forestry commission thug…?

Not me in the video, thoughts?

Pours drink and sits back

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ-WFgICVHw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

link not working?

Sorry edited, should be now

Didn’t see an assault and I couldn’t really hear what was said.

This is probably racist but I find people with that accent getting irate more comic than threatening.

Having said that some bloke manhandling you and your bike is probably threatening whatever accent they’ve got.

What a tugger. I’d probably tell him where to go if I were trying to get on with my job as well. Heavily edited also…

Text book bulb-endery from camera-wielding confrontation seeker (TM) – hassling FC employees about the impact of their big machines on the poor ground. One of them loses their rag – Victory! you can now go crying on youtube looking for sympathy for being a shithouse.

It beats looking for confrontation on the roads I guess – a lot safer.

Always the ones with cameras that get hassle. Perhaps they should turn them round.

Not withstanding the incident in the end the forestry guys were quite right, the only places outside of designated trails we have permission to ride on FC land is the fire roads which don’t get wrecked by the harvesters.

The forests as has been said before are primarily there for tree cultivation, that is gradually shifting towards leisure activities but it’s happening slowly in some places.

The rider should’ve realised quickly they weren’t interested in his point of view and got on with his hobby while they got on with their work. He should also have had a better understanding of his rights before making a fool of himself.

It does come across like he was provoking them, what was he expecting to achieve? Ah yes because you have had a moan at us we,ll not do our job today?

Locally, we ride all over Forestry Commission woodland. It’s working woodland so if a trail is wrecked so be it. It’s a small price to pay for having a free accessible playground.

What a tosser – the guy with the camera that is.

the guy with the camera is a numpty – nice smug little chuckle by him when he rides off. they should have run the evil machine over his delicate face

FC 1 – **** on a bike 0

Clever editing and provoking an argument there, the forestry cut trees down using machines, they repair some areas after and replant the trees that’s what they do. Bike rider just appears to be a tool who went out with his camera looking for an argument. I can see the bike being pushed a bit but no assault.

the only places outside of designated trails we have permission to ride on FC land is the fire roads which don’t get wrecked by the harvesters.

eh, its OUR land! FC are custodians of the land on behalf of the government(s), they most definitely do not own it.

In Scotland we have the right of responsible access anywhere, so unless there was a harvester working in the vicinity then IMO he has the right to go where he pleases in the forest.

Whilst i agree the guy was looking for an argument and it was probably unwise to direct it at the people who are least likely to do anything about it, there is no excuse for the guy speaking to him the way he did.

EDIT – the harvesters dont wreck the forest roads, the timber haulage trucks do 🙂

eh, its OUR land! FC are custodians of the land on behalf of the government(s), they most definitely do not own it.

No it’s not they lease some land from private owners too.

Edit: I googled Wentwood and found this interesting bit.

A small area remains in private ownership. Both the Forestry Commission and Woodland Trust have an open access policy for quiet informal recreation.

Fair point Drac but in general the vast bulk of the land is ours and they simply manage it for us.

It’s always nice when someone engineers a confrontation with people trying to do their job and then tries to get them sacked by posting the very mild results on the web. Even in the heavily-edited video I fail to see anything that constitutes an assault.

Are the FC supposed to harvest wood with secateurs to avoid interfering with unofficial trails?

Just because something is managed on our behalf doesn’t mean we can make unrealistic demands about its management to suit ourselves. We haven’t done badly from the FC in general, but they still need to carry out their main operations.

This guy’s point of view is misguided, and his actions stink.

genericbikerelatedname – Member

Locally, we ride all over Forestry Commission woodland. It’s working woodland so if a trail is wrecked so be it. It’s a small price to pay for having a free accessible playground.

Quite right, same here too.

eh, its OUR land! FC are custodians of the land on behalf of the government(s), they most definitely do not own it.

No it’s everyone in the country’s land, and it makes money. say the 99% of people not on mountain bikes would rather it lowered their tax bill by harvesting as opposed to being un-harvested for the benifit of the 1%.

No it’s everyone in the country’s land

yeah, thats why i capitalized OUR. its the peoples land, not specifically for MTBers…

sneaky edit. I dont think harvesting actually makes very much money at all for the country.

The guy on the bike was looking for an argument, judging by the tone of his questioning. Very confrontational. I don’t think the guy was an FC employee either, looked like one of the contractors to me.

Hmmm. Numpty provocation yes. But if the “big man” can get charged with assault then taffy there should too.

What a tosser – the guy with the camera that is.

Yep!

The rider should’ve realised quickly they weren’t interested in his point of view and got on with his hobby while they got on with their work. He should also have had a better understanding of his rights before making a fool of himself.

Well said.

I ride at margam park with a number of mates on a fairly regular basis. There are a lot of really good trails there, some of which one mate in particular has put a lot of effort into making and maintaining. However, we totally accept that it is a working forest and that any section could disappear from month to month.

this thread could also be titled ‘mountain biker being an annoying prat’, surely?

