massive stone heads suggest a civilisation intelligent enough to create big, long lasting, civic structures. What actually happened (so studies suggest) was that the civilisation which was reliant on trees didn’t figure out how many years it takes for a tree to grow on their remote island, therefore how many trees they could safely fell before they ran out. They didn’t figure this out until after they ran out of trees… ‘Bollocks, we’ve chopped the bleedin’ lot down…’ Had they invented a pastime that involved nature (riding mountain bikes for example? Just throwing it in there…) rather than the ‘big stone head cult/religion’ thing, there might still exist a forested, island paradise.

So how is the Cairngorm situation any different? No big stone heads, but none of that mountain landscape is natural either…
Just like Easter Island before the humans vs Easter Island after…
The moorlands are managed mostly for hunting and shooting and the hills have been sheep-grazed almost to a monoculture over hundreds of years.
Half of the whole of Scotland is owned by just over 600 landowners (the famous naturalist Mohamed al Fayed owns 100sq miles – I was going to say ‘naturist’ there, but I might get sued…). I’m sure it’s nothing to do with nature preservation, landowners simply don’t want us on their land! Except on their terms…. Witness the clearances which made way for the sheep to graze when wool was worth fortunes. Witness also the offence of ‘aggravated trespass’ which was introduced in 1994 to make life difficult and illegal for hunt saboteurs (And Ravers and new age travellers ?-Ed).  I think you can rest assured that though this was and still is used against the saboteurs, I’ll bet it has never successfully been invoked against a pack of heavy, hunt horses and dogs running riot through peoples gardens or other private property ‘accidentally’ trespassing in pursuit of a Fox.

So, on their terms then…
As part of the Visitor Management Plan of the Cairngorm Mountain area you are allowed to access any part of the mountain on foot (though you are asked not to stray off the footpaths). You are allowed to walk into the shop/restaurant/café at the top of the mountain there, though you will have to sign in and you must use the ‘Walkers entrance’. If you have used the railway to get to the shop/restaurant/café at the top, then you will NOT be allowed to access the mountain at all, not allowed outside the fence (I presume there’s a fence?)… All this is presumably to ‘protect’ the special flora, fauna, soils and habitats from damage, which are ‘easily damaged by trampling or disturbed by walkers, mountain bikers and dogs (off leads). I’d like to make two points in support of the walkers, mountain bikers and dogs here; 1) Is there not a f**king railway and shop/restaurant/café on the mountain? Is this classed as flora, fauna, soil or habitat? 2) does that mean none of the wild animals which are part of this special place are allowed to exceed the size and weight of a dog in case they also trample their own habitat to death?

But to be honest, you won’t be riding a bicycle on the bracken/heather/heath/bog of the Cairngorms anyway, you will be riding on a path… If you are in the bracken/heather/heath/bog you will be walking? Who would want to take their bike for a walk across that? The answer would be ‘not many’, probably not a big problem compared to, let’s say, ‘mountain railway construction’…

Incidentally, just started Keef’s biography, even the guitarist from the Stones fondly remembers riding his bicycle off-road at a place he calls the ‘glory bumps’… Hmmm, the glory bumps, a proto-1950s trail centre with permission to ride or no? Everybody loves riding bikes off-road, we’re gonna wear the whole f**king planet down if we aren’t careful! Actually, those weren’t the only ‘glory bumps’ he remembers fondly, ahem… Not the only laws he broke either, though it has to be said if he’d been prescribed his morphine via the drugs companies that would have been OK… Keef would have been on the right side of the drugs laws if he’d been into mushrooms in the 1960s, they were just fungus then, now they are evil. That’s right, the government have spent precious time in the commons and the lords making a naturally occurring, abundant fungus a Class A drug!

Lighten up… Go and ride some ‘illegal’ trails and ponder what ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ really means and who the law really serves, think for yourselves… These laws are all just a construct to control the population? It’s just a scratch in the dirt at the end of the day…

In fact you could pedal over from the ‘gorm and have a look at the aluminium smelting plant at Fort Bill if you believe what you do on your aluminium bike is low impact. You could maybe look up some pictures of a bauxite mine to see where the aluminium comes from.