DaveP wrote:richardyorkshire wrote:leave most footpaths as footpaths
Absolutely!
When there is nowhere left to go where you dont have to keep an eye out for wheeled vehicles then we'll really have lost something important.
Where? Someone should tell us Scots, as we have exactly the situation you describe!
We hike and ride off road, and the world hasn't ended yet. In fact, the most shocking damage to the environment is always around high concentrations of walkers, not cyclists. The trails at Glentress are immaculate compared with Ben Nevis.
We rode across Rannoch Moor and down the West Highland Way at New Year, and very fine it was too. In fact, I find the idea that I have more right to walk than I do to ride bizarre - and I'm speaking as a part-time Munro bagger here. Neither do I think any of my friends would feel outraged to find a horse going cross country (after all, we have 300,000 red deer doing it all the time). The idea that the mode someone uses to get around, should discriminate against them makes little sense to me.
Although we're not talking about pavements here, I am reminded of the moral outrage that cycling on a pavement brings from all sides, until some clerk at the council signs a form making it a cycle path, with no other changes whatsoever, and suddenly it is ok. I try to base my morals on something more solid than the fickleness of the law.