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[Closed] A funny thing happened to me this week at the top of Box Hill - Cylist Hate

geetee1972 · 2015-11-27T07:59:07Z

So a funny thing happened to this week on the way home from work. Having had a few weeks off the bike my ride home resulted in me seriously bonking about five miles from home. I ended up having to stop at a pub at the top of Box Hill to fuel up on peanuts and coke. As it was about 7.30pm, the early evening regulars were already several pints in. A conversation started up with the locals recalling a funny story of how a guy in the same position once came in and ended up staying the whole night and had to call his wife to come and get him. It was a funny story and the mood seemed relaxed. Then in a heart beat the mood changed. Properly changed. A brief pause and then one of the locals casually launches in with ‘But of course we f—in hate cyclists round here’. Now I am as sensitive to the situation on Box Hill as the next guy but this was early evening, dark, winter and a week day. The delivery was properly hateful; honestly it was like one of those ‘film moments’ where the mood changes instantly to hate and the person on the outside suddenly sees that they really are on the outside. I responded quickly with ‘That’s alright I f—in hate motorists’, which I thought would be taken in the obvious comic spirit intended - of course I drive a car for pete’s sake. From there we spiralled pretty quickly; next came ‘do you think it’s ok to ride two abreast and hold us all up’ and my ‘of course, we have just as much right to the road as you do’ elicited the entirely predictable response of ‘no you don’t you don’t pay road tax’, at which point I figured we’d have some fun. After we’d dealt with the ‘there is no such thing’ point I then went with both barrels with a ‘well I pay the so called ‘road tax’ to and I pay £450 a year - how much do you pay. Oh and for the record, I’m a higher rate tax payer. Are you a higher rate tax payer? No? Then I think you should just say thank you to me for what I pay to fund the roads because I pay a lot more than you do’. At this point the landlord and the main protagonist’s son both stepped in as the main protagonist was getting properly hateful and aggressive (I was just calmly eating my - ahem - nuts and drinking my coke). In fairness to the landlord, he did step in on my side and told them to back off, after all, all I’d done was come in to have a drink and some nuts. I was also dressed head to foot in reflective gear so they could see I was a ‘sensible cyclist’. The protagonist went outside with the landlord and I quietly finished up. I went outside and offered my hand to the chap and said I thought we’d got off on the wrong foot, that I was sympathetic to his issues, just not to how we presented his case and he responded with similar good grace and we genuinely parted as friends (well almost). It was a very interesting experience. I had a genuine experience of what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of hateful prejudice, albeit in a very small and isolated way.

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Last Post by geetee1972 10 years ago

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And in the TDF the Tour de Yorkshire would be classified as 'rolling' at best and probably flat.

Possibly, although look at the total amount of climbing from stage 2 in 2014. Yes, they're all short climbs but there's plenty of them.

http://blog.strava.com/tour-de-france-2014/

I'm biased.

Posted : 28/11/2015 6:25 pm

geetee1972

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Sure but I can do the same ride around the Surrey Hills, over the same distance, and rack up the same total alitude gain.

Posted : 28/11/2015 9:38 pm

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[Closed] A funny thing happened to me this week at the top of Box Hill - Cylist Hate

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