We've got a test this month of the new Skoda Kodiak, a sevenseat SUV which is a very, very good family vehicle - and, if you spec it the way you can, a 4x4 with some genuine off-tarmac ability.
No, it’s not going to do the stuff a Defender or Wrangler can. But that’s not the point.The Kodiaq, and vehicles like it, can take you a long way into the wilds on the sort of green roads that make up 95% of the rights of way network that’s accessible to us. In a couple of months’ time, in fact, we’ll be running an article in which we use one to do exactly that.
Green laning as a hobby is kind of split into two.There’s the kind of laning trip that needs tough trucks and big tyres - no, not so you can go ploughing through deep mud and all that, but so you can do the awkward, tight and technical bits without worrying what will happen if you bash an axle off a rock or catch your bodywork on a tree. And there’s nothing wrong with being able to enjoy the countryside in the knowledge that it took something out of the ordinary to get there.There’s precious little left in Britain that can be described as an adventure, after all.
Which is where the Kodiaq comes in. Six days a week, it’s your family transport -school, shops, work, you know the drill. But on the seventh, you can head out into the countryside, press the Off-Road button and head off across the hills.
The reality is of course that the hills are a total no-go area, unless you own them (probability about one in ten million), the person who owns them has let you (probability about one in, oh, ten million), or there’s a trail across them that carries motor vehicle right, is suitable for what you’re driving and hasn’t been closed yet.
Probability? Better than one in ten million, I guess. But the odds are getting longer all the time.

At the time of writing, there’s an online petition going around to have motor vehicles banned fromTilberthwaite Lane, one of the best rights of way in the Lake Di strict. The poor old farmers who live next to it say they’re thinking about giving up their tenancy because 4x4 drivers are making it impossible forthem to do their job. As many as 30 vehicles a day are ripping up the surface; it’s got so bad they can’t get their tractor up there any more.
You don’t need to be a barrister to see the obvious flaw in that argument, do you? Happily, the National Park Authority is smart enough not to let screaming antis fool it into bullying a minority user group whose rights it recognises. Meanwhile in Wales, though, 4x4 users had to buy a metal detector so they could scour the White Stones lane for spikes which someone had buried in the surface to try and puncture vehicles’ tyres.That’s how evil, reckless and downright uncivilised some people are.
The family in the Kodiaq might be forgiven for wanting to stay at home. But if the countryside welcomes them, even offers them a route to the adventure they’re seeking... well, the communities who live there might find that their new SUV-driving visitors are worth having around. If national or local government, or even just some enterprising landowners, were to create SUV-friendly trail routes using existing access tracks and promote them as a way families can enjoy a real adventure in the countryside, every car load coming to enjoy them would be a car load of custom for local businesses.
In the meantime, we have a scratchy and incomplete little jumble of rights of way, and SUV owners have no reliable way of knowing which will be suitable for their vehicles. It could be so much better - but if things keep going the way they are, there’ll be no adventures left to have at all.

Alan Kidd
Editor