More police patrols of Bristol to Bath Railway Path after another wave of attacks on cyclists

Its not "anti-social" its bloody criminal!

I mistakenly moved to Bristol 10 years ago believing that it was a good place to be a cyclist, it was promoted as a great cycling city, after 6 months I couldn't take any more and retreated back North. When cycling is your life it is a depressing place to be, especially when you know better.

Muggings and aggression on this bit of cycle path were all to common then and it appears nothing has changed. Sad times.

Gives the 'you won't get me out of my car onto a bike unless you prise it out of my cold dead hands' gang a perfect excuse.  Well done UK, we've even managed to create an environment where some responsible people trying to travel healthily in a sustainable manner have been threatened.

Thankfully I'm rarely on that bit of the path; I wouldn't trust the roads around there as the drivers are pretty 'lawless'.

If it was the choice of this route or the roads, I know which I'd take. 

The problem is as soon as you forcefully defend yourself then you'll be deemed a child beater and no doubt the police will persue you as the easy target rather than the Dick Turpins. 

Violence begets violence except when you're too scared about losing your job to smash these little shits around the face with a chain. 

Seems likely to me that this is a single gang of youths responsible for every one of these incidents - it shouldn't be too hard to identify them.

High-visibility patrols are a waste of time unless the police plan to do them indefinitely. The scrotes just move on while the patrol is there. They should nick them by dressing as normal commuters and riding along the route.

Now that there's very little point in nicking mobiles bikes are a great target for muggings. Often high value, easily moved on, and with segregated paths easy hunting for thieves. Add in the fun element of knocking people off their bikes and I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. I was always cautious of ones with no alternative route (i.e. properly segregated, under or over bridges) and tended to ride on the road, particularly at night. We're really easy targets, and you just know if you cliffed one of the scrotes with D-lock or ran them over escaping you'd end up being Allistoned.

I used to use this path multiple times every week, unfortunately, a couple things put me off and I haven't used it since;

I had a bit of a hairy moment when a group of youths blocked both ends of the path beneath one of the bridges with me trapped in the middle (it was fairly obvious what they were trying to do), fortunately, I did my best Sagan-esque sprint and, combined with some questionable off-path riding managed to get by before they did anything funny.

I've also seen a lot of drug use and quite a few kids on mopeds on the path.

It's no surprise, the path goes through some of the most deprived areas of Bristol. The children who grow up there have no spaces to be children, instead its just roads and alleys. The few, very small, green spaces aren't particularly safe for children