Innerleithen and District County Council is working with police to cut down on anti-social behaviour by mountain bikers,
BBC News reports.
Innerleithen was included in the British EWS rounds in 2014 and 2015 and is a popular destination for British mountain bikers. Tens of thousands of riders visit the destination each year but local residents have recently complained about a small minority of "muddy bikers stripping off in residential streets," using "foul language in response to reasonable representations" and using public land as a toilet.
Jackie Couchman, community councillor, told
Peeblesshire News, "The residents' primary concern is parking directly outside their houses and when there are events on in the town, they hardly dare move their cars because they won’t be able to park anywhere near their houses. PC Burniside said that if anyone sees this or any other anti-social behaviour, it should be reported. It’s only if the police have a record of these offences do they then have a feel for how significant the problems are.
She added, “There was talk about producing a leaflet basically welcoming people to the town and giving a code of conduct. I put something on our facebook page about it, there was an outpouring of people who don’t feel it’s a good idea. We need to tread with caution because there’s a danger that in intending to do good, it completely backfires.”
We've all been there though, sometimes the best trails don't have a car park or toilets and on a muddy day you just have to try and be as discreet as possible hunkered down in your boot. Neil Dalgleish, of events organisation Hill Outside, said that he had not heard of mountain bikers using public land as a toilet before but he believed the complaints were due to a lack of infrastructure for mountain bikers.
He told BBC News, "this issue would suggest there's a real need for better facilities. After all, who would choose to strip to the skin in a car park in January? The bike community will get the word out about this and I'm sure the riders will react well. I believe Innerleithen is a busier, more vibrant and probably a healthier community as a result of mountain biking's development here."
He also said the vast majority of riders respected the community they visited and "responded positively" to any issues or requests for co-operation.
There could be some good news on the way for all though as plans are currently being drawn up for a new bike park and innovation centre at Innerleithen. A public consultation will be held in town later this month with a full business case due to be published on January 24. An action plan has also been drawn up to look at increasing parking and using a small schemes budget to deliver improvements in facilities, hopefully everyone can ride and live in harmony until they come in.
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I couldn't give a shit about the rest of the comments about Scots as they're mostly all accurate
that isn't any where close to my comment. My dad literally turns brown like the colour of someone from Pakistan,
Don't try to justify it.
There are more important issues to get your knickers in a twist over, champion real issues, this calling out everything as this or that ism is just devisive and leads to identity politics, lighten up man.
Any comparison between people referencing the colour of skin is a form of racism whether you choose to accept it or not.
We're only talking about racism here so don't try to bring in anything else to dilute you error. This kind of childish shit can come back and bite you.
My past is right where it belongs, I just used it as an example to help you both learn from a different perspective.
How a few kids tried to describe me was racist... just not towards me.
I'm not trying to change the definition. Thats such a pathetic answer... All I'm doing is adding to it and I guess all those midge bites over the years and affected your ability to see things from different perspectives.
Do yourself a favour and go research some legal definitions and court cases regarding racism
But in this day and age if you say that to the wrong person you will end up with a record. Go into London, Bolton, Manchester (etc) and try it. In fact, be brave and make yourself a sandwich board with "last time I got a tan I looked like a Pakistani".
PS. You're more petty than you call me if you pay any attention to the dislikes
Sometimes you just don't have to look.
They complain they can't park outside their houses because someone else has parked there. On a public road. Having paid their road tax.
If you want a guaranteed parking spot you have to buy one. I'm pretty sure no one would park on your drive or in your garage.
Seems to me to be a convenient ploy to force people into paid car parks, thereby increasing revenue for the local town.
A part of human population has always been and will be - a*sholes. Some
of them are mountain bikers. However this is not always the case, some people just don’t think about what they are doing, and articles like this lead to slow change. Only a*sholes will not change despite the cues from surrounding community. I can also assume that this has to do with large events when people park EVERYWHERE, and well, when there’s Iron Maiden concert or hippie festival, much worse things happen...
Of course I'm not condoning peeing in someone's front garden but the exact place has not been specified. When I think of peeing in the wild, it's over a wall in a field or in the woods on a tree or whatever.
It’s a bit sad to see that the MTB community sees a complaint from the public and the response is basically to f*ck off and that they are old, have nothing better to do or are lazy / rich for simply expecting their way of life not to be tested by visitors to their home town.
Hopefully there is an adult in the room if the community does reach out to the MTBers of the area and they come to a compromise which suits both sides.
Last time I looked (3 minutes ago) it was called vehicle tax, not pollution levy.
If it's a pollution levy then explain to me why older cars (ie the most polluting) are tax exempt?
The point still stands anyway - unless it’s private land, a taxed car can legally park on any street. It’s not the resident’s private just because it’s outside their house.
