A parish council in has written to 10 cycling clubs in Cheshire to complain about the behaviour of groups of cyclists passing through their village, claiming they ride too fast and create a danger to local residents, litter, shout and swear and even urinate in public.
The letter was sent by Great Budworth Parish Council to clubs including Weaver Valley and North Cheshire Clarion, both of which insist that their members ride considerately, reports Telegraph.co.uk.
The letter was signed by parish council clerk Caroline Marshall, and read: “We have received a number of complaints from residents within the village regarding the conduct of cyclists riding though the village.
“Frequently cyclists come through Great Budworth at a dangerous speed (often in group formations) that are dangerous to both other road users and pedestrians.
“Whilst we appreciate that riders enjoy travelling through such a picturesque village as ours we would like to ask them to be more considerate of the residents who live there. Repeatedly cyclists are overheard using offensive language and generally shouting as they travel through.
“It has also been reported that cyclists have been seen urinating in the street, and within both our Upper and Lower Pump houses, historical landmarks in the village.
“We consider all of this conduct unacceptable and urge you strongly to remind your members about what should be considered acceptable behaviour.”
Parish council chairman Hilary Brudenell said the letter was intended encourage some riders to be more responsible.
“We are on the Cheshire cycling way and the village is a well-entrenched route for cyclists and in all honesty we have not had complaints before now,” he said.
“This is the first complaint we have sent out and we just hope its acts as a gentle warning to some cyclists to be a little more considerate in future.”
Several villagers quoted, however, were more forthright in their views, with the speed that groups of what they said were up to 30 cyclists were travelling at a common complaint.
One described cyclists as “a total menace” and said she would ban them from the village.
Another claimed: “They come down the high street really fast, shouting and swearing at each other. They litter and throw Lucozade bottles out in the street.”
In a joint statement, North Cheshire Clarion and Weaver Valley CC insisted their members behaved responsibly and that it was a “”small minority” of riders not linked to them that were to blame.
“Simply, the issues raised by the parish council do not refer to any of Weaver Valley Club, or North Cheshire Clarion club members, who ride with respect and to the Highway Code on all of the roads that we find ourselves on.,” they wrote
“We are well-known and respected local clubs which engage with our local communities with mutual respect and understanding.”
The parish council’s letter was sent out following a meeting in June between Mr Brudenell and two follow councillors with Cheshire Police and the Highways Department of Cheshire West and Chester Council.
The meeting addressed issues including speeding motorists and implementing parking restrictions. On the subject of cycling, the parish council’s notes record that the advice it received was:
Support writing to cycling clubs and national bodies to highlight issues. Cyclists are mainly on unofficial ‘rides’ and therefore difficult to regulate. Difficult to take action as not considered to be a significant problem.
45 thoughts on “Council in Cheshire village warns dangerous, sweary and urinating cyclists”
Cyclists fueled by Lucozade,
Cyclists fueled by Lucozade, a likely story.
Probably a case of anecdotal
Probably a case of anecdotal experiences of ‘cyclist behaviour’ being blown-up into a general scattergun ‘cyclists are a nuisance’. If I lived in a village, I know I’d far rather have more cyclists than more motorists passing through…
So we have residents
So we have residents complaining that they speed though silently, while shouting and swearing. And that they are rising at dangerous speeds? The Strava segment for the village shows the KoM a (WVCC rider. Incidentally), only doing 36 kph, in a 50 Kph/30 mph road.
This is hate for cyclists in general. Once the council writes to the AA and RAC asking their members to drive and park legally, then perhaps their complaints could be listened to. But I suspect that the Google street-view scenes of cars parked on pavements are the residents themselves. Showing that they are hypocritical cyclist haters.
“They come down the high
“They come down the high street really fast, shouting and swearing at each other. They litter and throw Lucozade bottles out in the street.”
Hmm.
I know the village, it’s on the slope of a hill and I can imagine cyclists possibly going too fast , but it’s odd because it’s tucked away off an A road and doesn’t actually see that many cyclists. As for the lucozade (in 15 years I’ve never seen a cyclist drink it) and club riders urinating in the pump house (which is on the A road) when there are acres of farmland for a 10 mile radius? Did anyone witness that?
Nah.
That area of Cheshire is pensioner/NIMBY central, I’m willing to bet cyclists are a convenient scapegoat for all sorts of social ills .
The rsidents are no better
The residents are no better themselves
http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/10718365.Brain_damaged_drink_drive_victim_s__miraculous__recovery/?ref=rss
Lamb Henry wrote:
Another horrific car driver report – so clearly all Gt Barworth residents are drunk drivers, backed by fact rather than un-proven assertion! No doubt the Parish Council has written to the British Legion bar.
