Haytor, Dartmoor. Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Post a photo of a good day's riding on Dartmoor to social media and watch what happens. Within an hour someone will say it's a disgrace and the rangers have been called. Someone else will say it's a legal byway and the first person doesn't know how to read a map. A third person will quote a bylaw about Access Land that has nothing to do with the actual track in the photo. Nobody in the thread agrees, and by the end nobody's actually answered the question: is it legal to ride a motorcycle on Dartmoor or Exmoor?
The honest answer is yes, in specific places, and Holloway can say exactly where because we checked the real data rather than guessing. Here's what's actually rideable, what isn't, and why the argument keeps happening even though the legal position hasn't changed in years.
The argument that never actually gets settled
Almost every Dartmoor and Exmoor legality argument online comes down to the same confusion: mixing up Access Land with a BOAT or a UCR. They're not the same thing, and treating them as interchangeable is why both sides in these threads usually end up talking past each other.
Access Land is the open moorland itself, the "right to roam" land created under the CROW Act 2000. It's genuinely open to walkers and, on Dartmoor specifically, to horse riders too. It was never open to motor vehicles, and no amount of arguing changes that. If a track only exists because riders have worn a line across open moor, riding it is not a grey area, it's straightforwardly not allowed.
A BOAT or a UCR is a different thing entirely, a road in the legal sense, recorded on the county's own definitive map, that happens to be unsurfaced. Riding one isn't trespass or an abuse of access rights, it's using a public road exactly as intended. The confusion happens because both can look identical on the ground, a gate, two wheel ruts, moorland either side, with nothing to visually tell a rider "this one's a road and that one over there isn't."
Dartmoor's legal network is bigger than most people assume
We checked this properly rather than repeating what a Facebook thread claims. Cross-referencing the raw mapping data against Holloway's own byway database, Dartmoor has genuine, currently-legal BOATs and UCRs running well into three figures, not the handful most casual riders assume exist. This is exactly the "loads of legal byways and unclassified roads" that gets asserted and then argued about online, and in this case the assertion is correct, it just needs the specific lanes attached to it rather than a general claim.
The network clusters around the moor's eastern and southern fringes, parishes like Staverton, Bridford, North Bovey, Moretonhampstead and Christow all carry a real spread of named byways, from easy, well-surfaced runs to genuinely technical climbs. A few worth knowing by name:
- Staverton Byway 34, an easy, approachable route into the cluster of Staverton byways south of the moor.
- Throwleigh Byway 16 and Little John's Walk, both graded easy and a sensible place to start if you're new to riding this area specifically.
- North Bovey Byway 23, Bridford Byway 41 and Christow Byway 36, all graded hard, technical climbs that reward local knowledge more than horsepower.
None of that is a promise that every one of these is trouble-free on the day you ride it. A Traffic Regulation Order can close any of them with little warning, and Dartmoor's popularity means its byways get more scrutiny, not less. Check Holloway's map for current status before you commit a day to any of them.
Exmoor is a genuinely different story
This is the part most "best green lanes" content glosses over, and it's worth being straight about it: Exmoor's legal motor-vehicle network is much thinner than Dartmoor's, and almost none of it sits on the high, open moor itself. The classic postcard views, Dunkery Beacon, Winsford Hill, the moorland above Porlock, are Access Land or open country, not byways, regardless of how track-like a particular line looks on the ground.
Porlock Vale, Exmoor. Sean the Spook, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
What legal riding there is tends to sit on the moor's fringes rather than its heart, minor byways connecting villages rather than crossing the tops. That's a genuinely different riding character to Dartmoor, shorter, more scattered, more about linking a day together than one long moorland crossing. It's also exactly why this is the area where the "surely there's more than this" instinct gets people into trouble, because it's tempting to assume a good-looking track further out on the moor must be legal simply because a nearby one is.
"Dartmoor and Exmoor get the same argument every few months and it's almost always the same mistake, someone assuming a track is legal because it looks like the byway they rode last week. They're right that there's more legal riding out there than people think, especially on Dartmoor. They're wrong that it means every good-looking track qualifies."
- Mat Stuckey, founder of Holloway
The other thing Dartmoor riders need to know about
Separate from access law entirely, parts of Dartmoor sit inside Ministry of Defence live-firing ranges, and public access, including on roads that are otherwise perfectly legal to ride, is genuinely restricted when firing is in progress. This isn't a green laning technicality, it's a real safety matter with its own published firing programme, and it changes week to week. Check it directly before you ride anywhere near the training areas rather than assuming a route is clear because it was last time.
Before you head out
A few things worth doing before you commit a day to either moor:
- Confirm a route is a BOAT or UCR, not Access Land, before you ride it, the two can look identical from the saddle
- Check current legal status on Holloway's map, not just whether a lane is generally known to exist
- Check the Dartmoor firing programme if you're riding anywhere near Okehampton, Willsworthy or Merrivale
- Expect Exmoor to offer less linked-up moorland riding than Dartmoor, and plan a shorter, fringe-focused day accordingly
- If you're genuinely unsure whether a specific track is legal, the local TRF group will know it far better than an argument in a comments section
Holloway is a free green lane finder, BOAT map and route navigation tool for England and Wales. The free version covers:
- Every lane's legal type, difficulty, length and hazards, including everything named above
- A Legal Status Search built into each lane, so you can check the current picture yourself in one place
- Points of interest and reported hazards from other riders who've actually been there
We don't tell you a lane is legal from a comments-section argument, we check it against the actual mapping data and show our working. Once you've confirmed a lane's current status, Holloway Premium, £20 a year, adds route planning across linked lanes, GPX export, exact coordinates, live weather and offline navigation, so the whole day is ready before you lose signal on the moor.