Villagers besieged by the ‘Lycra louts’
Great Budworth has had enough of yobs on two wheels. got on his bike to find out why
The road to Great Budworth winds gently across the Cheshire Plain, passing farms, fields and impossibly pretty red-brick cottages with goldfinches and house martins babbling between the eaves. On the approach, the sandstone spire of the village’s 700-year-old church rises over the landscape.
The picturesque scene is among the finest in England, but one I pedal towards with some trepidation. For not only am I on a racing bike but also dressed in Lycra. If reports last week are to be believed, around these parts that makes me
Great Budworth has become the latest place in England to declare war on “Lycra louts”, the modern-day scourge of weekend cyclists buzzing like drones down country lanes and haring through towns and villages at up to 40mph.
The parish council has written a letter to 10 local cycling clubs, claiming that packs of riders up to 30strong have been tearing through Great Budworth at dangerous speeds, shouting as they pass in language as colourful as their jerseys.
Worse still, some two-wheeled interlopers have been spotted urinating on the cobbled streets and in the village’s historic Upper and Lower Pumphouses – which prior to 1934 were Great Budworth residents’ only source of drinking water. Some in this medieval village of 300-odd souls say they feel under siege.
Since circulating the letter – and publishing it in the local paper,
– the plea for cyclists to behave has, in the words of the parish council chairman, Hilary Brudenell, “gone viral”.
Numerous cyclists have taken to social media to pooh-pooh the concerns of the villagers. There were even online mutterings of a protest ride taking place through Great Budworth this weekend.
My first port of call is Mrs Brudenell’s thick-beamed cottage opposite St Mary and All Saints Church, where a group of residents are stringing up Union flag bunting in advance of a concert belatedly to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday. The village, in the Tatton constituency of former chancellor George Osborne, also recently held a scarecrow festival in honour of Her Majesty.
“I never realised when we sent the letter that it was going to be this exciting,” says Brudenell over a cup of tea. She has lived in the village for 17 years and is at pains to point out that residents are not anticyclist. Great Budworth sits on the 176-mile circular Cheshire cycleway, and riders regularly frequent its church teas on a Sunday and its 18th-century pub, the George and Dragon. She also stresses that while unsettling, they don’t have Tour de France numbers coming through.
“What we don’t like is the gratuitous use of swear words not appropriate in polite society, and them hunting in packs,” she says. “Nobody seems to have a bell or a horn these days. Presumably that interferes with the aerodynamics?” The parish council only decided to go to the press after receiving a lukewarm response from the clubs they sent the letter to. Only two out of 10 responded, and that was to claim that, as their members were not involved, they would not be circulating it among them. “We never thought in our wildest dreams that it would spark so much interest,” Brudenell says. “There is obviously some resonance somewhere.” That there is. Back in 2013, villagers in Surrey launched a petition called “Stop Surrey Being Turned into a Cycle Track”, which received thousands of signatures within days. A survey of 2,321 motorists over the age of 21 published last month found that 73 per cent of drivers felt cyclists should be forced to take a proficiency test to be allowed on the road.
According to British Cycling, the governing body of the sport, more than two million people are now cycling once a week in England, with the number of amateur and professional road races in the thousands.
Like Surrey, Cheshire – which encompasses the so-called “golden triangle” of Wilmslow, Prestbury and Alderley Edge beloved by Premier League footballers and millionaire business folk – attracts the modern-day breed of cyclist known as the Mamil: the Middle Aged Man in Lycra.
These are the portly executives in skin suits and mirrored sunglasses who hare down country lanes on £10,000 carbon racers, often several abreast, with scant regard for anything and anyone in their way.
On my ride into Great Budworth, I chat with a few fellow cyclists who agree that the behaviour of some local riders is raising eyebrows. Doug Harris, a 37-year-old aircraft mechanic from the nearby village of Wincham, has been riding a bike since he was 14.
“It’s increased massively,” he says. “When I first started you would go for an hour and not see any cyclists. Now sometimes you see more than cars. Cyclists, as much as drivers, need to be educated. I’ve been cycling on these narrow lanes with my girlfriend and seen big groups coming the other way all over the road. I think it’s quite dangerous. I understand both sides getting upset and aggressive.”
Another cyclist, 58-year-old Dave Arundale, who is a member of the local group Frodsham Wheelers, insists the problem is not with club riders, who are encouraged to follow long-established rules of etiquette.
“You just try to be respectful,” he says. “Most of the people out on bikes I know are nice. It only takes the odd one to spoil it for everybody else.”
Not all in Great Budworth, though, are opposed to the legions of riders zipping through. Bert Hunt, the 92year-old church sexton, is out planting flowers when I arrive on my bike and he proffers a broad thumbs-up.
He comes from cycling stock, and on his waistcoat keeps a pocket watch taken from a German officer during the Second World War (Hunt served with the Royal Corps of Signals at D-Day) and a gold medal won by his father during a road race for the Salford Wheelers Cycling Club in 1912.
“There are one or two bad ones and I’ve had the odd milk bottle swiped from my step,” he says. “But these cyclists are an asset to the village. It is nice seeing them come through.”
Brenda, his wife of 65 years, however, feels differently. “On Sundays they come here shooting through in their big groups,” she says. “There will be a serious accident one day.”
Hers are sentiments I hear echoed again and again. Herman Lenders, 63, is emphatic: the cyclists are “an utter nuisance” and “ruining our way of life”.
Perhaps the parish council’s shot across the bows will be enough to put an end to Lycra-loutish behaviour. As I pedal back out of the village, it is past two black and gold signs bearing the hopeful message: “Thank you for driving carefully”.
But if the wheeled weekend warriors continue to descend with such reckless abandon, the otherwise-genteel residents of Great Budworth might just feel forced to add some rather more colourful language of their own.