JP
Park there now get clamped / towed.
I think @Karve is refering to the common motorists misunderstanding that vehicle tax pays for roads and therefore gives them rights over other road users.
But it isn't a big leap towards someone leaving their car somewhere where it causes an obstruction as there is no decent parking, then an ambulance or Fire Engine can't get through. So it is a problem worthy of discussion at local level.
Although I sometimes feel I own the street, in reality I don’t and they’re free to park where they like.
I usually don’t smile at them when they say hello, though. Let THAT be a lesson to them...
Not rude, not arseholes, just living in a bubble of obliviousness.
People get insanely territorial about parking outside of their house, not saying its right but that's the way it is.
Your comment about the business MTB riders bring to the area is also pretty one-sided, I am not entirely sure the average person living on a street that has nothing to do with any business that supplies MTB visitors would care too much or benefit from them being there?
Its all balance and mutual respect at the end of the day.
It annoyed the shit out of me but it wasn't my land. It was a public road. My dad never had that problem because he was parked on his drive. No one ever parked on that without asking.
No wonder you guys need guns.
Sure we are allowed to park on the road outside people's houses and I often do, but if it's somewhere that looks like it happens often enough to be a genuine problem to the residents I will avoid it.
There will be a row of terraced housing with barely enough parking for a single small car outside the house, if these are regularly taken by visitors going biking they could have almost nowhere to park within reasonable walking distance of their home.
Now what if the resident is elderly, has poor mobility or have young children?
The parts of the USA I visited don’t have such issues, you have space, most houses have land and driveways - how can you pretend to understand?
Basically you know how much it pisses you off so you think others should be forced to live that way too.
im sorry that people cant park outside their house, i would love that luxury. but as others have stated, if you want private parking, build a driveway.
It's a trail access issue. Everywhere. Always. Don't just follow the laws, be good neighbors where we ride. That's how we continue to get better trails.
The residents will get pissed off and lobby the council for permit parking on the street (a friend of mine lives on such a street - permit parking due to rail commuters, two per household)
They will also make as much noise as possible about how the MTB lot are just trouble and do what they can to keep things from expanding.
Or people could use common sense, one hilarious thing here is surely if you have a bike with you parking further away isn’t a problem?
How do you not get that?
PS -- its EVERYONES parking spot.. thats what a public parking spot means, dumbass.
Oh jog on. Brits and their fetish for their cars are embarrassing.
A good portion of us have changing towels, or even vans. If the odd silly sausage wants to rock out with his cock out for 10 seconds in the car park, and that causes offence, you need to reevaluate your life.
I find the whole concept of golf offensive (see top pic), but i'm not a dick about it.
Some old codger - "Its not a f*cking public carpark!"
Me - "That's true, but it is a public street and it is perfectly legal to park there."
Money well spent if you ride up there a lot.....
Now if only there was something similar at the other side of the valley
b) using foul language - it's hard to educate uneducated; it's not up to anyone anymore; damage has been done
c) pooping in public - sooooo, yeah... ok that one... obviously.... no.... of course not.... ffs...
In Germany I dare not make a skid in the forest, otherwise i would de-root the entire planet, but I can shoot animals in the face and clobber them with a home made mace. Someone even made a video in which two elderly men were walking in the forest and became terrified at the sight of a small gap jump over a stream. I guess they wanted to polevault over it with their walking sticks, but the dang mountain bikers ruined their fun. Bill Burr said it perfectly, we need to get rid of about 70-80% of the population.
Anyone wishing to strip off on my street is welcome; I can even pay. Trades also considered.
I PERSONALLY love peeing in rivers.
The public infrastructure in inners is virtually zero.......
Community council should get there finger out and place even a basic changing facilities.?
A pet peeve of mine...
There is an uplift service at Innerliethen and Events, when paying for these services it might be good if there was something as simple as a pop up Gazebo in place (wind permitting) for people to get changed in.
How about the FC provide something as simple as a screen or box for people to get changed behind... maybe reinvest some of the money from parking fees on a bigger and better surfaced car parking area at Innerliethen.
Saying all that, being a mountain biker I find myself turning up for Badminton and just getting changed in the hall, I know I shouldn't but we just get accustomed to changing at our cars. But then, when I was young in the late 70's and 80's we swam in the river/sea, got changed at the side of the river or sea. We went running and got changed in the local park and when we were out on our road bikes an needed a pee, we just stopped and went for a pee in the countryside.
I will not to be respectful to self-righteous old codgers who would harrass me, a more useful responsible taxpaying member of the same community, for changing on the side of a B-road.
Wow, you have a job! You think the older generation may have worked before being retired though? You planning on being old someday?
