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Off-road culture: True Automotive Freedom via the knobblies

Bikes

Get far from the madding crowds, go offroad and get knobbly, dirty and dangerous

The problem with roads is that they have rules. The good thing about offroad culture is that there aren’t as many.

Whether you like it or not the road is in itself a piece of administrative coercion. No matter what kind of machine you drive or ride the freedom these things represent is curtailed, limited, palsied. It’s one of the contradictory truths of international motoring.

This is directly contrary therefore to the huge majority of the aesthetic of marketing. The motoring industry universally tempts us with promises of freedom, transcendence. We are beckoned to this brand and that via a series of spurious images hardly any of which stand up to scrutiny in this crowded urban world.

This is, then, where the beauty of offroad riding and driving comes in. Sure, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Green Lanes, for example, have well-administered rules and regulations concerning what you can and cannot do.

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