Lucazade and other “sports
Lucazade and other “sports drinks” like Red Bull are usually just chucked out of car windows. Cyclists drink from proper water bottles and since I don’t have a team car behind me and I’m not in the Tour, I don’t just throw those into the hedges!
Funny when it’s litter from cars like MaccyD wrappers that never elicits angry letters to all the local Macdonald’s telling them to remind their customers to behave properly!
Quote:
And now there’s suddenly loads of complaints? Okay…
Right. But the KOM suggests that even the fastest aren’t anywhere near the speed limit.
Right. What exactly is the problem? You’d rather 30 cars?
Really?! Honestly? So they’re riding through shouting “fuck, shit, fuck, wanker”. Come on…
I have never ever seen a cyclist stop and urinate anywhere other than tucked behind hedges on country roads. I’d suggest that if somebody is really urinating in the street, the problem is completely unrelated to cycling and they have a screw lose.
The only unacceptable conduct is blatant fabrication of lies by residents and then you’re acting upon that without any further thought
Basically they don’t want
Basically they don’t want people in their village.
Although it looks a lovely place so I think I’ll take a spin by.
Obviously not weeing or swearing or lobbing lucozade bottles – cos who does that ??
Now, I don’t want to mention
Now, I don’t want to mention that the Parish Council has a Twitter account.
I dont want to mention that it is @GtBudworthClerk.
Well if NIMBYs want a war,
Well if NIMBYs want a war, how would they like a crowdfunded journo sent down there to see if there’s any instances of child abuse being covered up.
I mean if you are going to
I mean if you are going to put ‘Great’ in front of your village name then you are going to attract people!
Very near to me, I shall make sure to star that there segment and re-route Sunday’s ride, I do hope I need a dump!
And the Daily Fail headline:
And the Daily Fail headline:
“Village issues ban on cycling Lycra louts who speed along their roads”
I wasn’t aware that we could enforce bans on our public highways, I may ban cars from the M6 between junctions 16 and 17…
alansmurphy wrote:
I started reading the comments 🙁 They did not help with my misanthropic tendencies.
I probably cycle through here
I probably cycle through here twice a month and it is nice. It reminds me of the village in Hot Fuzz and is a typical English village (in an Americans mind) I haven’t seen anyone tearing through the village but the houses are directly on the road so maybe they can hear a bit of noise I haven’t seen anything worthy to shout about but it was probably because I was drinking my sparkly lucozade as swearing at my mates. (thats a joke as I have no mates)
I regularly ride through this
I regularly ride through this village, normally on my lonesome or in a small group, and find the accusation that I might do so while simultaneously swearing and urinating quite frankly laughable. A few sportives do go through there though – but that’s a short window on a handful of Sunday mornings per year – as opposed to intimation there’s a regular ongoing parade of two-wheeled obscenity through the place.
As folk have pointed out upthread, the the main road in and out of the village’s western side is on a hill. And I can confirm that, as other folk have pointed upthread, it’s doubtful whether a cyclist going down this hill would exceed the speeds which many cars regularly reach on the same stretch – particularly as the hill terminates in a dangerous blind junction with a main road. However I do think the hill factor provides some insight into what is going on in the minds of this council though. Almost all the way up the hill road on weekend days are parked cars, which effectively reduce the width of the road to a single carriageway. This means that any cyclist (or cyclists, or even another motorist for that matter) will have a high likelihood of having to confront oncoming vehicle traffic in their path. This makes it a potentially dangerous affair for the cyclist riding downhill, if the oncoming driver in their path doesn’t give way. But, for the (inevitably slower) rider coming up the hill, the chances of encountering head- on traffic are even higher, given the longer amount of time they’d spend traversing this stretch. Someone then has to give way and, guess what, it’s invariably the more vulnerable but more manoeuvrable cyclist. They either then do so – moving across to the pavement (no doubt a source for more council irritation) and/or finding themselves in an unforeseen and unintended stand-off with a motorist on (no doubt an occasional source of the alleged ‘swearing’).The motorist, no doubt irritated by the delay to their journey, then carries on their way, while their cyclist tries to get going up the hill again, and forever connecting Great Budworth with a memorable near-miss experience.
It’s likely that the majority of cars parked on this hill, and effectively turning a perfectly safe country road into a one way, stand-off prone zone, belong to local residents. The solution would be to remove this parking hazard by placing double yellow lines along the entire stretch. But why do that when you can scapegoat cyclists instead?
What i go from the article
What i go from the article was quotes from two moaning octogenarians and no actual mention of a ban, which would be unenforceable, and a new desire to ride through their ‘Great’ village to see what all the fuss is about.
I might pee in a Lucozade
I might pee in a Lucozade bottle and ride quickly through the village swearing before chucking the bottle at a local resident.
