My commute takes me through Esholt woods (lucky me) it’s the shortest route for me and I’m counting it as my allowed exercise too.

It’s not often I come across motorised vehicles, but when I do they are usually giving the beans and ripping the place up. Yesterday a group of about 8 MX’ers came razzing through, half of them no-helmet-no-number plate types that I’d rather not confront. That’s bad enough but today I saw a 4×4 heading down the bridleway (from Coach Road) which isn’t passable so they must have come up same way.

I wasn’t near enough to get a good picture, but you can see they were stuck in the mud on the flat.

I could see a lad putting stuff under the wheels, when they moved on I went to take a look and you can see they had taken stone from the wall.

They also ripped up the track somewhat.

You can see the immediate damaged they caused.

I was pretty angry by now and I chased them down the bridleway, and got a couple of ok pictures showing their number plate.

On any day coming into the woods and causing damage is unacceptable, but how can this be essential travel? How can this be their exercise? It’s totally wrong to be perusing non essential leisure activities on top wrecking a much loved forest. There are obviously a section of society who are thinking the police will be too busy and it’s their opportunity to run amok.
What’s the best way to pass this on to the police? I’m hoping they’ll take a dim view especially in present circumstances.

Report on 101

Maybe they can afford the £30 without another thought.

Are you absolutely sure that it’s a bridleway?

Down with this sort of thing!

When I used to see lots of scalliwags on no. Road legal bikes up on Portsdown Hill, rather than confront them I’d approach if possible and say they needed to be careful as the police had just asked me if I’d seen anyone on a motorbike so they must be looking for them. I’d phrase it in such a way that it sounded like I was in their side and it was some nimby who’d shopped them to the police.
Pretty much every time they thanked me and buggered off.

Esholt woods has had problems with dicks on what are probably stolen bikes for a good few year’s,there are signs warning anyone that if they are caught they will have the bike seized and crushed,can’t see why a car would be any different

There are obviously a section of society who are thinking the police will be too busy and it’s their opportunity to run amok.

this sounds like a perfect opportunity to send TJ in to run amok. Maybe do a bit of decimating while he’s at it. With whatever it is we can agree a pitard is.

To be honest, that section just below the railway viaduct is often like that

I can tell you that car is a Daewoo Musso, registered near Portsmouth or the IoW.
It only did 1300 miles last year, it’s V5 issue date was 02/03/2020, and it’s not reported stolen.
I can’t give any more info without paying for the data.
BTW, it is a 4×4, but it’s almost certainly wearing road rubber, hence the dimwit driver getting stuck in a slimy bit.

20 years ago that was my regular play ground and commute. It was bad then for scrotes and stolen cars although not really that many MX-ers. It was always a mess in places.

Not defending the 4×4 driver but wonder if he (presumably) could have had a bit of a brain fart and thought ‘as it will be quiet and I’ll be out of the public way so sort of isolated, I wonder where this bit goes’

Then realised the mistake and got a bit stuck.

It’s when you see a group of them green laning (or whatever it is called) illegally that annoys me.

Surprised no ones had a go at the OP for calling them MX bikes without detailed knowledge of their compression ratios, gearbox and suspension settings. How can he know they’re not enduro bikes, or dual sports with the number plates removed?

This place is slacking.

Not lycra louts so no one cares!!

Surprised no ones had a go at the OP for calling them MX bikes without detailed knowledge of their compression ratios, gearbox and suspension settings

Everyone’s probably distracted by the spacing of the characters on the number
plate of that car. H X0 2 ULK – What’s that all about?

SsanYong not Daewoo. Probably trying to bury it in the woods after realising what a hateful pile of crap they had been driving around in.

Lolz @maccruiskeen

The spacing on the number plate is an attempt to fool ANPR cameras and is illegal

The spacing on the number plate is an attempt to fool ANPR cameras

Ah, thanks, I was genuinely puzzled. I knew it was illegal but thought it was just to do with fudging number/letter combos on vanity plates. I was failing to come up with anything plausible from H X0 2 ULK but it just boils down to “I’m shifty AF”.

To be fair, on my 1:25K map (admittedly 20 years old now) that track up to the viaduct is simply shown as a white road with no ROW overlaid. It could be argued that this gives it the same status as any other white road such as those in housing estates etc. I have no idea what signage there is on the ground, but there are obviously no barriers there to stop vehicles so it could just be a simple mistake.

SsanYong not Daewoo.

It’s listed by the DVLA as a Daewoo, but it’s also shown elsewhere as a Ssangyong – I think it’s a shared model, a bit like Vauxhall and Opel, or Hyundai and Kia. It also uses a Mercedes drivetrain. My info came from the vehicle licence checking app I used for making sure cars had an MOT.

My info came from the vehicle licence checking app I used for making sure cars had an MOT.

Well done Miss Marple

I live off coach road.

It’s a real pain some days. Bradford’s anti social driving team are ok. (steerside).

We’ve already called the police once this week while out walking.

Thinks it’s an area that always will have planks. Hope that in time they crush all their bikes.