I don’t see why people can’t see that some MTBers behave like dicks and that causes these conplaints etc, backing the little MTB ‘tribe’ is counter productive, if we want to invade a town it’s up to us to fit in with the residents, not the other way round - of course assuming everybody is being reasonable.
Now if they made that leaflet absorbent and attached a doggy bag . And a map of small bushes to squat behind .one problem sorted.
There are lots of me, quietly carrying on with our lives minding our own business, changing sports clothes in car parks, responsibly using the outdoors for [preferred outdoor activity]. We are your schoolteachers, doctors, postmen, butchers when we're not riding bikes.
I think anyone with the gall to stand up in a community council and denigrate us as antisocial hooligans is the one with the bad attitude. In the tweed valley of all places!
"I'll look forward to telling some crusty old community do-gooder to shove their 'code of conduct' leaflets up their arse too."
Shows your just concerned with what your getting, and not with your impact. Hence myopic... If we all took that attitude to our local trail head it would be a disaster for the sport. Look back at the history of trail access in our sport.... nothing good comes from being disrespectful to the local communities we use.
I come from a community where we don't make other peoples' affairs our business. Good fences make good neighbours.
I don't care for the out of touch self-righteous do-gooders that would harass me and pollute Leithen valley with 'code of conduct' leaflets, but I don't publicly object to them or "work with the police" to prevent them doing their thing. I just ignore them unless they harass me.
I think you're siding with the antagonists in this situation, the people objecting to me changing in the car park
You are not the problem but being tribal about all MTB'ers is wrong, there is always a minority who make everybody else look bad, just take into account that some other MTB riders will go to the same place as you, act like dicks and then you will be tarred with the same brush.
Your attitude goes no way to help this, even though you are not involved, you also have a 'so what' attitude about it all, going as far as suggesting 'stuffing leaflets up their arse' - that might lead to you being 'harrassed' in the future, in the same way you tarred all old people with the same brush you will be tarred with the same as the a*shole loudmouth group that pissed all the locals off.
I don't tar all old people with any brush though, I am stereotyping and ridiculing community council attendees who claim to represent the community when they stand up and denigrate us, the lifeblood of the village, talking about "antisocial behaviour" and wasting police time.
Now that I think about it I don't ever see any antisocial foul-mouthed groups parking on the residential streets in Innerleithen and I'm around regularly. Its a fiction.
How should I change my attitude? What more should I do?
What you could do though is not claim that because you dont do it, nobody does and because you dont see it, it isnt happening.
You say you are around regularly, but unless you live there you cant possibly claim to experience the area in the same way as a resident. You probably dont park outside residents houses on a regular basis either.
If they feel they have an issue, right or wrong they have the right to an opinion, its up to the decent majority to show the 'bods' at council that the MTB community is full of decent people and that its the small minority of nobheads that bring it all down - I have seen them at my local trail centre, music blaring from the van, skidding and 'jbbing' all about the carpark and shouting all sorts of shit - They are having a great time together but im not sure 60yo Mavis out walking her border collie agrees.
We have to think of others, if we dont they will complain until something is legally done, like taking away trail access, reducing funding, withdrawing the ability to host events etc,
We all have to live together, if we nobody behaved like a dick we would be fine, the extreme bods and extreme tossers on the other end can get f*cked.
Its probably a small amount of sensitive people complaining about a small amount of over-loud nob-head's, always the minority that spoil things for everyone else.
As somebody stated above - mutual respect. Turn down the tunes, turn down the “bro” tales, turn down the suck. Simple, right?
Last time I checked there was no reasonable toilet anywhere near the trails in Innerleithen
Pretty certain this is about the golfie since there is nothing at all on that side
And the getting changed in public man Jesus Christ get a grip everyone has a penis or a vagina it’s not something you should be disgusted about catching a glimpse of! Better yet if it does bother you then don’t watch the Mtbers getting changed at the side of the road ya pervert.
You don't see the vagina in a naked lady. You would see the vulva if they were shaved :p
Like toad says, there is no toilet in the place. I park sometimes at the Traquair car park but I will never pay, at least not while there are no facilities, not even a bin! Why anyone pays is beyond me.
But yea been biking ~7 years and never payed at inners, I do at Glentress if I ever go there, never at any other forestry site
Would probably choose to shit in the woods rather than a portaloo as well
...Oh shit, a family is parking next to me, gotta cover my junk.
I don't know, I haven't met one to ask, but I sure do
I'd imagine with England & Scotland being populated for as long as they have, the difficulty in finding solitude to shine your shimmy stick is even harder.
www.amazon.com/Winthome-Changing-Towel-Poncho-Robe/dp/B07J5V5GW4
it was a joke but yeah. There are ebikes instead