No parking for us.

[mistericeman]

Speaking from personal experience of the greenlaning side of things....
We 4x4 owners along with Trail riding groups have been fighting byway closures for years now (following the NERC act etc) via TROs etc...
Some substantial numbers of folks formed into some pretty large groups....

Very little, if any success of any sort....
Local authorities and the national parks etc have carried on regardless with the closures....
Even the spending power of large numbers of enthusiasts via petrol stations/hotels/cafes/resteraunts etc hasn't made any odds....

A large proportion of this is frankly down to the populariseation of "off roading.... (A misnomer as, byways green or otherwise are effectively roads)
Via forums/websites/YouTube etc.....

Same is (and has been for some time) happening to the campervan/motorhome side of things....

Sadly I'm of the opinion that there is now little we can do....
Other than try to enjoy the time we have left

 

[Fisherman]

Is that not just a small extension to what this forum is already?

Maybe you could start by opening a thread highlighting a particular place that you believe to be unreasonably restricted & begin a campaign to overturn the restriction. Our very talented current members (thinking particularly of 'maureenandtom'!) could pitch in with advice on how to fight it & once a plan of action has been agreed on we could all email the relevant person or bodies involved as a show of numbers.
If that proves successful then you challenge another location.
The 'leaders' will become apparent & any success will attract new participants.
Rewarding those that have invested the most time & talent can become a consideration once a momentum has begun.

Start small, think big.

you make a fair point. But it’s also important that this body validates their members as bein competent and responsible. Anyone who breeches the rules could have their validation removed.

 

[daygoboy]

I have a feeling we're going round in an endless loop on this one.
Make that a Mobius Loop!

 

[peter palance]

I mostly agree with you - I've thought often that the golden age of our sort of motorhoming is over but not about the attitude, generally, of the public. Plenty of whingers but they're always with us and the only anecdotal evidence we have is of the - "I was talking to this guy down the pub last night, and he said ...". Useful, but ... well, it's one thing to whinge in the pub and quite another to find good reason for prejudice.

As a group, we are anxious to believe itis true that we are resented – but it isn't, we aren't. Or, at least, there is no hard evidence of it. Quite the opposite in fact; the only reliable judgement of public antagonism is the number of complaints authority receives about us. FoI requests show time after time that there are vanishingly small numbers of complaints about us.

And this is true even when councils say there have been large numbers of complaints. Pressed to show them (FoI) – there are none. Lincolnshire for example said there were over 200 about motorhome overnighting at Huttoft Car Terrace. There were none. There were about 25 parking complaintsd for Lincolnshire entire and none of those 25 were about motorhomes.

Councillor Louise (I forget her name and the name of her council, it'll come to me if I need it) for her council said 90% of motorhomes left “effluence” behind when they left and the public was outraged. There were no complaints and the public was solidly in favour of motorhomes judging by the comments in the newpaper article reporting it.

Keswick (in the Press) reported large numbers of complaints and the newspaper printed a photograph of the litter we left behind at Portinscale. There were no complaints and (at the request of one of our memebers here) the newspaper admitted that the picture was a fake; that it was taken from “stock” and was not of the area used by motorhomes.

And I could go on. A very few times councils have been persuaded to (continue to) permit overnight parking (Fleetwood most recently, Noth Devcon years ago - and a few more) so their lies can sometimes backfire but usually councils have made their decisions and then looked for reasons for them. Bye -laws in East Lothian and Aberdeen not approved by the Scottish Govt because of lack of evidence of their assertions of complaints from the pubnlic. Qute a few more examples which don't trip off my mind right now.

We do need an organisation to talk on our behalf and I might be able to shed a little light on this some other time. We did have a couple and both had some success.

thank you, too true, ok pj

 

[maureenandtom]

I have a feeling we're going round in an endless loop on this one.
Make that a Mobius Loop!

We're all on the same side? If only that were true.

 

[Fisherman]

We're all on the same side? If only that were true.

Exactly we are not all on the same side, and there’s the rub.
yes Peter we are going round in circles, of on tangents and getting nowhere.
and that’s a real shame.
I find it perplexing how some are quick to lay the blame on ourselves for the loss of parking sometimes. Yes there are idiots and inexperienced folks amongst us, and yes they do things they should not do. But what do you do when you have travelled from France to Scotland and have a cassette to empty, or some grey water to dispose of, with nowhere to dispose of them. Are we really so surprised that some resort to dumping it were they should not.
my wife and I wild camp for three nights then spend a night in a CL or a campsite with chemical waste facilities. That’s our solution. But then we value our environment, and we are considerate of the locals in their communities. Sadly some are not. Motorhomers come in all varieties, but from my experience the vast majority think like me.

So we have a problem, but not of our making, we are not a problem, the fact that we are regarded as a problem is the problem. The solution to this is really quite simple. Provide facilities whereby we can safety dispose of our waste for a fee to cover the cost of installation and maintenance. Stop putting up barriers in remote locations which only creates problems elsewhere, stop putting up idiotic no overnight parking signs that are unenforceable and have no legal bearing, and stop treating us like we are a problem.

Yes there are some idiots amongst us, but then there are idiots everywhere. But it seems that we are the only ones that need sorting out, the only ones to be banned.
People drop litter on pavements every day, in some places it’s a real problem. The solution is not to ban pedestrians from pavements, but to educate people and provide enough bins and maintenance of these bins as possible.