I’ve only been road riding for a year (primarily due to the terrible summer) around the NF, live in southampton.

Until the news about the sabotage at the recent wiggle sportive I had been blissfully unaware of such anti-cycling from some residents.

Is the NF is any way worse than other areas of the country in terms of road biking and the number of people cycling? I have friends who live near box hill and I see far far more road bikes there than whenever I go for a ride round the forest. You don’t see any anti-cycling vibe in their area.

I had a conversation with a resident and I was genuinely shocked at their response about cyclists. To the point where they said rather proudly that they deliberately buzz cyclists…and its okay as being knocked off is unlikely to kill the rider, maybe just a broken collarbone(!!!). Thinking about what he said, on several occasions I have been buzzed by drivers around Beaulieu. I am quite concerned about continuing to ride there now. Which I suppose is exactly what they want…

Call the police if it happens again.

Reminds me to go and check how the road rage/assault charges are going with the driver who hit me.

i would have a word with the police about the person you spoke to (as they blatantly were happy to put cyclists life in danger).

RANT what is up with some people/media e.t.c who are happy to want to cause harm to cyclists and think it is acceptable 😡

if it was racism/sexism/homophobia e.t.c it would rightly be frowned upon,but even the law doesn’t give a damn about cyclists being run down e.t.c RANT OVER.

I feel sorry for cyclists in the new forest at the moment, the hate campaign started by Anita Sibley has manifested itself into something truly horirble.Its going to be awful this summer as motorists seem to believe that the hate campaign is in some way justified. There will be dozens of incidents i nthe new forest this year and hundreds of near-misses.

The Wiggle sportive brought out the worst in both parties though, it staggers me that the anti-cycling mob have a wafer thin agenda, It seems that their whole issue is based on having traffic disruption for a few days a year despite the fact that the whole area is apparently gridlocked in the summer with day trippers driving around. They could only resort to self satisfied smirks by calling us “lycra louts” or “MAMILs” once the myths of road tax and cycling two abreast were nullifed…

However, their issues with litter is one that we as cyclists can resolve ourselves. As someone said, taking a bar/gel will give you enough energy to put the wrapper back in your pocket and not drop it on the floor. In some situations we dont help ourselves…

If I rode there regularly, I would simply invest in a helmet cam and report as many incidents as possible. This is the only way that the motorists attitude in that area will change.

I found people putting tacks in the road at the Wiggle sportive quite amusing though, well not amusing per se but the longer term implications of their actions. The roads and gutters are now strewn with tacks, rusting away, and now posing a considerable threat to wild animals and dog owners, local cyclists and motorcyclists… unless they went out after the event and swept them up?

As I said, it will get worse before it gets better so any cyclists down there have my sympathy. It would be nice if the local MP came out and condemned the actions but I fear a few of the anti-cycling mob have his ear and are inclined to paint a different picture than hte truth…

I actually quite like the guy who I spoke to, he is a respectable member of the community, hence why i was so surprised with his reaction. The primary frustration from his perspective appears to be traffic chaos during summer, which cannot solely be blamed on bikes, though I can see where he is coming from when you have 4k riders on one day.

I’d rather not get hit and then try to prosecute… I would rather I wasn’t hit at all and people respected each other. It probably needs plain clothes coppers out on road bikes with gopros to make a difference.

My question was more around whether this is unique to the NF as it has lots more cyclists than other areas, or is it that other areas of the country more tolerant?

they said rather proudly that they deliberately buzz cyclists…and its okay as being knocked off is unlikely to kill the rider, maybe just a broken collarbone(!!!)

👿

What a *%^&* idiot!

I wonder if he conversely thinks that it is okay for you to swing a heavy metal bar at a driver that deliberately buzzes you?

I mean, it’s okay, it’s unlikely to kill them, maybe just a broken bone or two.

I actually quite like the guy concerned and he is a respectable member of the community

I’d be inclined to say he was a respectable member of the community Darren – can’t see why he should command anyone’s respect any longer. What did you say to him ?

FWIW I’ve been road riding round the northern bit of the NF for years and not encountered explicit hostility but I’ve had my share of not-very-comfortable overtakes.

Then again, maybe they are doing it deliberately:
Had one on the Friday before the Wiggle weekend, on the Roger Penny way. The car in question then pulled into a car park about a mile up the road. I followed it in to have a quiet chat but driver had disappeared. Carried on and then it overtook me again (safely this time) and then turned off into a little village again half a mile after passing me – through which the Wiggle ride was routed. Followed it again and found it parked (and hastily abandoned ?) with 2 dogs in the back outside a house bang on the wiggle route.

