Safer Hacking for EVERYONE!

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Gypley

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I was thumbing through this months copy of YourHorse magazine on my lunch break and came across an advert for an organised ride in Essex. The ride has been organised by essexbridleways.co.uk who are a charity dedicated to providing safe riding to everyone and keeping bridleways open as well as applying for new routes to be availabe to the public.

I would just like to say how impressed and jealous I am, that such a well organised association dedicated solely to safer hacking even exists! (To my knowledge there is nothing like this in the Kent area)

When trying to find new places to hack, I am generally met by out of date websites or overgrown, unkept tracks and with roads getting busier and traffic in my area getting faster, I long for rolling hills and well maintained paths!

Is there a secret society being kept from me in Kent? Or is something as good and well run as essexbridleways.co.uk a rare occurance?
What do you have in your area to support local hacking?
 
Nags...have heard of trot but there is nothing within hacking distance of where I live and unfortunatly dont have the luxury of being able to box somewhere every weekend :( Although my original post tells of my longing for rolling hills...I would settle for just right of way on the verge of farmland rather than risking life and limb on the main road !
 
I'm in Essex. Have been on a few Essex Bridleways rides. Always well organised and great fun. Plus fantaastic to know that your entry price is going towards the future campaign for bridleways.

Essex Bridleways has saved a couple of bridleways close to my old yard. Where the roads were busy and horrid, the bridleways were the only form of hacking. They have also installed a horse crossing on a busy A road to make it safer. Which took about 2-3 years of campaigning for.

The organisation really do have their place around here :)
 
Gypley said:
Nags...have heard of trot but there is nothing within hacking distance of where I live and unfortunatly dont have the luxury of being able to box somewhere every weekend :( Although my original post tells of my longing for rolling hills...I would settle for just right of way on the verge of farmland rather than risking life and limb on the main road !
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Maybe you could contact the TROT people and work with them to get some rides on the farmland - after all a lot of the existing rides are I believe on farmland so wouldnt have been there without TROT/local riders work.
NB one issue with 'field verges' is depending on the type of single farm payment scheme the farmer can in some be penalised if he allows any interference with the verges, incl horseriding.
 
I am in Kent and would LOVE to have more off road hacking!! I love hacking, but despise the busy roads :mad:
Me and a friend had a look into TROT membership today funnily enough as we have 1 within hacking distance, but we are not willing to pay £140 per year for 1 route and maybe the 2/3 times a year when we box to the forest which is also part of TROT.
I think this is a down side to the TROT organisation, great off road hacking if you are willing to pay a small fortune for the priviledge. The 2 forests we have near us we are not allowed to ride in because we aren't TROT members.... :confused: If it didn't cost so much I would quite happily pay something towards off road riding but I just think £140 a year is very steep unless you use them every week!
 
Baker190... dispite fully supporting TROT in maintaining and opening bridleways, I do agree that this is a bit steep for the use of only one route. Do they not offer an option for just paying for the rides near you and then adding on exta ones as a 'booster' for the occasions when you do box? If not i definatly thik they should look into it. Even a pay as you go system, i would have thought, would be benificail to them
 
My small team have opened a number of new bridleways and restricted byways in North Hertfordshire. We have also had most the bridleways in the area upgraded to improve their surface and drainage and all of them are passable as they are now regularly maintained. All this does take a lot of work and there are very few riders that will actually put themselves out to help out.

I would suggest that if you want to improve your local network of bridleways and byways then contact your local BHS bridleway (access) officers and ask if you could help them to improve matters in your immediate area. Your local BHS bridleway officer is: Anne Rillie Tel: 01622 710582 (North and West Kent) and Mick Ingleton Tel: 01795 873709 (South and East Kent).
 
Gypley said:
Baker190... dispite fully supporting TROT in maintaining and opening bridleways, I do agree that this is a bit steep for the use of only one route. Do they not offer an option for just paying for the rides near you and then adding on exta ones as a 'booster' for the occasions when you do box? If not i definatly thik they should look into it. Even a pay as you go system, i would have thought, would be benificail to them
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I am going to email them now if I can and ask as it would be the logical answer! I am just not willing to pay such a high price for such limited riding in my area :rolleyes:
 
I am pretty sure that they do a reduce rate if there is not enough trot rides (i think its under 3 miles but you would need to check)they also do reduced rates for children and you can pay monthly by standing order. I've been a member for years now and its really worthwhile.
 
nagseastsussex said:
I am pretty sure that they do a reduce rate if there is not enough trot rides (i think its under 3 miles but you would need to check)they also do reduced rates for children and you can pay monthly by standing order. I've been a member for years now and its really worthwhile.
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I have emailed them asking if there is anything they can do as for us, it is not worthwile at all!
If we had a lot of route's close by and the use of a box to go out every weekend then I would pay it, but the amount of use we would get out of it would not justify £140.
Hopefully there is something they can do to help! :)
 
There is a reduced rate for TROT if you don't have any routes within easy hacking distance and/or a limited mileage of route.