“The meeting addressed issues
“The meeting addressed issues including speeding motorists and implementing parking restrictions.”
I would bet money that someone mentioned cycling as an alternative to driving into the village. The complaints about cycling are an attempt to distract attention from what is really damaging the village.
In essence, grown men (unfortunately) saying that a big boy did it and ran away, can we still keep our out-sized Tonka toys?
They seem to hate pedestrians
They seem to hate pedestrians too.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2949793,-2.5046886,3a,75y,57.38h,59.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_cK9jj5_WpKC8vqzSuY64g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Might have been a bit too
Might have been a bit too clever for my own with cut & pasting google maps. Suffice to say, I’m glad I’m not having to push a pram up Westage Lane too often.
pockstone wrote:
This is the link: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/%4053.2949793,-2.5046886,3a,75y,57.38h,59.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_cK9jj5_WpKC8vqzSuY64g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 . The “automatic” URL detector got confused by the @ symbol, which you need to encode as %40.
Looking at that photo, no doubt the council will be writing to the AA about their drivers.
Now, if a local cyclist really did want to piss off the village, they could print out some strips of “please don’t block the pavement —park legally” strips and place them under all the wing mirrors. Then the locals can complain to the mail and telegraph about cyclists telling off the drivers for parking illegally
contender wrote:
Thanks Contender….are you sure you trust me to start messing around with the printer!
Damn freedom of movement. It
Damn freedom of movement. It allows Eastern Europeans to come over here and fix our plumbing and pick our strawberries. And it allows cyclists to ride through our villages and get in the way of our massive Range Rovers. I say brick up the lanes, even if it does means going back to a subsistence living, surviving on nothing but locally-grown crops. Even if the parish councillors all run away and they have to put that bloody difficult woman who scares the school kids in charge.
That said, while the Lucozade bottles are clearly bollocks, I can unfortunately believe that some cyclists make a lot of noise. I did the Dunwich Dynamo for the third time last year, after a gap of ten years since the first two, and it made me sad how many riders now seem to give no thought whatsoever to the appropriateness of shouting at the top of their lungs. And that was in the dead of night, right in the middle of villages.
Although the hill parking
Although the hill parking issue I referred to above is round the corner on High Street.
I feel the same about the
I feel the same about the cars racing through my town.
Who can I write to to get them banned?
The correct response, is of
The correct response, is of course to secretly inform the Chinese authorities of another idylic village, to which they should send coachloads of visitors.
This follows almost exactly
This follows almost exactly the same format of complaint that New Forest cyclists were getting. They’re difficult to see (yet they proceed in huge packs)
They’re too quiet to hear coming (yet they shout & swear a lot)
They’re a menace to [insert name of thing that feels menanced] (in spite of their being no single documented collision/injury involving cyclist and [thing]).
They travel too fast (yet they somehow also cause traffic congestion).
You could make a bingo card out of these sort of complaints. Bonus point for mention of not having road tax or insurance!
I find the idea that I might
I find the idea that I might drink Lucozade offensive. To whom may I complain?
This explains why a woman
This explains why a woman drove at me as I was struggling up the hill into Great Budworth last week.
Perhaps who the letters were
Perhaps who the letters were addressed to can attend the next parish meeting and find out who is the cause of this menacing behaviour, asking residents to get some documentary proof that it happens and who has done it. Then the clubs can take some action against the members that are falling below the standard. A mutual agreement and respect could work wonders.
Im pretty sure they’ll never get anything though because it sounds like nonsense to me.
The parish can’t complain there isn’t a two way dialogue which can be constructive that way. We all know it’s a bit Royston Vasey there though.
Sswindells wrote:
It’s a good idea, but I don’t think that the parish council or the good folks of Great Budworth actually want to have a dialogue. Because then they’d have to admit that everything they’re complaining about isn’t that big a deal compared to other stuff, and it will all come down to “Well, Mrs Jones told me that there was this one man, riding a bike, this one time, and …”.
Come on, you all know that we
Come on, you all know that we are thugs and louts, spending thousands on bikes and reeking havoc wherever we ride.
Could set up a Hells cycle chapter haha!
Typical elitist village attitude. The slightest out of the ordinary, complaints start! Sounds like speed guns by the elitist residents will be the order of the day.
Putting aside the fact that
Putting aside the fact that the accusations are clearly a mish-mash of bollocks, and that blaming two local CCs would be clueless, what we are seeing here is a cyclist hating bikelash in the rural fringe areas near towns and cities: day ride range. It’s strong in Surrey, in the New Forest they have control of the park authority, and clearly the Daily Mail are supporters. Every time another village complains, it generates more pressure for “some form of regulation” , be it on single file, numbers of riders, etc. Look at the New Forest “guidelines for cycling events” as an example: numbers, width, effectively number plates for participants.