(luckily I didn’t have my tinfoil helmet liner fitted so I took it to be an accidental near-miss that they’d acknowledged as their fault and so didn’t knock the door. I do remember where they live though so might stop if I see them outside ever)

though I can see where he is coming from when you have 4k riders on one day.

<2000 per day I believe
wonder how many cars go through the NF on a typical weekend?

<edit>here we go

The Southern Daily Echo says that while event marshals swept drawing pins from the road at Boldre, some of the near 2,000 riders taking part on Saturday still suffered punctures.

second day was cancelled due to weather, don’t believe the crap he fed you, (he sounds like an arsehole anyway) weren’t there some posters up complaining about 6000 riders?

when you have 4k riders on one day

The wiggle rides are limited to 1,500 entrants per day with start times staggered over 2.5 hours. Even allowing for other non event cyclists in the area there is no point at which there will be 4,000 cyclists on the roads in and around the new forest.

okay maybe 4k was an exageration(!) I was going off the conversation.

Re my response. I have a good relationship with the guy and need to maintain working relations. until the anti-cycling rant he seemed a great chap. This is why I think things must be worse in the NF than other areas round the country.

I pointed out the dangers of buzzing (what if there is a pothole and the cyclist needs to move out) and that prompted the well it is unlikely to kill them comment! It sounds like it is done deliberately by a number of residents. I will certainly be looking out for it more and taking note of plate numbers. Not sure I would stop and challenge anyone though as I can’t imagine it would be a constructive debate if they are the sort of person who is happy to risk putting you in a ditch / hedge / side of a tree.

I dont get how the traffic problems are focussed on bikes. Surely the big caravans / tourists / horses in the road are the primary issue. We did talk about if there could be a solution but I can’t see what could be done to improve the situation. Other than maybe some arrests of those that are getting increasingly militant

I did nearly suggested if traffic was so bad he should think about getting out on a bike, but thought that was unlikely to be received very well!

okay maybe 4k was an exageration(!) I was going off the conversation.

if the moaners repeat it so much that other cyclists pick it up it adds weight to their argument.

Re my response. I have a good relationship with the guy and need to maintain working relations.

that sucks

I’m just staggered that a “respectable member of the community” can have these views.
Presumably if his mother was slowing me down in the supermarket aisle, I could just go “buzzing past her” because if I do knock her over she’s unlikely to die, just break her hip – by his logic that is OK?

Does he do that with horses too or does he slow down, wait for a safe moment and pass wide and slow? I’m simply astonished that a person can’t correlate the two. They’d slow right down for a horse. They’d sit behind a slow moving tractor. But with a bike, they just have to blast past, immediately. 😯

The problem is (in the New Forest and other well-publicised areas like at the Etape Caledonia) that it IS the “respected members of the community” that stir up this hatred. Always some self-appointed NIMBY busybody – the editor of the local parish magazine or a church elder or similar.

People seem to be fine with cyclists, as long as they hug the curb so they can squeeze their car through the remaining gap without ever getting held up.

As soon as they have to wait for a second, the cyclists seem to get labelled “arrogant” or “thinking they own the road”. In many peoples eyes, there is no other possible reason for cyclists holding people up. This feeling seems to increase 10x should the cyclists be two abreast.

I live in the forest and have been riding there (on and off-road) for 30 years. My regular road route is near identical to the Wiggle route.

Most of the roads are pretty quiet, even on summer sundays. In all that time, I can’t think of any particularly ‘nasty’ incidents, just the odd person a bit too close or mis-judged pull-out which can happen anywhere.

If it wasn’t for all the press, i’d be oblivious to the issue. And that, really, is the crux of it. One of the senior reporters at the Echo (Julian somebody-or-other) is very anti cycling, so they are very keen to blow any incident out of proportion. Chuck in a few vitriolic locals, and it becomes self propogating.

Also, any cycling topics get loads of visits to their website and loads of comments under the article.

hug the curb

– problem is, buzzing promotes defensive riding and thus being further out in the road so you aren’t pushed into a drain or pothole. Making the whole thing worse.

I do have some sympathy, the forest does have traffic problems in summer, but I don’t think it is all down to cyclists

And as I said above I was oblivious to it all until this week. But thinking back over the last 12 months there have been a handful of times when people have got very very close for no reason

For the vast majority of my 4000 miles round the forest I have encountered very few other cyclists, cars or wildlife. Some rides other than the section out of southampton to hythe I can actually see no cars or people at all….

I think you are right, it is getting blown out of proportion by a few people. I’m probably not helping but starting yet another thread on it!

I have a good relationship with the guy and need to maintain working relations

How much do you need that? I think I’d find it hard to maintain good relations of any sort with somebody who could cheerfully suggest he was quite happy to injure somebody.

