A CRACKDOWN on illegal off-road action brought police an unexpected bonus -- they netted youths who had escaped from a young offenders' centre.

On Sunday, a police team of on and off-road motorcyclists backed by a Land Rover crew, officers on mountain bikes and environmental health staff from Wigan Council were on the Red Rose Forest site surrounding Higher Folds estate and stretching from Astley to Leigh.

With checkpoints in North Lane at Blackmoor and at Old Hall Mill Lane they mounted an operation to stop and question motorcyclists using the network of tracks on the forestry site, much of which is reclaimed colliery waste land now being transformed further by a massive tree-planting scheme.

An interested observer was Cllr John Lea, Bedford/Astley ward representative on Wigan Council, who tracked the action on his push bike.

"There have been a lot of problems and we have looked at locating somewhere the riders could use without causing annoyance or damage -- but there are a lot of legal problems. This is not a one-off check, there will be more, and new powers mean machines can be confiscated if they are being used illegally."