I don’t know what can be done here except maybe followup articles showing how bollocks this villages claims are. But would they get printed? And then read?
On a brighter note, Bristol and its regions, including the bits of England and Wales across the Severn Bridge, do not appear to have so much hate noisily making their presence known (albeit with some complaints about the Welsh velothon road closures). If anyone is feeling persecuted in Surrey: head west
To be fair, this retweet does
To be fair, this retweet does seem to suggest they recognise motorists are a big problem. https://twitter.com/cheshirepolice/status/750013818441494528
But overall, its the usual myopic anti-cyclist brigade. just ignore them. They’ll pop their clogs in a couple of years.
Actually, I’ve witnessed cyclists relieving themselves in innapropriate spots. One at the entrance to a cemetry, whilst a funeral cortege was going in. Quite what goes through the mind of someone doing that I’ll never now. Go for a try before you leave, find a more hidden spot etc.
I’ve also been accused of riding ‘at least 40mph’ through a village, by someone who then claimed they pulled out because they didn’t see me… My GPS said I was doing 13mph, up a hill. :-/
I like Gt Budworth, it’s nice
I like Gt Budworth, it’s nice to ride through. As others have said though, you’re either climbing or approaching a blind, fast junction, so there’s no way anyone’s clogging it through there.
I am tempted to buy a case of Lucozade (who drinks that on a bike?!), empty all the bottles, place them in a courier-style bag over my shoulder, then ride down there and throw the empties while shouting “Bastard, bollocks, shit, twat, knobface, fuck fuckity fuck!”
As an aside, and for those unfamiliar, Gt Budworth looks really old-school, they use it on TV sets for programmes set in the 50s and so on; all they have to do is remove the cars and hey presto. A side-effect of this is that the landscape wasn’t designed to include all the driveways that you see on a modern estate. Ergo, there can be quite a lot of cars parked on the street, and that will create more issues than this.
notfastenough wrote:
I accidentally rode into a shoot of the TV series ‘Our Zoo’ a couple of years back.
Riding around the corner by the church and almost colliding with a camel is the most surprising thing that’s ever happened to me on a bike.
What’s all this cycling? Gt
What’s all this cycling? Gt Budworth is a local village for local people. There is nothing for you here. This is a community. We don’t bother the outside world, we don’t want it bothering us. We’ll have no trouble here!
Clickbait and you all fell
Clickbait and you all fell for it!
If you stopped for a second to see how bitter, reactionary and angry you all sound, you’d appreciate the irony of your accusations against these villagers.
Comments on this site are like the daily mail sometimes, only with the opposite views!
700c wrote:
Bitter and angry? I think most of the comments on here are relatively dispassionate, or humorous.
I truly think there is [are]
I truly think there is [are] legs in the clubs turning up at the council meetings.
Higher moral ground and all that.
The other stuff…meh
Jacob Brown, 18, said: “They
Jacob Brown, 18, said: “They just go really fast through all the village and don’t slow down. The fact is cyclists do cause problems for us they don’t seem to care what the do and they need to be told to pipe down.
“One nearly crashed into my brother’s car as he was pulling out of the drive and shouted at him.”
newtonuk wrote:
I thought that was some sort of piss take, but it’s a genuine quote from the Daily Telegraph story.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/11/besieged-villagers-say-on-your-bike-to-anti-social-cyclists
I also note from the same article that the village only got piped water in 1934. I am assuming that it must have been a lead pipe and has not been replaced since.
Mungecrundle wrote:
I find that quote truly incredible (and a bit scary).
I wonder if Mr Brown’s brother is aware that if he is coming out onto the road from his driveway then the onus is on him to check that the road is clear, before driving out
(which is something he clearly didn’t do, if a cyclist crashed into him as he came out of his driveway…). And, for that matter, he also needs to check the footpath that he is (presumably) accessing his driveway across is also clear (right of access doesn’t grant priority).
Rode with the Weaver Valley
Rode with the Weaver Valley CC in the the 60’s and 70’s and often rode through Great Budworth on training rides and club runs. No trouble in those days from the anti cycling rabble who are happy to accept ever increasing motor traffic and all the deaths, injuries and damage resulting from this love affair but somehow see cyclists as a threat to middle England.
I later worked as Cycling Officer for Oxfordshire County Council and was astonished by the anti cycling rants expressed at public meetings where the County was proposing pro walking and cycling initiatives.
I guess cyclists remain the last recognisable minority which is still acceptable to publicly attack. Sadly, the media tends to support such views and indeed often initiates them. At the same time we do not see these anti cycling attitudes in the rest of Europe, leading to the question why is it that this is the situation in the UK. Is their some inherent nastiness in some of our fellow citizens?