I do have some sympathy, the forest does have traffic problems in summer, but I don’t think it is all any of it is down to cyclists

…admittedly I don’t live there, but it would surprise me if on all but a couple of days when the sportives are on cyclists make any difference at all to the traffic problems. The anti-cyclists seem all to happy to ignore all the congestion caused by other people driving cars when they have their rants.

okay maybe 4k was an exageration(!) I was going off the conversation.

Wasn’t having a dig at you, but 4-6000 per day is the number that I’ve seen thrown around and that is so far from the truth that whenever i see it I feel it needs correcting. If we are going to have a sensible debate about the shared use of roads then we should at least try and get the verifiable details correct within reasonable margins.

Also I realised that I hadn’t really answered the original question.

On leisure rides (Sunday morning, road bike, 3-4 hours) I don’t tend to witness very much antagonistic driving at all. This may be in part because there are fewer drivers about on a Sunday morning, or because we tend to plan our rides to use quieter lanes wherever possible or because whilst we do often ride two abreast when there is an obvious bottleneck we are quite quick to slip into single file. Our largest group tends to be around 4-5 so is easy to control.

I used to witness a lot worse driving whilst commuting into London (mostly through the suburbs) but then the number of drivers on the road is much higher and people are generally wound a little tighter due to the weight of traffic/lack of progress.

The only other sportive/charity ride that I’ve done is the London – Oxford. Although the maximum allowable for that event is 10,000 I imagine that the actual number is significantly lower than that and probably closer to 1,000-2,000. I’ve done that ride a few times now and i don’t think I’ve ever seen a group bigger than about 6 riders together. It’s a similar staggered start to the New Forest event and the first quarter of the ride will be on significantly busier roads than the New Forest sportive.

It does seem to be a minor local issue being blown out of all proportion.

As you get anywhere bad overtakes and stupid driving. I can’t say I could distinguish any of those from being “buzzed” though. That’s a national issue not a local one specificity ime.

I think the attitude in the New Forest with a specific minority is worse than in other places, not just to cyclist either but to others and that seems to me to come from the verderers\commoners who imo see it as theirs and theirs alone and seem to endlessly make up paper thin reasons to see everybody banned and the forest closed. If it wasn’t done here 200 years ago then it shouldn’t be done now, unless we’re talking about cars that is, even though they kill 60+ animals a year and cause genuine traffic chaos all summer they’re fine.

IMO I don’t think there are significantly more cyclist around though in general or more sportives\charity rides etc than any other beauty spot in the UK.

The village I live in is a bit of gateway to the north we see dozens of roadies & MTBers every day heading out and back all year, we’ve been on several sportive routes too, as well as lots of local horse riders about all the time. We’ve lived there a year and half and haven’t seen or heard of a single incident.

They do themselves a their cause a dis-service with the paper thin arguments and made up “facts”. What they should do imo is work with the Sportives not against them to minimise any real or perceived impacts of these events and to put some perspective to it with regards the NF Show, County show, Beaulieu auto jumbles etc and the impact they have.

The Wiggle events appear to have tried to do whatever they could. You can’t reason with a minority group of militant bigots though

In many peoples eyes, there is no other possible reason for cyclists holding people up. This feeling seems to increase 10x should the cyclists be two abreast.

Sad to say I had this exact conversation with my own mother whilst she was a passenger in my car at the weekend. Driving along back country roads (fairly hilly and winding) and I see ahead there are two cyclists out for a Sunday pootle, riding two abreast.

Road is far too winding to see far enough past them for a safe overtake so I casually slow down and wait for my opportunity.

Within literally seconds my Mum starts frothing:

“Take them”

“I can’t see if it is clear”

“They shouldn’t be riding two abreast. They are making it harder to overtake.”

“But if they were in single file I’d have to make a much longer overtake. It’s easier for me if they stay together.”

“Yeah but you wouldn’t have to pull out as far if they were single file”

“Well.. I WOULD because you are supposed to give them as much room as a car”

“Says who?”

“The Highway Code”

“Well then! What does the Highway Code say about riding two abreast? It’s not allowed is it?”

“It says they are not allowed to ride MORE than two abreast and should CONSIDER riding single file on narrow, bendy or busy roads.”

“See?”

“But the Highway Code advice for cyclists is generally rubbish. Until recently it banned flashing lights and recommended that cyclists turning right should go around the outside of the roundabout.”

“That’s just stupid”

“I know!”

