New Forest NIMBYs melt down (again) as two cycling events planned for same weekend

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Take both events to Yorkshire. They love bikes oop North!

I think you are right. They do have a couple of legitimate grounds to object in my view but they are very minor points and totally undermined when they come up with spurious ones like danger to wildlife.

Councillor Maureen Holding, a vocal critic of sportives and similar rides in the area, said: “Organisers of mass cycling events are treating the Forest as a playground. The time is coming for legislation to sort this out.”

I love that quote. If my history serves me correctly the forest was originally established as a playground for the Normans. Surely cyclists are just carrying on that tradition.

"Councillor Maureen Holding, a vocal critic of sportives and similar rides in the area, said: “Organisers of mass cycling events are treating the Forest as a playground....""

yes that would be the purpose of a national park.

says so here
"Managing recreation in the New Forest National Park is widely recognised as being one of the most important tasks for local organisations.

The most popular activities are walking, cycling, horse riding and camping and the forest is generally well-equipped to cater for these."
New Forest National Park

Now of course if you don't want to live in a national park you can always move. I was born and grew up in the New Forest and my brother still lives there. It's a fantastic place.

I didn't see any objection by the same nimbys when the New Forest was being mooted as a National Park. Well why would there be it comes with significant funding from Natural England. That in turn levers in all kinds of other funding most recently £2.9m from the EU.

The quid pro quo of being a national park, having your area protected from development, and with funding for communities to be sustainable without it, is that it becomes and is intended to become a recreational area for the nation. A national playground if you like.

And Julian Lewis MP isn't even a local. He's Welsh but being a Tory couldn't get elected there so was parachuted in.

So, they want to limit cyclists, but the huge lines of cars every weekend that mow down people and ponies alike are just fine...

"Councillor Maureen Holding, a vocal critic of sportives and similar rides in the area, said: “Organisers of mass cycling events are treating the Forest as a playground. "

As far as im aware the New Forest has allways been a playground since William 1 replanted it to go hunting. ( Royal playground).

After my email exchange with a parish councillor last time, I freely support as many as possible. Why stop at 2? Where's the Road.cc sportive? And shall I phone BHF and see if they can organize a night ride through the forest on the Saturday night after the success of the London - Brighton Night Ride? And what else is there to do on a Friday except have a mass protest by that loony lot in London picketing for safer roads?

For the record, the Gridiron is a really good event that has been running for years, and is generally well received (or at least tolerated) by the NIMBYs.

I've ridden it for the past few years and it's a much friendlier low key event than the mass market Wiggle ones.

Surprised that it is safe to have a Sportive in the New Forest, with all the toys and dummies that have been thrown out the pram by some of the locals.
Having lived near the New Forest for a number of years the biggest threat to the precious ponies is the local's bombing around the place in their cars. When will these idiots learn that they do not own the roads we all do and anyone can use them as the are PUBLIC roads.
There again the horsey community seem to have a bit of an issue near we're I now live. I was considering getting them stickers for their oversized vehicles they don't seem to have the ability to drive "I slow down for horses and expect everyone else too but I don't bother my ar$e for other vulnerable road users"
RANT OVER

You have got to laugh really.

It's a real shame that there's this vociferous and entirely unwarranted opposition to cycling events, as the New Forest really is a decent place to ride. I've used the 100 sportive route as the base of my last couple of rides and it really does take in the best of what the Forest has to offer.

Would hate to see people not take part in the events, and more importantly not then return to the Forest at other times too, just because of the ill-informed views of a very small, but admittedly very vocal minority.

Besides, as was mentioned above, surely it's a good thing that the two events are held on the same weekend as the disruption is presumably less as against holding them on separate weekends?

Alternatively, run the events midweek when most of the so-called locals will actually be up in their London boltholes...

Why don't they round the ponies up in a field? Crazy idea I know.

I know lets move the critical mass peeps down there for the weekend. Preferably the same weekend as the show so that the show organisers can't fleece the visitors for car parking and entrance fees, the trade concessions don't make any profit etc etc. I'm sure that local businesses would suddenly have something to say to the minority that don't like cyclists.

They move the pony draft to coincide with any cycling event that they hear about it just gives them another reason to moan.

I hope the organisers of these's events did it on purpose just to whip them into their frothing mouthed frenzy.

I live the other side of Southampton and have the misfortune to have to ride through the forest once a year on the way to swanage. I hate the car invested hell hole and they sooner they turn it into car park the better (it's what the out of town "locals" want)

The soon we take cycling money else were the better.

.....and relax

Having both events on the same weekend gets them over with in one go and means only one weekend of inconvenience instead of two. Surely that's a good result for them that don't like cyclists?

Sadly it seems that there are some who are intent on whipping up anti-cyclist hatred. I see it here too in Surrey. Clubs have been riding the roads for 100+ years, races have been going on since the 1960s (TTs even earlier) without bother but now there's abuse, spreading tacks, throwing stuff etc.

I'm not sure what the answer is - aside from waiting for all the colonel blimps to expire from the inevitable heart attacks.

"You're holding up the traffic!", bellows the motorist.
"We are the traffic!" replies the cyclist.

The drifts seem to something of a moveable feast, when it suits

Really, this is all ridiculous. 3,000 cyclists across a weekend? Big deal. It's the New Forest Show next weekend, that had (I think) 94,000 visitors last year and most of them drove. I don't hear these people complaining about that.

Still don't get how a round-up of the ponies is affected by hundreds of cyclists whizzing by in an orderly fashion.

I seem to remember a confilct with the round-up last year too. The sceptic in me wonders how wdely the round-up dates are published and whether the clash is deliberate.

Such a shame its going this way.

It's a wonderful area to ride a bike and when I went back in '08, the cafe owners and people out and about were more than willing to say "hello" and pass time.

Whether that's still the case for a long travelling cyclist, I don't know.

Quote:

Councillor Maureen Holding, a vocal critic of sportives and similar rides in the area, said: “Organisers of mass cycling events are treating the Forest as a playground. The time is coming for legislation to sort this out.”

OR: People who happen to live within a national park area want to treat that area as their personal garden, with no outsiders allowed.

/sarcasm_off.

Mind you, after everything that's been going on down there I would have thought that the sportive organisers might have shown a little restraint... Especiallty if there is some sort of scheduled and organised round-up of the wild new forest ponies happening that weekend.