Letter: Motorised hunt

Sir: I am sure Mr Kidd and the 4x4 drivers he knows conscientiously avoid driving on byways with damaged surfaces (letter, 13 February). But far too many do not.

Today I rode along a bridlepath that has been classified as a "road used as a public path" (or RUPP). It was scarred with ruts a foot and more deep, and in one place a 4x4 driver had not been content to follow in the ruts left by his predecessors but had created a separate set of his own, so that the rider or walker was faced with four parallel ruts.

A green lane I know near Essendon used to offer a very pleasant ride in the 1960s and 1970s: one could canter almost the whole way along it. Today it is so rutted that many riders prefer to go round by the road instead.

The trouble is that too many bridleways have been classified as RUPPs or BOATs ("byways open to all traffic").

ROBERT NOWELL

New Barnet, Hertfordshire