An ancient ford, or river crossing, that has been in use for over 1,000 years in the UK has been closed after becoming a viral sensation on TikTok.
Rufford ford in Nottinghamshire, England, was blocked by the local council at the request of fire and police services who couldn’t cope with the sudden influx of rescues following the crossing’s newfound internet fame.
Like most fords, this one, which is part of a regular asphalt road route, is barely more than a dribble of water in dry weather and presents no barrier to traffic. But when the rain comes the water can swell to several feet deep and several yards across.
Most locals knew of the danger but you’d still get the odd optimistic fool, or out-ot-towner underestimating the danger and finding themselves stranded and in need of a tow. And that’s how it stayed for decades after the introduction of the car, but the internet changed all that. In less than three years YouTube and TikTok have managed to put an end to something that predates Columbus’s arrival in America by almost 500 years and had been in (almost) daily use since.
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In 2020 local teenager Ben Gregory (YT handle: benregers) began uploading videos of cars trying to cross the ford to YouTube. Not every car would get stuck, but that didn’t matter because it was fun trying to guess which would make it and which would be marooned. And that wasn’t necessarily easy. You might get the odd Ford Fiesta that manages to surge through by hitting the water at just the right speed and maintaining that pace. But the next vehicle might be a BMW X3 mistakenly presuming that that their SUV has the off-road ability of a Camel Trophy Land Rover, and driven by someone with no understanding of how to drive through puddle, let along deep water.
But the real gold is when the water is so deep that the car doesn’t just stop dead, but begins to float away; when the driver is forced to climb out and wade to the side; when the driver gets stuck and is so humiliated he starts shouting at the people capturing the action for the internet.
Originally that was just Gregory, but more recently others have also come along for a slice of the action, some to film their own content, others from miles away simply to watch in person. And that’s when things started to get out of hand. Gregory’s YouTube videos had already clocked up millions of views, but when the action migrated to TikTok the ford’s notoriety exploded.
Suddenly the crowds gathering at the ford on rainy days were much bigger, and some of the driving seen in the videos became noticeably more aggressive. You’d get drivers purposely steaming into the water at high speed, and local councilor Neil Clarke said it was becoming dangerous for both drivers and pedestrians.
“There was a motorcyclist who approached it at 50 mph, went full pelt, and came straight off head over heels over the handlebars,” he told The Guardian. “He went so fast he bounced all the way along the water before collapsing on the other side in a heap. It is life-threatening.”
So the ford is now closed, meaning Rufford Lane is genuinely impassable, no matter how tall your air snorkel is, and likely to stay that way for some time. According to The Mirror, the council can’t afford to replace the ford with a bridge, but is investigating other ways to reopen the route.
Meanwhile, Gregory, who has amassed almost 17 million likes on TikTok and 65 million YouTube views, and the other content creators have shifted their attention to a couple of other sites around an hour’s drive away in Leicestershire.
