Give horse riders equal access to English woodlands, say campaigners

[cauda equina]

I've never heard of The Trails Trust before, but good for them; they sound more determined than the hopeless BHS
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...l-access-to-english-woodlands-say-campaigners

 

[Ellibelli]

I've never heard of The Trails Trust before, but good for them; they sound more determined than the hopeless BHS
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...l-access-to-english-woodlands-say-campaigners

I've often pondered sex equality rights when seeing the investments in cycle paths in forests and roads and nothing for horse riders. I know there are female cyclists and male horse riders but the fact is that most cyclists are men and most horse riders are women. The same could also be said about televised sport and can't help thinking if equestrian sports were male dominated it would still be shown on mainstream tv. Fingers crossed they are taken seriously

 

[cauda equina]

To be fair to the BHS (I know! Why should we?) they did say at an access thing I went to a couple of years ago that they were pushing the equality aspect too - ie a disproportionate number of horse people are female.
It's just a pity that the BHS seem to be so ineffectual; we need to be more vociferous.

 

[Rowreach]

The BHS keep bombarding me with ads telling me that my "cheap" membership helps them provide me with all these rights of way - which we have none of on the island of ireland, except the Beara trail down in West Cork (nothing to do with the BHS), and BHS Ireland are only interested in the areas around where the officers are based, not the rest of the country, for permit rides.

So all power to any organisation and pressure group that can add to the provision of and access to off road riding, anywhere in the UK and Ireland.

 

[Iznurgle]

The BHS keep bombarding me with ads telling me that my "cheap" membership helps them provide me with all these rights of way - which we have none of on the island of ireland, except the Beara trail down in West Cork (nothing to do with the BHS), and BHS Ireland are only interested in the areas around where the officers are based, not the rest of the country, for permit rides.

So all power to any organisation and pressure group that can add to the provision of and access to off road riding, anywhere in the UK and Ireland.

TREC Ireland have recently had a push for access to Coillte pathways for anyone with the required 6.5 mil public liability (which HSI gives with all tiers of insurance FYI). Coillte themselves are very difficult to obtain an individual permit from, and even then, that permit allows for use of one, predetermined trail! Absolutely useless, so hopefully TREC are successful in lobbying for access - every hike I go on I imagine how much I'd love to ride a horse on it, haha.

EDIT: It's actually TREC Trails! They're active on Facebook if you're interested.

 

[PeterNatt]

As a volunteer BHS Rights of Way Officer based in Hertfordshire my small team of volunteers have worked very hard to get additional Bridleways/Restricted Byways and Byways for horse riders within the county. If more hose riders and carriage drivers were members of the BHS then the BHS would have greater resources to do this important work which is time consuming and expensive to do.

 

[cauda equina]

I think the local BHS people do a good job but as a spokesorganisation for riders the BHS leaves much to be desired