Firstly, I'm glad everyone had a nice weekend, and secondly I for one would not set a tyre off road on a lane I didn't know personally. I have ridden the GS offroad, very briefly on a stoney lane not far from my house, I was very slow, but that's my way.
I have some background in offroad driving and greenlaning of landrovers, so have a certain knowledge of what it's like trying to put a run together. We, as a group, would pick a date, and a meeting point and start time. The vehicles would meet up and be split into groups of no more than 5 vehicles. The only excepetion would have been the dusk till dawn runs, but that's another story.
In general the splits would be new members with less experiance, members with nice 4x4's that wanted easier lanes, and finally the senior members more prepared for the rougher terrain.
Each group had a leader who knew where to go, and a dedicated tailend charlie to ensure the gates would be shut. Each lead and tail would also have CB's to let each other know what was going on. The benefit of a small group was so that fragmentation of the group was keep to an absolute minimum, but the day as a whole always required at least 6 senior group members. The problem came when we ended up with the senior members being bored stupid taking new members on easy runs.
The seniors wanted to go with their mates rather than lead others, so the group fragmented into the original members and the new ones. Eventually the senior members started taking part in serious competitions, requiring serious vehicle modifications (Any one spent more than £15,000 on a Series IIA Landy?). I decided to go my own way after winning some silverware in one such event after realising the damages inflicted would be stupid if done on a regular basis. After a short period I returned to the group and found that they had evolved, and started doing more and more competition trials, which my IIA is a little on the heavy side to compete in, and the Green lane events have all but vanished.
I should probably get around to re-installing the winch and the other offroad gear I removed.
Whay should be remembered is that this run was organised on the sort of basis of I'm going round some lanes and anyone can follow me. What you would have needed for all to have a nice time would be a series of graded offroad rides plotted out before hand, with a series of dedicated guides and tailenders. You would also need routes of a circular nature, with minimal road sections between the lanes. The possibilities are fairly endless, for instance a grounp could cover some tarmac miles to link easy gravel lanes together, whilst one grounp could stay closer to home up to their necks in a peat bog.
It simply becomes a logistical nightmare trying to cater for all concerned. I'm not a big mileage person, I was shattered after 180 miles in a full day of riding in the Dales, so the road ride would have been a bad idea for me. I also didn't fancy an early bath on the fords run.
This was a get together run, organised for a bunch of generally like minded persons, with a few options for a days entertainment, led by people with the generousity to actually lead a group, and that should be aplauded