*passes cyclists wide and gets a wave of thanks*

Pleasingly though she later repeated my argument almost verbatim to my father-in-law when he was chuntering on about the same cyclists 😀

Not sure I would stop and challenge anyone though as I can’t imagine it would be a constructive debate

You’re right. I certainly wouldn’t recommend getting into any roadside discussion or debates, as these things usually don’t help. Instead, ride with a go-pro on and use the video as evidence.

Pleasingly though she later repeated my argument almost verbatim to my father-in-law when he was chuntering on about the same cyclists

If only it was that easy to convert them all! 🙂

If only it was that easy to convert them all!

Yep 😀

The thing is: she knows that I ride on those exact same roads. Me, her only son. And she was still advocating a dangerous overtake to avoid being “held up” for all of about 20 seconds. 😯

Boxhill resident here and there is a group of people that are anti-cyclist although they just moan about it and don’t actually take action. Your going to get them anywhere and they may not necessarily hate bikers. it could be fishermen, Church gosers on a Sunday parking everywhere and so on.

It’s always been busy with bike up here but since the Olympics it has gone crazy. The majority of riders are courteous etc and yes there is still an impact on traffic but everyone just gets on with it. As the weather gets better the number of cyclists goes up as does the number of Tourists/Day visitors so more tension involving more people but again, most of the time everyone just gets on. However, there are cyclists that ride round here and regularly that are complete and utter C Units. Lots of fist waving, shouting etc when you pass or are waiting to pass.

Facts are – It isn’t cars and bikes that dont mix, it’s arseholes and normal respectful people that don’t mix, regardless on which side of the fence they fall.

It’s horses for courses… oh hang on… don’t get me started on the horse lovers in the area 🙄

Just done a bit of looking and some shit sums for my future reference:

(NFDC website)
Approx 14.5 million visits to NF (13.5M day visits, 1M at least overnight)
Tourism creates over 7,980 jobs in the forest and generates nearly £400 million

(NF visitor survey 2005)
On questioning whilst in the forest:
As in previous surveys, the majority of visitor groups (85%) had travelled to the New Forest in their own private vehicles. Despite living within the New Forest, 88% of local day visitor groups used a car or other private motor vehicle to travel to the site where they were interviewed.
Those 14.5M visits equate to approx 40,000 every day (assuming all months same and weekdays and weekends equal – clearly untrue, so summer weekends will have far higher numbers)
Be generous and assume that 34,400 who came by car (86%) all came four to a car:
That’s 8,600 leisure visits from cars every day on average (nowhere near the summer weekend figure, of course).

Aspects spoiling the visit (NF visitor survey 2005)
Traffic congestion (11% of households surveyed), litter (8%), overcrowding (7%) and bad weather (5%) were most frequently mentioned. People driving too fast endangering the animals (3%), dog mess (3%) and lack of car parking (2%) were also issues of concern.

Anybody see the words “cyclists holding up traffic” in here ? (can’t find the full document online; it could be listed as a minor frequency response)

Despite being a lovely area with some very decent riding, I’ve avoided Boxhill and Surrey generally since the Olympics course was announced purely because i thought one less cyclist in the area would be no bad thing.

I tend to head out towards the Chilterns instead which hasn’t really got the numbers of cyclist to cause any real build up of resentment from other road users. Occasionally see a club run out but mostly riders are in groups of 2’s and 4’s.

Boxhill resident here and there is a group of people that are anti-cyclist

If I was “anti-cyclist” and I was thinking about where to buy a house….

cyclists = second class citizens …

folk at my work that dont know me ask “how longs your ban” …..

I have started wearing a roadhawk on commutes and some rides – only turn it on for certain roads due to the battery life so sods law ill get hit on one of the less busy roads but i know the roads where its most likely to happen.

i was hit in january and the driver immediately went on the defensive of “you were speeding” ……. backed down a fecked off when i said i have a GPS trace that will show i wasnt.

This flyer got handed out after the nimbys started complaining about cyclists on Boxhill riding two abreast…

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/530140/surrey-police-go-after-inconsiderate-cyclists.html

Hmmm.. “careless or inconsiderate driving” has a maximum sentence of £5000 fine + 9 points + disqualification.

And according to the CPS:

Some examples of careless driving are:

• overtaking on the inside;
• driving too close to another vehicle;
• driving through a red light by mistake;
• turning into the path of another vehicle;
• the driver being avoidably distracted by tuning the radio, lighting a cigarette etc.

Examples of inconsiderate driving include:

• flashing lights to force other drivers to give way;
• misusing lanes to gain advantage over other drivers;
• unnecessarily staying in an overtaking lane;
• unnecessarily slow driving or braking;
• dazzling other drivers with un-dipped headlights.

Right. I wonder how often that is enforced then…?