Salisbury Plains in Standard Jimny

There used to be a legal ford through the River Avon but it has been closed for a long time. I once watched a Scorpion tank take the ford at approx. 40 mph. Unfortunately the bow wave swept up the glacis plate and totally inundate the driver who would probably have been the one to bale the tank out later.

Roger

Thanks, all, for the tips and advice. Sounds like it is probably not as tough as I was expecting. Seen a few videos on YouTube with a lot of deep water and mud with people getting stuck and needing to be towed out, but maybe these are people going off-piste and just messing about.

I think Trailwise should at least allow me to keep to the allowed lanes, and stay clear of any tanks.

Thanks
Lee

A GPS unit will allow you to follow the tracks you mark on your map so you shouldn't get lost. The plain is pretty flat and the majority of the tracks are driveable in a Mini. From memory most of the bigger holes are to be found at junctions.
Personally speaking, the ranges at Otterburn are much more interesting.

Roger

wrote:

Thanks, all, for the tips and advice. Sounds like it is probably not as tough as I was expecting. Seen a few videos on YouTube with a lot of deep water and mud with people getting stuck and needing to be towed out, but maybe these are people going off-piste and just messing about.

I think Trailwise should at least allow me to keep to the allowed lanes, and stay clear of any tanks.

Thanks
Lee

I would think almost anything on YouTube showing extreme terrain is not on an actual 'green lane'. Sadly it is twunks doing stuff like that, which result in lanes being shut or slapped with a traffic order restriction.

We were in Wiltshire and Salisbury plains a couple of years ago. It was middle of summer, but you really could have driven the very vast majority in something like an Austin Metro.

I'd recommend getting a mapping app on your phone. Trailwise is good for planning, but doesn't show your live location.

On my iPhone I use an app called Outdoors GPS. Which will give you access to all of the OS maps for £19.99 a year. OS maps offer something similar, although not sure if you need internet access to use theirs. The Outdoors GPS one allows you to download maps before you go or stream live.

The 1/25,000 scale works well and will show your exact location and the lane. And you can record your route, so if challenged, you can provide proof of where you have been driving. It was amazing watching large numbers of people driving on tracks that had no public right of way.

Some pics showing the general terrain:

I have used ViewRanger on both IOS and Android for a lot of years, I was a Beta tester (unpaid of course) once for new versions especially IOS.

Viewranger will use OS maps as well as Open Street Maps and will show your position, you have to pay for the OS maps, but they are good value as you can just download the squares you need. There is also a large library online of routes, mostly walking routes, but a reasonable number of 4x4 routes as well, a number of these are free.

I have recently started using OSMAnd (Open Street Map And), this is similar to Viewranger and the base version is free. OSMAnd also works as a Sat Nav and will get you to the start of the Green Lane.

Open Street Maps have good clear mapping and you can see the smallest of lanes on here, but it is not as clear as OS maps to see if they are a public right of way.

This is where www.rowmaps.com comes in, they have all of the public Byways (open to all traffic) as downloadable GPX, KML etc and you can import these in to Google Earth and OSMAnd.

You can of course plot your own routes or you could get the GPX from Trailwise and import in to OSMAnd or Viewranger to show your vehicle as a moving dot whilst on the lane.

None of these mapping apps confirm that you are allowed to drive down the lane, unless it is a public right of way, so you still have to do your reseach and make sure before setting off, but at least they keep you on the lane when driving.

Thanks, DrRobin. I setup OSMAnd and it seems really good. That was the problem with Trailwise, you can't easily use it for tracking where you are/navigation.