When you are a member you can go to any TROT route in the country and use the routes for no extra charge.

The TROT charity was started by riders who had no off-road riding at all, and approached landowners to see if they could ride on their land - for some money - and link up bridlepaths, but with the ultimate aim of having safer, more pleasant daily hacking.

There are routes up to 20 miles long with bridlepaths joined by farmers' fields.
 
I have ordered an ordnance survey map of my area along with some historical maps too. I have read on the BHS website that of you can prove that a path has historicaly been used for horses you significantly improve your chances of having it cleared and re-opened. That said I will also be contacting the BHS directly tomorrow to she if they can help in any way and will contact TROT too. Hopefully I will at least one marked bridleway within hacking distance by this time next year!
 
Don't hold your breath Gypley. We have a very old (known to have been in existence since 1700 at least as a public road) track by us, it goes through 2 fields and has been blocked up to riders for 10 years; we are in negotiations with our ROW officer but the BHS don't want to know at all. Not impressed as that is what I joined them for.
 
There used to be Bromley Bridleways Association Group, I don't know if they still exist or if they're near you OP (I can't see locations on my phone). There is also South East Toll Rides, but its expensive.
 
Find out if there is a local bridleways group near you, by contacting the Public Rights of Way officer (PROW) at your local council . If there isn't one, set one up yourself.

We used to have a very active group round here, which was sadly subsumed into a much larger, more ambitious group which does nothing at all for us in this immediate area. So I just got together a bunch of acquaintances and friends on a very low-key basis. We have a wonderful PROW officer on the local council, who is so supportive.

These groups are very important because they provide a pressure group (and it needn't be aggressive!), and a council would much rather deal with an organised group, however small, than oddball individuals. In our good old days we had 3 or 4 bridleways reopened, two of which had been 'lost' (closed) for years and years.

I know a little of the TROT scheme. I always thought it sounded a good idea, but my fellow bridleway-ers were very against it as a fee was involved. Could someone explain to me whether the fee paid to TROT enables you simply to ride on othewise private route (i.e. not on a bridleway/byway). If the scheme in some way makes you pay for riding on what is already a public route (say by reason of keeping it up together) then this would seem to be very wrong as it is paying for what is already your by right?
 
Rose Folly said:
Find out if there is a local bridleways group near you, by contacting the Public Rights of Way officer (PROW) at your local council . If there isn't one, set one up yourself.

We used to have a very active group round here, which was sadly subsumed into a much larger, more ambitious group which does nothing at all for us in this immediate area. So I just got together a bunch of acquaintances and friends on a very low-key basis. We have a wonderful PROW officer on the local council, who is so supportive.

These groups are very important because they provide a pressure group (and it needn't be aggressive!), and a council would much rather deal with an organised group, however small, than oddball individuals. In our good old days we had 3 or 4 bridleways reopened, two of which had been 'lost' (closed) for years and years.

I know a little of the TROT scheme. I always thought it sounded a good idea, but my fellow bridleway-ers were very against it as a fee was involved. Could someone explain to me whether the fee paid to TROT enables you simply to ride on othewise private route (i.e. not on a bridleway/byway). If the scheme in some way makes you pay for riding on what is already a public route (say by reason of keeping it up together) then this would seem to be very wrong as it is paying for what is already your by right?
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Yes it does enable you to do this. Public routes are used for linking the private permissive TROT routes and obviously the public bits are rideable by anyone free of charge. The money goes to paying farmers/landowners to compensate for the insurance/damage/loss of subsidies etc that are involved in allowing the riders on, as I understand it, as well as paying for the development of future routes.
 
Yorkshire people have the brilliant Ride Yorkshire (the person who runs it is a member on here) which is well worth a look at if you are living in Yorkshire, visiting for riding holidays or thinking of starting your own hacking group.

It would be lovely to have something similar over here, but bridleways do not exist in Ireland (literally, never have done). We do have some great off road riding in forests and some beaches, but we have to pay for the forests and access to the beaches is getting more restrictive.
 
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