As many of you will know, the Langdale Quest activity operates within 10,000 acres of prime forest owned & managed by Forest Enterprise. The main aims of the activity are as follows:

• Provide a managed & maintained environment for people to enjoy 4x4 off-road driving.
• Develop the activity into a Tourist Attraction, increasing trade to local service providers, such as Hotels, restaurants, Petrol Stations & related Tourist Attractions.
• Help to take the pressure away from the use of Green Lanes for off-road driving.
• Diversify the use of a forest area into a profitable business in a manner that is acceptable to local residents and avoids damage to the local environment.

The activity has been running now for nearly 10 years. During this time the Langdale Quest has evolved into a unique business of which we are extremely proud. There has been a steady growth in 4x4 ownership here in the UK and over the years the site has been continuously improved in all aspects in order to provide for the increase in trade.

Maintenance procedures have been refined to create an environmentally sustainable activity able to cater for a growing number of customers.

To maintain the quality of the Quest experience and of the local environment requires an immense amount of work. For example every year we review the off-road driving routes within the forest.

In order to maintain our high standards, the first step is to survey the off-road tracks & plot on a map where any remedial work is required. Preventative maintenance is a major part of our overall maintenance programme.

Helpers in the Maze In the long term this helps reduce the overall workload & drastically cuts down on the number of vehicles getting stuck along the routes, which in turn helps our instructors too! We can also carry this out at times when the site is either closed or very quite.

Obviously, we don't want to make the tracks too easy to drive as this wouldn't be much fun. It's a fine balance between keeping them passable yet still challenging & exciting to drive.

Most of the repairs involve management of water run-off. When an off-road vehicle passes over soft ground, ruts are left & if the track crosses the side of a hill for example, the rainwater will tend to follow the course of the rut. This has a dramatic effect on the track. If unmanaged, the water will quickly erode the track creating deep gullies. The silt from the erosion can also cause problems if it finds its way into streams & rivers.

In order to prevent this we build small ridges across the track using a hard material such as stone. The water is then diverted off the track into an area of trees where it is filtered & cleaned. It can then safely enter the drainage channels along the roadsides of the forest & make its way to the nearest stream.

Other sections of rutted track may require to be 'graded'. This involves the use of our Mercedes Unimog fitted with a special grading blade on the front. Ruts develop along a track when soil is picked up by the tread on the vehicles tyres, small amounts fall off the wheel as it rotates and then land on either side of the rut. The overall effect is that the ruts get deeper & the ground either side of the rut gets higher.

The action of the blade on the ground is to scrape the earth back into the ruts where it originally came from. This method of repair works well if the ground is relatively dry & our Unimog can cover over 500 meters of track in an hour! In areas that are always wet we use stone to help reinforce the surface of the track. If the terrain is really waterlogged, particularly in the winter months, the work needs to be carried out by hand in order to avoid destroying the track with the heavy machinery.

Sometimes it is better not to use a section of the track in the following year rather that attempt to repair it - vegetation grows quickly in Langdale Forest & this helps to re-enforce the tracks surface.

Throughout the process we liaise closely with staff at the Forestry Commission who advise us on environmental guidelines, how we should repair the track and the materials we should use.

Each year we have to re-route parts of the Quest in Langdale as some areas of the forest undergo major timber harvesting. With an average of 1,500 tons of timber leaving Langdale each week, we need to work closely with both the contractors & the Forestry Commission in order to ensure all goes to plan!!

Sometimes this can be accomplished with temporary diversions but if the extraction area is large we omit that area of the forest from any routes for the season.

The long-term sustainability of the Langdale Quest relies heavily on our ability to minimise the impact of the activity within the forest. It is imperative that repair work is carried out before any damage to areas becomes a threat to the environment. We have built up a strong working relationship with the Forestry Commission to achieve this.

WE ARE PROUD THAT WE CONTINUE TO PROVIDE CONSIDERABLE ENJOYMENT FOR OUR CLIENTS WITHOUT COMPROMISING THE QUALITY OF THE FOREST ENVIRONMENT.