New Forest chiefs’ anti-cycling attitude akin to apartheid advocates, says local club

Yep, it's bikes that are the problem all right 

"Four ponies died after being hit by vehicles on the same road in the space of 11 days, campaigners have said.

In one case a mare, seen standing over her foal's body, was killed two days later near the same spot, according to the New Forest Roads Awareness group.

Spokeswoman Gilly Jones said the ponies were all hit at night on a mile-long stretch of the B3054 near Pilley between 25 August and 4 September.

She urged authorities to install average speed cameras on the road."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-66727911

All cyclists should also remember that the much-needed changes to Ipley Crossroads where two cyclists were killed in the last decade were delayed time and again by the Verderers. They play the "bUt NatUre" card only when it suits them and happily ignore the impact of livestock and the vehicles used in their management.

One of the local action groups is the Game & Wildlife Trust who attempt to hide their true purpose (shooting animals for fun) behind conservation schemes which provide cover in themselves for predator control. For example, they fund a waders conservation scheme which allows them to remove habitat for common raptors and foxes on shooting estates. Of course those raptors and foxes also take the game they've bred so that rich wankers can compensate for their limited virility with shotguns.

Ultimately, the New Forest is a National Park and yet the Verderers seem to think it belongs to them. It's partly a generational thing as the grey old men in charge remember when it wasn't a National Park - there was in fact a huge campaign against it being awarded NP status, because it eroded their ability to rule it like some feudal fiefdom. It's 90 years since the mass trespass on Kinder Scout, perhaps it's time for another one here. It's the only one of the NPs so vehemently anti-cyclist, despite it bringing a huge amount of money into the local economy. There are 5 or 6 thriving local bike shops and bike hire companies, and UKCE are based here too.

Be grateful that other agencies like Forestry England and New Forest District Council are comprised of grown-ups and have some accountability other than to themselves.  There's something of the cabbie, the market trader about commoning - a lot of huffing and puffing about something where you wonder whether it turns a profit. 

The Court's petty obsessions, encroachments from the C21st, range from cycling through campsites, camper vans, placement of ice cream vans, dogs (agree with them on this one) and so on.

The slight good news is that their anti-cycling ramblings get a pretty strong reaction in the comments in the normally low-key Lymington Times & New Milton Advertiser. But I think this attitude links to the driver resentment of the New Forest sportives, the nonsense with the the tacks.

The monthly Court of Verderers minutes usually contain the last animal road death numbers, but no-one seems to bat an eyelid about that - however see the below extract, bottom of the page.

The main road across the Forest is an obvious candidate for average speed cameras, but that seems stuck in the doldrums - it doesn't make sense as drivers are always telling me how lucrative these are.  Of course it's locals: you can't blame visitors for animal deaths in November. I just wonder where all the boshed-in cars end up when it's a hit & run. 

If we must suffer the Court of Verderers to exist at all, let them focus solely on the core business of managing the livestock on the forest, the countless donkeys that are neither use nor ornament, of which as kil0ran has said they're doing a grand job. 

This story (or the behaviour of those in this story) does seem like a sketch from somewhere between Morecombe and Wise and the Goon Show.

The Verderers assert they have evidence about people on bikes, and CUK assert that there is no differential evidence about people on bikes vs everyone else they can think of as triangulation.

Then up pops Mr Faceplant and asserts that he and his friends are like victims of the Sharpeville Massacre.

We clearly need a Judge-lead enquiry! Or the Ghost of Desmond Tutu speaking via a Ouija board.

Perhaps one ignored need in the New Forest is birds and small mammals. What do the various SSIs actually say?

Up here in North Notts, the main serious cycling problem we get in our local woodlands, such as they are, tends to be teenage or tweenage MTBers digging big holes in woodland footpaths to make jumps (I have only seen that twice), but we still get people wheelie-ing their way down back, and sometime classified, roads. That one will perhaps go in abeyance when one gets awarded a Darwin and it is all over the local papers.

But we also have a very good range of ex-mining railway shale trails and Sherwood Pines plus Clumber Park with their facilities, which is very poplar. Plus the Peak District. 

Has anyone in the New Forest cycling community suggested what they think they actually need?

The Verderers sound like an absolute bunch of cycle-hating old gits, frankly, but the apartheid comparison simply shouldn't be made. If we object to being called "cycle Nazis" for riding legally we should not sink to that level ourselves, totally undermines the perfectly valid points being put forward.

The primary damage to the forest is caused by a massive increase in the amount of Commoners stock (horses, cattle, sheep, pigs etc) freely grazing. 

There were 7,600 farm animals on the forest in 2011 vs 12,000 in 2021, down from a peak of over 15,000 in 2020. Most of that increase is from cattle which trebled over those ten years. Yep, great hulking cows randomly wandering wherever they want, eating what they want, crapping where they want. Even with the current vogue for mahoosive tyres I somehow think 30kgs of ebike isn't going to do as much damage as 750kg of cow.

Source for stats - the Verderer's own traffic fatality stats. Always good to hoist them with their own petard.

https://www.verderers.org.uk/app/uploads/2022/02/ROADACCS-RATIOS.doc

Really, at least as far as the ponies are concerned. The threat is not from cyclists.

"....the Official Verderer, Lord Manners,......"

You literally couldn't make it up.  If ever there was someone nominatively determined to be an ultra-right wing bicycle hater, it's this guy.  Do we have any information about how many of the verderers ride a bike, and how many ride a horse?

It's funny, but we don't seem to have these problems in the Forest of Dean, the only difference being that we don't have verderers.  Hmmmm.

So, the reaction to people abusing a limited resource, is to restrict that resource even further - that's reasonable...

Hmm, whatever the merits of their grievance, they'll be on a sticky wicket invoking apartheid.