Guardians of The Stray in Harrogate claim site has been left with "atrocious damage" due to World Champs Fan Zone flooding

It is a right mess, lets be sure of that, but it will be OK if the council and subcontractors do the job they promised which brings me to my point.

I support the SDA here, anybody who deals with the council and subcontractors know that without somebody looking over their shoulders they will just "make do" and not repair it, whilst the SDA are a right royal pain, hopefully the complaints will ensure it is put back fully, the grass will grow, it is the massive ruts and the like that need repairing.

So the SDA uphold an Act that grants "freedom of the Stray to all people for all time"? Where is the exception for cyclists or cycle enthusiasts. NIMBYs the lot of them! 

Madness, who invited all these cyclists to congregate at one point? Such 'organised' events should be banned!

I hope she's holding the Yorkshire rain to account ? 

As has been said - it's grass  - it will recover.  And whats the point of the Stray if not to be used ? 

Don't mess with the stray defence association.

I'm originally from one of those 'right part of town' areas but that is only by chance and immense house price rises in the area. The character of the town has changed a lot imo, when we first moved there it was open to 'normal' people with middle class jobs. I remember if you saw a Porsche it was 'wow'. Now they're ten a penny around the town.

My parents moved there in 1984, into a 4 bedroom detached in a decent area - £51k.

Same houses in 2019 - £600k. Bonkers. Anyone moving into the town now is pretty loaded.

My mother actually moved in 2004 into a bigger house and paid £290k. Now they're about £700k. Insane. They're like poor people in the street because she's still driving a 2007 Peugeot and everyone else is driving a Q5/Range Pig/£60k thing.

I missed the boat on buying a house there,  my mates that did ended up living in areas which were pretty crap like St. Andrews estate and near the dive parts of Bilton. You do have to move quiet a way out for prices to drop through. Knaresborough and Wetherby aren't far off in prices. York is also pretty daft for prices as well even though it's pretty much a district of Newcastle on a weekend.

One wonders whether said chairwoman drives a motorised vehicle.

Pannal is very nice. I doubt it is any less expensive than Harrogate!

My nephew lives ten minutes out of Harrogate, in Pannal. He tells me that most people who live in Harrogate are not locals, they are NIMBYS of the highest order. Locals cannot afford to live in Harrogate. The 'Locals' moan about everything. Usually wealthy in appearance, huge 4x4, double barrelled names, what my nephew calls 'fur coat and no knickers'.

We went to watch the race just out of Skipton. The weather was atrocious. All the riders looked pissed off, but hats off to all those who rode it, let alone completed it. Far from the weather ruining it, in my opinion it made for one of the best races. A true 'Hell of the North'.

Stray Defence Association statements are often hyperbole. They seem to really hate bicycles. The Stray belongs to everyone in Harrogate, and I doubt the SDA represents us.

But. When we had the Tour de France, West Park Stray was used in the same way, but it was left open to everyone.

For the World Champs, it was fenced off about a week before. Then lots of G4S operatives were employed to enforce pernickety rules at the entrances. No cameras, for example. Why? (They may have relented on that after the first day).

It did spoil it a bit, having so much fencing around. It is still fenced off now as they dismantle everything.

West Park Stray is in a right state, because of the weather, people walking on it, and HGVs driving over it. Of course it will recover in time.

If there was anything similar again (which there probably won't be), I'd say don't fence off and privatise The Stray. And bring a minimum of infrastructure, because you can't have all those HGVs driving over the park. And no G4S.

I attended the Worlds on Sunday ,I was stood opposite the fan zone which had been shut ,it did look like there was standing water in quite a few places ,I can imagine it won’t be a nice place after all the media caravans have left site .I come from South Shields which every year sees the finish for the Great North run ,the Leas is turned into a media and finish village ,after it is packed away it takes about 3 months to recover from the turmoil to be honest it’s looking pretty good after only one month of regrow the of grass at the moment .Give it time and it will return to its splender . 

This sounds a lot like some people have just realized they are a much smaller cog than they thought.

'The Stray Defence Association was set up in 1933 to protect the grounds from encroachment and uphold an act that grands "freedom of the Stray to all people for all time"'
Surely this renders the rest of Mrs D'Arcy-Thompson's hyperbole irrelevant? As long as no Monopoly Man esque villainous fat cat tries to make the Stray into private land, the SDA has no cause for complaint.
It's such a crying shame that the current grass coverage isn't as good as it should be, what with the lovely Yorkshire autumn and winter coming up. Just think of all the ruined picnics.

The 'Fun Police'.......every town/city has a group.  If they had their way nothing like the World Cycling Champs would happen, the town would die and then they'd be squeeling that the place was just full of charity shops.  The vocal minority that, quite frankly, get too much 'airtime'; sadly they're usually intelligent, well-funded and more than happy using all their waking (retired) hours opposing things that the majority would enjoy.

They need to get Michael or Emily Eavis to tell them what happens after a load of people walk around in muddy fields for a few days.

Spoiler alert - it recovers.

I'm sure it does look pretty terrible now, and if there are ruts and so on they should be sorted out and the ground returned to how it was, it's only fair.

But it's rained pretty much non stop for a week, a global sporting event has been held in your town, and it's only Tuesday morning.  You can't expect it to look the same five minutes later. 

Give the organisers a few weeks to make good on their promises, let the grass grow back and by April next year if it still looks like a bombsite then I'm sure we'll all be annoyed.

CX organisers get similar every time a park is used. One organiser posted some before, during and after pics to Facebook showing a vast muddy swathe cut through the field and about 2 weeks later, anothe pic where you could barely see the previous damage.

It'll dry out in a few weeks, a bit of grass seed and it'll be back to its previous condition.

To be honest they could do with converting some of it to meadow / grassland rather than just a sterile grass, it's little different to a golf course.

Funny how they don't complain when it gets used for the Harrogate Fair or for temporary parking during shows.

'.. was this simply an unprecedented weather event that no one could have foresaw..?'.

Yes. Next...

It 'was' grass..now it's kyboshed...

They should be thankful that The Feeling gig got cancelled...

They're angry because it was for something to do with cycling.

Surly it's just grass, or am i missing something ?