Now..its not often I feel the need to blog about this, But I ( well myself and my son who rides with me ) are seeing an increasing amount of rudness or rather bad etiquette from the more “casual” walkers on Dartmoor…We have a very good relationship with hikers and horse riders in particular, as we always pull over / cover lights ( if on ) and even take helmets off for the on coming horse.
However, more and more often I am getting the very odd occurrence of that very “specail” walker that see’s people / bikes coming near a gate and often still close it ( which i find is fine ) but after making that eye contact with the oncoming people, they make it a point to ignore the fact that sometime soon someone is going to be catching up and needing to pass.
This Easter Weekend we had this, two walkers had seen us approach the gate, to the point of actually looking at us..so they knew we would be catching up soon, as we got to a distance where we could see them again my son honked the old school hooter ( its loud and sounds like a very big duck! )…but not a reaction at all, as we got closer i used my bell to alert to our being close…still no reaction!, and then finally as we where aboout 12 meters away my son called out ( not shouted ) riders on the right…then the lady of the party made such a display of over reacting and shouting at us “oh my God you scared me so much!” , I did stop brefily and say we did hoot , and dinged a bell…But could tell this was not something that was going to make much impact…
Just as a reminder..Byways and Bridleways are a shared space, my son and myself always make it a point to give way to oncoming traffic such as other bikes / on foot or on horseback, but saddly we are getting way more people like the above, who full well know that someone is behind then, but choose to spread out and fill the track , ignore any warning given and then to over react at the last moment…If that was someone on a horse that well may have scared the horse to throw its rider…End of it is to be respectful please…Its not that hard guys!