If you keep pushing and prodding some people don’t be suprised if they get a bit lairy.

I dont think harvesting actually makes very much money at all for the country

The figures I have for FC for 2010 are (in £ millions)

Expenditure :
Harvesting and haulage 41.2
Recreation, etc 56.0
Other 58.1

Income :
Timber 77.4
Recreation, etc 18.7
Other 23.0

So income from harvesting supports both management costs and expenditure on recreation.

Harvesting and thinning are also necessary for managing the forestry, particularly where spruce plantations are concerned.

This strange presumption of self-righteous entitlement that is spreading among riders is a real shame. What we have at the moment is an ideal situation where there are plenty of places to ride, from purpose built centres to natural areas to sneaky secret trails, with minimal interference in terms of insurance, admission fees and licences. The minority mouthing off at other FC-land users and workers will cause problems for those of us who just want to get out and ride.

The minority mouthing off at other FC-land users and workers will cause problems for those of us who just want to get out and ride.

This.

My approach is to keep my head down, be polite and realise I’m their on sufferance.

Keeping off cheeky trails until night time helps.

Not a Wentwood local, but my impression is that the trails there are at least semi-sanctioned (I seem to recall Dragon Downhills being held there in the past). I think if they were destroying my riding spot I’d be getting pretty chippy too.

http://www.wentwooddownhill.co.uk/track.html

By contrast when the FC recently thinned a local wood in Bristol they were at pains to point out that work was temporary, anything damaged should be looked at as an opportunity to rebuild, etc. It might have been just a token bit of diplomacy, but it was appreciated.

Anyway, regardless of the rights and wrongs, acting like a nightclub doorman is not going to win you any friends.

acting like a nightclub doorman is not going to win you any friends

Acting like a total bellend to people doing their job isn’t going to win you any friends

Well done OP 🙄 – that’s my local patch too and I’ve always found the FC workers more than courteous – always a cheery smile, stopping machines to let me past on fire roads, etc. It’s a working forest and there’s a lot of thinning work taking place at the mo’ – tracks disappear, new ones are formed, get used to it! I’ve lost count of the number of cracking little d/h runs which have come and gone over the years I’ve been riding there but hey, change is good right? Although the Wentwood d/h site doesn’t appear to be up to date, as far as I am aware, as Mr A says, the main d/h track is sanctioned and remains maintained and undamaged.

what a fool..

A more satisfactory outcome would have been if passing riders had intervened and sent the sillybiker packing..

Can we see the full & unedited video please?

[edit] then again, don’t bother…….

as much as I hate the FC (or their contractors) harvesting and ruining trails, everything the guy in the yellow jacket was saying was correct, we only have rights to ride on the stone surfaces,

no need for the assault though,

I’ve got a foot in both camps these days (working for a sawmills) and, yes, forestry in GB is a large industry. My only gripe with harvesting is when all the brushwood isn’t removed on clear fell, leaves hell of a mess.
As Adam [amt27] will know here in the FoD, cheeky trails get built, the area gets trashed, new trails are built; and so it goes on. The new Verderers Trail pretty much follows the RDFCC Enduro course which itself followed earlier cheeky trails.
It’s a working forest and, whilst tourism, recreation & leisure is becoming a larger part of the pie, the production of lumber and all that entails is still the main industry and this has to be acknowledged and recognised by other users. In my 45+ years riding in the FoD, the ground pretty much always recovers.

now being investigated by the forestry commission 🙁
why can’t people just leave things be, only result I can foresee is forestry workers will dislike bikers & bikers will have restrictions on riding in the future, will someone please give that Utube idiot a step ladder so he can get down off his high horse 🙄

Usual story here – somebody trying to start an ‘us and them’ argument, when the real situation is that there are wrong-doers in all camps.

To tell the workers that he would ride where he wanted and that they couldn’t stop him was somewhat inflammatory, and the workers’ reaction to the goading was ill-advised.

If the cyclist had just let the guys get on with their job (or was a bit more polite in his questioning technique) then none of the confrontation would have happened.

For the record, our local woods suffered from extensive logging work a couple of years ago, but returned to a usable state in a surprisingly short time. You’d hardly know that it had happened, considering that it looked like the Somme at one point.
There’s currently a lot of working going on to remove invasive rhododendrons but, based on previous experience, we know that it’ll recover fairly quickly so aren’t too fussed about it.

Just happy to have somewhere local to ride our bikes – life too short for arguments.

<pantomine>Oh no it isn’t!</pantomime> 😉

+1 psling
Not saw one bit of harvesting last year that the Fc / contractors removed here in the FoD and the brushwood. With the value of wood so low they take cheapest option and leave it like bomb site. And we still get blamed for making a mess!