WHERE CAN I RIDE?
When planning a ride using an OS map (1:25,000) are there any paths, etc, that you are not allowed on? What marks should I be looking at in the key?
Alibali65 from the forum

Simple really: on a 1:25,000 map the trails are marked in green. Short dashes are Public Footpaths, where mountain bikes aren’t allowed. Long dashes are Public Bridleways, where they are. Crosses are Public Byways, where bikes are allowed, and long dashes with short green dashes dissecting them from alternate sides are Roads Used as Public Paths or RUPPS, which are legal on a bike but are being phased out to be replaced by Restricted Byways, which will also be legal. You may also see green circles, which denote a public right of way, usually legal for bikes too.
The only other thing that may help is that sometimes footpath or bridleway dashes are orange, meaning they are permissive paths/trails rather than legal rights of way. This doesn’t usually matter much on the ground, but occasionally there may be restrictions imposed by the landowner, and of course, the permission could be withdrawn.

HOLY COW!
Anyone know what the score is when a farmer keeps his cows/calves on a public bridleway? I was in the middle of a sweet downhill section and came around a bend to find the entire track blocked by cows and the like! Gutted.
Is the farmer breaking the law by keeping his cows in the middle of this right of way? Any ideas? Cheers peeps.
Itchy, from the forum

Basically, no. He would have every right to graze his cattle in a field crossed by a right of way as long as they were all cows and calves, or that any bulls among them were from beef breeds such as Herefords or Welsh Blacks, etc.
It is illegal to keep bulls from dairy breeds such as Jersey or Fresian in a field crossed by a right of way. Either way, proceed with caution whenever you pass a bull and take particular care with cows when there are calves present.

ANYONE SEEN THE SEA?
Next year, a group of us are embarking on the C2C, pretty much as per mbr Sept 2007, but in five or six days. None of us own or know how to use GPS, but I’ve been looking at Garmin 605 and Satmap Active 10 — will either of them show me the way, or just tell me where I am when I get lost?
S_worker, from the forum.

Put simply, all a GPS can do is guide you between a set of coordinates. If you only input the start and finish, all it will do is point towards the finish, expecting you to travel in a straight line to get there.
If you want your GPS to guide you along a trail, you need to input coordinates — usually known as waypoints — all the way along the trail, and it will guide you between them. The only really practical way to do this is to team up your GPS with some mapping software like Memory Map, and download the route you wish to follow from the software to the GPS unit. Most top-end GPS units are compatible with the software and they can usually be mounted on handlebars for easy reference.
We’ve used both the Garmin 705 and the Satmap. The Satmap is impressive, but we’ve found the batteries aren’t great and it’s a pretty huge unit to mount on your bars. It takes three AAs but that huge screen eats up power and it didn’t last more than about five hours.
The Garmin 705 is very similar to the 605, and very intuitive to use. We used it on this month’s Cut Gate Killer loop and it was very good — and the battery lasted the eight hours we were out with juice to spare.
The problem with the Edge series of GPS units from Garmin is that they will only accept 100 waypoints when you create a route. The Etrex series will take 1,000, which is far more useful for off-road routing, although it lacks the training functions. What this means on the 605 is that you have to create the route as a track.
Out on the trail it’s easy to see where you are in relation to the track you’ve created and it’s obvious when you have gone off trail. Obviously we also carried a paper OS map — a proven fail safe — but you don’t really need it; it’s just nice to have.