Is West Oxfordshire cycle-hostile?

Thu 9 Nov 2006, 19:13

I was out cycling near Great Tew this afternoon. Suddenly I noticed that the road in front of me was strewn for as far as the eye could see with hedge clippings, many of them very sharp and pointed. Luckily I had the presence of mind to stop, turn round and walk out of the affected area before my tyres could be punctured. I was not so lucky about a month ago. On that occasion I came round a bend near Glympton to be confronted by a road plastered in hawthorn clippings. Before I could stop one of the thorns had pierced my front tyre. I had to cycle about seven miles with a flat tyre and a wheel that seemed to get progressively squarer as the journey home continued. All very annoying as puncture-mending is fiddly, time-consuming and not always successful.

On neither occasion was there any indication that hedge-cutting was in progress; had there been a warning I could easily have found an alternative route and avoided the problem. This afternoon there seemed to be no-one in attendance at the scene - I imagine the farmhand responsible was having his lunch and if he did intend to sweep up the clippings then he was damned if this was going to happen before he had fed his face. Does anyone know if farmers are allowed to just flail their hedges like this, leave razor-sharp thorns all over the road and then refuse to sweep them up? If I puncture again in the coming weeks who can I report it to? Why doesn't the person responsible for hedge-cutting display some sort of sign (a handwritten cardboard one would be better than nothing) to warn approaching road users?

This may seem like a trivial issue but in my experience nothing is more likely to puncture a cycle tyre than a hawthorn. My tyres are protected with Beltguard (a protective Kevlar strip on the inside of the tyre), which gives reasonable protection against glass cuts, but the humble hawthorn seems to be about the hardest, sharpest substance known to man and can shred a cycle tyre in an instant. Suppose I were to go out and festoon a road with tin tacks which led to an accident in which a motorist died - presumably I could be had up for manslaughter. Why then are farmers allowed to slash cyclists' tyres to their heart's content without being accountable to anyone?

I realise that I have not been seriously injured and neither has the bike been badly damaged but two cycle rides in less than a month have been curtailed or made much more difficult as a result of negligence on the part of West Oxfordshire landowners. To return to the subject of an earlier thread, this is just one more thing that will make it less likely for people to get on their bikes and take exercise. Am I just unlucky (or over-reacting!) or have other cyclists or other road users been inconvenienced in a similar way this autumn?