Cyclists using the Bristol & Bath Railway Path were threatened with a knife by a gang of youths on Saturday afternoon.
Police were called to the incident on the popular shared-use path, with one of the riders sustaining a shoulder injury when he was hit with a D-lock by a member of the gang.
A cyclist who arrived on the scene as the incident was unfolding in the Whitehall district of Bristol described what they had seen to the Bristol Post.
"Basically I got onto the path at Whitehall, heading towards town, and within seconds saw a big commotion happening on the far side of the Devon Road bridge.
"I kept cycling towards where I was headed and then saw bikes being thrown around and a bunch of teenage kids in the middle of it.
"About a dozen or so other cyclists stopped seeing that the path ahead was blocked, I continued on and saw the tail end of the incident.
"The [youths] headed quite calmly away from the scene towards the Greenbank/Whitehall turnoff, I'm not sure which exit they took.
“One of them confronted me saying 'what the fuck are you looking at?' and being generally threatening. Another of them said to him 'come on! The cops are coming'. Away they went.
"The cyclists who'd been attacked were obviously in deep shock, one had a painful shoulder injury, another had been hit in the head with the attacker’s D-lock and had a hand injury from where he fell off onto the ground.
"I think there were four cyclists in the group that was attacked, two of whom were on a day-trip cycle from Bath and were heading back that way.
"A local resident had heard the whole thing happening and called the police and ambulance immediately. About a dozen or so other locals were helping where possible too.
"Once I was sure that the injuries weren't overly serious, I headed off in the direction that the attackers left to see if I could find them but to no avail.”
"Incidents like this happen all too often on this section of the bike path, but they're usually in the darker hours. It was quite the surprise to see it happen in broad daylight."
Police confirmed that they had recovered a knife from the scene, but to date no arrests have been made.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.