New Forest Sportive.

As I have posted before. I was born in the New Forest and my brother still lives there. It is a National Park. I'll write that again It's a NATIONAL PARK.

Residents that think they can buy a weekend or retirement home in the Forest then try to stop visitors using the park are the culprits here.

Most actual real locals (people who work for a living) either themeselves or have family or friends that work in the Forest in some way in tourism. From pubs, cafes, restaurants, shops, camping services and rental services. Now although many of them refer to visitors as Groccles they also know where their bread (or their wives, husband's childrens, and friends) is buttered.

I would be disappointed if readers on Road CC got the impression that most locals were against visitors of any kind.

I'm a big fan of Wiggle but they suffer as do most Sportive organisers from the fact that they are not located in the places where they run sportives. A bit like those Beach Clubs in the Caribbean where the guest's money is mostly repatriated to the USA or the UK and benefits the locals only marginally.

Maybe Wiggle or someone else that knows the business ought to front the sportives as the New Forest Sportive Co Ltd. Buy an office in Brock or New Milton employ mainly locals, get involved with cycle training in schools. That might help get over the one of the sticks that's used to beat Sportive Cyclists in the Forest.

My brother was at a meeting where it was literally said that Wiggle turn up with all their catering set up camp. The riders arrive and are catered for by Wiggle they ride the route arrive back and don't spend a penny in the Forest that isn't with Wiggle.

OK it's not totally true lots of people make a weekend out of it. My brother was there as a cyclist in favour of cycling in the Forest but even he acknowledged that it was true enough to be a fair point.

That's possibly one minor way that the cycling sportive community can hit back in PR terms.

The growing public attitude to Sportives is the very reason that i and a large majority of my fellow club members have stepped away from them this year. Don't get me wrong, the Sportive has it's place within cycling but for me spending £30 for a waymarked route and a parking space is not value for money.

I don't think Wiggle have done themselves (or Sportives in the NF) any favours. They now chuck a large number of cyclists on to the busy A337 straight out of the start gate. There is a small rise that slows the riders down immediately compounding the problem. This is going to gripe motorists on one of the main roads through the forest. Then it happens again on the Sunday, and again in the Autumn!

Instead my club have now started to offer club away days. UK Cycling Events provide the sportive route Garmin links on their website. So anyone can download them. Last weekend we had a lovely ride (apart from the weather) through the New Forest with a small group of ten riders, following the majority of this weekends sportive route. A simple adjustment of the start/ finish location and a couple of road alterations were all that was needed from the 'official' route.

People should not be able to control who uses the roads in this way but, changing the subject slightly:
Sportives are loosely organised attracting loads of people who don't know how to ride in groups and who don't respect other road users. A Sportive is not a race but at the end you are given a time and a time based certificate: proper races, both time trials and road races have to jump though health and safety as well as policing hoops and requirements which Sportives don't seem to have to.
But that's another subject.....

Maybe if Wiggle loudly promoted the fact that many riders will be fitted with cameras, and maybe that Wiggle will be placing non-cycling people with cameras along the route, that would discourage the vigilantes? You'd only need a few high-profile prosecutions of esteemed locals brought low to make the rest pull their necks in and leave people to use the public highway in peace.

Remember folks, these roads ARE NOT THEIRS. They belong to EVERYONE. These councils and boards have zero right to close access to any public road, except for another event.

I think the event organisers have rolled over enough.

Quote:

It isn't just a few vocipherous nimbys in the New Forest, there's clearly a growing concern nationally about the whole sportive situation.

Ok so it's a nimby problem nationwide...the fact of the matter is there is a worrying "obsession" by certain people with "bloody cyclists" and a lot of envy going around it seems.

As for ALL the money going to charity - it's just not feasible for commercially organised sportives, surely you must realise how capitalism works (for all the positives and negatives it brings).

As I (and probably others) have said before, drivers will drive on "closed roads" as it's a red rag to a bull, even to the point of endangering human beings, seen it all before.

Yet again we pander to a small vocal minority to the detriment of the greater good. There is a huge graveyard of good things in this country that have been killed off by this sort of behaviour. Haven't they got something better to do.....perhaps like going for a bike ride

Carry on participating in events that are clearly interpreted as competitive, both by other road users and the "competitors" themselves, and promoted for commercial gain, to the detriment of residents and businesses along the route, and you can be sure that the prospect of tighter legislation creeps ever closer. It isn't just a few vocipherous nimbys in the New Forest, there's clearly a growing concern nationally about the whole sportive situation.

The sensible compromise is clear.

Bigger events, on closed roads, similar to the "RideLondon100", but carefully routed such that no 3rd party is inconvenienced more than once a year, and where ALL the money raised goes to charitable projects in the areas through which each event passes.

I grew up in the New Forest but now live in London... It’s been my ambition for absolutely years to open up a cyclist cafe in Brockenhurst – but this sort of thing just makes me think that even if I were to ever do it, it would be such a hassle that all the potential pleasure of doing something I love would be sucked dry by appalling NIMBYs who are perfectly happy for 40,000 cars to plough through the forest and its animals daily but the first time 1,000 people in lycra show up they start heating up the boiling oil... makes you wonder if they have any interest whatsoever in the economic and environmental future of the area they live in or if literally ever fibre of their beings is devoted to their own lousy self-interest.

They gave them an inch.

That's mighty christian of them!

"The Wiggle"