16th January 2004

Me and Greg decided to meet up after work on Friday evening and try out the Total Off Road magazine's greenlane roadbook. The February edition was set in Nottinghamshire, and coincidentally I already had the OS explorer maps of that area.

The previous night I'd traced the route on the maps to check for any houses/farms near to the lanes. Considering we were going laning in the evening/night time when it was dark I thought it best to avoid any lanes that ran through farms or close to houses.

The route started near Elkesbury, and lead us down a couple of nice gentle 'foresty' lanes to begin with. The second lane went through a nice wide ford, which had a footbridge running along side.

Rather spookily, as we pulled up to the ford and stopped to look, Im sure i caught sight of someone (or something!) running away. Just out the corner of my eye I saw what i thought was a red jacket running through the trees. I couldnt tell where it was, as i saw it out the drivers side window, but it could have been a reflection of something out the other side of the truck. Either way, I got out and locked the hubs as quickly as i could before jumping back in and locking the doors!

The ford turned out to be quite deep and easily went over my front bumper when i reached the middle.

The lane carried on a bit further though the forest until we got out the other side. We stopped under a street lamp so Greg could try out his new 'extendable' tripod.

The next lane on the roadbook was a nice long RUPP running through the forest. When we got there it looked suspiciously like a bridleway, and didn't have any tyre tracks running down it. We decided not to risk it as we weren't sure of its status. This needs checking out in case the magazine is wrong. We went to have a look at the other end of the track to see if there were any more signs that could shed light on its status. But en-route to it, we were stopped by a security guard blocking the road who informed us that we couldnt go where we wanted as it was private property and we'd be trespassing. Ah well, lets try the next lane, whereupon we were greeted with a big green gate blocking the entrance to the lane!

At this point we decided to abandon the roadbook and shoot across west to do some tried-and-tested lanes in the Peak District. We did the lane near Baslow that goes past a huge quarry

And then on to another nice lane near Stoney Middleton. This was very muddy and went up a bit of a hill with some twists and turns thrown in for good measure.

After this we decided to call it a night.