New Forest sportive organiser accused of vandalism after spray painting arrows on road

gary p wrote:

I think we've officially crossed the threshold from the "information age" into the "age of outrage."

Outrage age; I love it, and will promptly start being outraged by cars, drivers, police, judges, politicians.  Well, when I say start.......

ktache wrote:

I had to look, there is a Cafe Velo in Ringwood!

 

Which  is superb. It’s run by a family of cycling people, for cycling people. However, Ringwood is very much only just bordering the New Forest. It’s within a couple of minutes of the heart of the forest, but not really central forest, like Beaulieu, and Nomansland and Minstead are.

ktache wrote:

I had to look, there is a Cafe Velo in Ringwood!

 

Lovely brekkie and coffee there - and they'll fix your bike. Ringwood is quite the cycling hub with the New Forest and Moors Valley on the doorstep, plus a long-running TT course.

Shout out also to Forge Cycleworks, excellent spannering

ktache wrote:

I had to look, there is a Cafe Velo in Ringwood!

clearing of throats, blowing of noses, anyone?  I also live just outside the New Forest - it's no better or worse in my experience than anywhere else for the level of consideration afforded to drivers towards cyclists.  
The letter-writers complain of litter, the Forest being turned into a "petting zoo" (visitors feeding the commoners' livestock), and there was recently one about alleged off-trail cycling.
It is "different" though in some respects: in one village, a set of pylons strides across the landscape, "lad, your father and his father before him fought long and hard over them pylons" "you lost, then, dad" "lost? We won, lad." Serioulsy, biggest no-brainier the electric board could offer, get rid of the pylons, the people didn't want it. 

the Wiggle sportive hysteria takes different forms each time. Maybe someone did spit or wee up a tree one year, but I doubt any resident was actually "a prisoner in their own home" both days.  an awful lot of the route is outside the New Forest area anyway. Inguess the sign tampering is slightly less murderous than the tin tacks, that we never seem to get to the bottom of.
The CTC Gridiron in a couple of weeks has 1,000 riders, but no signage, seems to pass off OK. Amazing the difference some baggy shorts, a Mercian or Roberts steel frame and a Carradice saddlebag can make?

ktache wrote:

Don, nice to have you back.

I'm sure you speak for many.

don simon fbpe wrote:

Quote:

The Advertiser and Times (link is external) reports that an anonymous local resident was “horrified” to find yellow arrows on New Forest roads following the event on September 14.

Some people have no idea of what being "horrified" is.
Snowflakes.
 

They should count themselves lucky that they didn't wake up to the Red Arrows blocking the road.

srchar wrote:

Imagine how empty your life has to be for some temporary road markings to horrify you. These people should be offered counselling.

They aren't offended by the arrows; they're offended  because they are for cyclists.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

New Forest residents should not be allowed to travel outside their area.  For their own good - on this evidence, if they  caught sight of the world outside they'd likely die of shock.

A well considered theory, which I feel would benefit from being followed up.

HoarseMann wrote:

World champs in the New Forest next year then?

Yay bring it on

maviczap wrote:

It is Gammon Central. I've never ridden there, but visit there quite frequently. I see plenty of cyclists, but matched by plenty of gammon driving Range Rover owners, who don't want to slow down for anyone

Off-topic (mostly) but a chance to point out something that I've only recently had pointed-out to me - that the term gammon was used, in much the same sense, by Charles Dickens.

I give you, Nicolas Nickleby:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/967/967-h/967-h.htm

Quote:

‘My conduct, Pugstyles,’ said Mr. Gregsbury, looking round upon the deputation with gracious magnanimity—‘my conduct has been, and ever will be, regulated by a sincere regard for the true and real interests of this great and happy country. Whether I look at home, or abroad; whether I behold the peaceful industrious communities of our island home: her rivers covered with steamboats, her roads with locomotives, her streets with cabs, her skies with balloons of a power and magnitude hitherto unknown in the history of aeronautics in this or any other nation—I say, whether I look merely at home, or, stretching my eyes farther, contemplate the boundless prospect of conquest and possession—achieved by British perseverance and British valour—which is outspread before me, I clasp my hands, and turning my eyes to the broad expanse above my head, exclaim, “Thank Heaven, I am a Briton!”’

The time had been, when this burst of enthusiasm would have been cheered to the very echo; but now, the deputation received it with chilling coldness. The general impression seemed to be, that as an explanation of Mr. Gregsbury’s political conduct, it did not enter quite enough into detail; and one gentleman in the rear did not scruple to remark aloud, that, for his purpose, it savoured rather too much of a ‘gammon’ tendency.

‘The meaning of that term—gammon,’ said Mr. Gregsbury, ‘is unknown to me. If it means that I grow a little too fervid, or perhaps even hyperbolical, in extolling my native land, I admit the full justice of the remark. I am proud of this free and happy country. My form dilates, my eye glistens, my breast heaves, my heart swells, my bosom burns, when I call to mind her greatness and her glory.’

I'm intrigued to know whether the term has actually quietly been existant ever since, or if someone somewhere read Dickens and decided the time had come to resurrect the usage and it 'went viral'.  Or is there something just intrinsically compelling about the association of gammon and a certain kind of British male, such that the term just got spontaneously reinvented?

Anyway, back to rolling one's eyes at pampered New Forest snowflakes (I wonder if Dickens used that one as well?)

maviczap wrote:

It is Gammon Central. I've never ridden there, but visit there quite frequently. I see plenty of cyclists, but matched by plenty of gammon driving Range Rover owners, who don't want to slow down for anyone

Forest of Dean is the same.  Wankers in 4x4s speeding routinely.  Open any local news website and it is full of Gammons whining about having to recycle, denying climate change and moaning about anything that restricts them from driving everywhere.  Nice places to visit but it must be fuckimg awful living there.