That’s Nicola Sturgeon’s cunning plan now that Scottish oil is on the way out 
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If only the obstacles on G/SP-015 had the same effect.
I can’t speak for the one in your photo but that’s Myth No. 2 in the article below …
I more or less gave up trying to use the narrow cycle lanes in my (former) village [which simply narrowed the main lanes] because of massive on-street parking. It’s more dangerous for a cyclist to keep having to rejoin the main lane due to obstructions than to stay in the main lane. Improperly-done cycle lanes are just a tick-box exercise for local councils.
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Sounds like The Cloud should be closed to pedestrians if they can’t live with a few cyclists
They keep trying to push them as a cleaner alternative, although I’m not sure if they considered the huge great dirty power station 50 miles down the road which has to power all of the vehicle charging points?
Even if you burnt diesel in a power station you could do it more efficiently than in a car yes. They keep pushing it as cleaner because it is, even before you consider that cars can charge off-peak on the surplus wind power.
I have to say for a bunch of smart people, this thread astounds me. This thread really plays to the stereotype of radio amateurs as grumpy old right wing men. Can I suuggest you all get your climate science from somewhere other than the Daily Hate Mail in future?
This is the trash being repeated all over the 2m band. Is it any wonder that the hobby is dying.
Since it is already closed to cyclists that would make the summit illegal to use for SOTA!
Enough painting with a broad brush, James. Some of us have been trying to alert people to the dangers of AGW since before it became a headline topic, and you would be hard put to it to point out anything in this thread that is denialist. As for right wing, some of the guys in this thread have been left wing all their life. Grumpy? Well I guess we all have the occasional grump - you just did. Brush that chip off your shoulder!
It isn’t Brian - that’s what this thread is about.
James @2E0XJM - rest easy, most of the comments above are laced with irony!
I hadn’t realised that it was with immediate effect.
Tom you are correct, many comments were clearly attempting irony.
Some of them were clearly much worse than that.
Here is something I say directly. I see walkers in the high hills in unsuitable clothes and footwear, endangering the people that have to rescue them. I see them littering, I see their dogs bothering the wildlife. I see them walking across whole tracks without the slightest appreciation that someone might want to pass. I see this outnumbering discourteous bikers about 1000:1. Sounds like we should ban walkers from there hills to let the bikes through.
I’m sure that I speak for all the GOM on this thread and say, having bad-mouthed all cyclists and motorists, we’ld be more than happy to switch to bad-mouthing all hillwalkers too. After all, being grumpy is what gives us pleasure in life.
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Do you have data, or is this just splenetic hyperbole?
Of course you see people in unsuitable clothes or footware, but such people are a small minority. You see ill-controlled dogs - but not many. You see bad-mannered people, but they are a rarity in the fellowship of the hills. As for discourteous bikers, I have never been forced off a track onto a steep bouldery slope by other walkers, only by speeding bikers, but despite the bad taste in the mouth left by such behaviour, I acknowledge that the majority of bikers are courteous and well-behaved.
When I first ventured onto the hills there were no books telling us what was and wasn’t suitable clothing and footwear. Nylon cagoules had not yet been invented, you could get canvas smocks that weren’t waterproof or if you were rich, ventile coats that were. Some people still used nailed boots though most of us took advantage of bendy commando boots from the army and navy stores. That is where our prismatic compasses came from, too. We learned the hard way not to wear blue jeans. And you know what? We survived. Primitive clothing still works, experience accumulates. Getting sniffy about people “in unsuitable clothes and footware” is amusing to the generation that found what was suitable or least unsuitable by trial and error! Oh yes, there weren’t many mountain rescue teams in those days, either! You got yourself in trouble, usually you had to get yourself out of it again - in those days the hills weren’t as crowded as the mall on a Saturday morning!
I don’t know whether you are genuinely intolerant or just trolling, but whatever you define as the spirit of the hills, you ain’t showin’ much of it!
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Typical fell runner clothing 1930s to 1960s (i.e. prior to ordinary folk having discretionary spending)
Well I never liked wearing shorts (gorse bushes are unforgiving!) and never tramped the hills in wellies, but otherwise that was what we looked like in the 1950’s, perhaps with a gaberdine mac in an ex army rucksack!
I find you tend to get the best of everybody / everything on the uplands. Nicer, more polite people than average. Better cared-for, exercised and trained dogs (and children). And yes, even the cyclists are an improvement on those encountered on roads…
There are rotten exceptions in every category (large populations, mathematics of scale etc) of course, and our memories do have an annoying human habit of disproportionately magnifying whatever negative impact they had.
Over the years I’ve had (very occasional) problems with other walkers, cyclists, dogs and runners. But the lovely nice walkers, cyclists, dogs and runners outnumber the rotters by about 1000:1 (no I don’t have data, yes that is splenetic hyperbole).
Haven’t had a problem with an inconsiderate cyclist for a good long time now. My current top annoyances would have to be:
- Dogs on “leads” that are longer than most kite lines. If your dog needs to be on a lead, what exactly is the point of these?
- Fell-runners who stop for a break right beside me in a group of 20-30, and chatter very loudly while I’m trying to concentrate on a VHF contest.
I know we have a lot of enthusiasm for dogs on here (that I do not share), so excuse me while I go and find my tin-hat…
I don’t use them with my dogs but - apart from training young dogs - they allow the dog a degree of freedom without the risk of it running off.
Exactly, Andy! My current dog is a foxhound. This breed likes to hunt, and run and run and run! They have an annual foxhound race in Cumbria, the course is ten miles, the time about half an hour! Much as I would like to give Ellie her full freedom, last time she got loose in wild country it took three hours to get her back!
So the dog owners don’t lose their dog, while simultaneously allowing their dog to run amok frightening people who dislike dogs, sniffing people’s rucksacks for food and running into guylines and dragging antennas down.
(And yes, I have personally experienced all of the above in 2019 alone).*
I find this a considerable distance away from “acceptable”.
*DISCLAIMER - for every one such nuisance dog, there are exactly 1000 delightful well behaved ones, that I grant you.
Tom, as a dog person, I fully understand that not everyone is a dog person. Our (timeshare* ) dog is part Greyhound and part Staffordshire Bull Terrier, a combination that is probably the fast canine killing machine if you are a small furry thing. She’s really friendly with humans and loves to make a fuss of them (hoping for food). For other animals she’s ready to kill… squirrels, hedgehogs, cats, rabbits, sheep etc. We call her “well-hard” because she is.
We keep her on a stretchy lead because a) we can’t trust not to be what her genes tell her and charge off and kill something and b) we don’t want her to force her doggy friendship on people who don’t do dogs. The long lead allows the dog some freedom to run back and forth and do doggy things and it means the owner can wind in the hound when needed.
Important when you can’t command it to ignore it’s genes. Or when you need to stop the dog being friendly.
*timeshare dog: dog bought by son and wife that spends 1/3 of its time with us and 2/3 with my son and his partner. Brilliant because you can have a weekend/week off from dog ownership for other activities without worrying about what to do with the dog. And you can request the dog for longer when you need the contents of the kitchen bin scattering on the floor several times a day.
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