YOU recently published a letter from a person who claimed to have a hobby of riding a motorcycle on the 'unsealed roads of Wiltshire'.

The letter was printed beneath a picture of a badly rutted grass surface of a part of the Ridgeway. Your correspondent pointed out that these ruts were caused by four wheeled vehicles, implying that motorcycles have no part in the horrendous damage presently being inflicted on this ancient roadway.

I recently walked from The Shepherd's Rest to Wantage and was forced to walk many times in adjacent fields to bypass hundreds of yards of impassable Ridgeway.

I saw several groups of motorcycles passing me, obviously using the muddiest parts of the Ridgeway as a cross country race track.

These motorcyclists could claim that they have the right to use this ancient way. Surely this right is to travel from A to B. To use the wettest parts of the Ridgeway as a scrambling course is destructive and anti-social behaviour.

There must be a way that the councils through which the Ridgeway passes could curb or ban these anti social activities of motorcyclists and 4x4 vehicles.

Perhaps if the local councillors were to take a walk on the Ridgeway, the groups set up to save the Ridgeway would be unnecessary.

JOHN LE COYTE

Bishopstone