Abuse and agriculture

General cycling advice ( NOT technical ! )
Bonefishblues
Posts: 11010
Joined: 7 Jul 2014, 9:45pm
Location: Near Bicester Oxon

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by Bonefishblues »

Walk away, be the bigger person, and don't fall into the trap of stereotyping a community because of the actions of one individual. Oh, and don't think about getting involved in even a limited way with brainless and unpredictable animals (or the cows).
pwa
Posts: 17371
Joined: 2 Oct 2011, 8:55pm

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by pwa »

Just looking at the subject of cattle being herded along a road, when we meet them we should avoid spooking the cattle and stay out of the way. If there is an accompanying vehicle, we should stay behind it.

But in this case the farmer was just an exceptionally grumpy individual, probably with his grumpiness level raised a bit further by hot weather. He is probably grumpy with all sorts of people for all sorts of "reasons", so I'd just regard it as his problem. I live surrounded by farms and none of the farmers I meet are like that. This is just someone who has "angry" as his default setting. It can't be nice living like that.
hamster
Posts: 4131
Joined: 2 Feb 2007, 12:42pm

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by hamster »

I suspect that he was jsut severely stressed by the situation before you had arrived. If you've moved livestock on a road then there's a feeling that you are only 5 seconds away from total chaos at any moment.
Tangled Metal
Posts: 9505
Joined: 13 Feb 2015, 8:32pm

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by Tangled Metal »

Probably isn't helped by cyclists trying to b squeeze past it motorists idling their engines too close behind. Although in this case it was the farmer. Whenever I've seen road based herding of various types of bovine it is done by farm staff on foot or at most one guy on a quad just in case. Personally I'd not like to pass such animals on my bike under any circumstances. I can be very patient around larger livestock.

I really can't see what the result of complaining to anyone will be. A farmer used some fruity words and made a few comments about not liking cyclists. I bet there's loads of motorists who overtake you sharing the view of you. It's just he had opportunity and the personality to tell you. I'd like his mind to be changed on cyclists but I doubt that will happen. It seems to me the op doesn't like what happened and wants to get his own back somehow. Not positive neither. Reminds me of face saving after the fact.
Airsporter1st
Posts: 784
Joined: 8 Oct 2016, 3:14pm

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by Airsporter1st »

As a general rule, farmers and the public don't get on.

Farmers are by nature quite insular and much of their interaction with the public is no doubt negative - trespassers, poachers, sheep scarers etc. etc. I'm not excusing their or this particular chap's behaviour - just presenting a possible explanation.

Personally, in the OP's situation, I,would simply have sat back and enjoyed the countryside until the road was clear. (Trying to engage him in converstaion is akin to trying to talk to the bus driver.) The confrontation need never have occurred.

Once it did the only response would have been to either totally ignore him or tell him to go forth and multiply......In either case, its too late now, so I would chalk it up to experience and not put myself in that position in the future.
Username
Posts: 289
Joined: 21 Dec 2016, 12:46am

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by Username »

fex54.0 wrote:It was a beautiful morning for the bike this morning and at just after 8.30, I was cycling gently along Peckforton Road towards Beeston Village in South Cheshire. I caught up with a black Land Rover Defender, TA11RAE. Some 50m in front of that were 4 small cows and in front of them someone walking along the road. This small convoy was moving at walking pace.

About three years ago I very nearly had a catastrophic experience with cows while cycling (there were many more than 4 - too many to count at the time, all much bigger and more lively) and I am now rather wary of these beasts.

Because of that, I though it would be prudent to ask if it would be safe to pass: it looked like it to me, but twice shy. I pulled alongside the Land Rover, with a view to asking its driver but I was immediately presented with the driver’s head leaning out the window. It was immediately followed by a violet tirade of abuse as follows:

‘You’ll have to effing wait! Can’t you see I’ve got effing heifers out?’

(he did not actually use the term ‘effing’, that is me exercising discretion, with some difficulty)

While I would have been happy to wait, I took exception to this unprovoked attack and asked the ‘farming gentlemen’ what was wrong with him and received little by way of an intelligible reply. I dropped back slightly and the Land Rover pulled across my path, but not dangerously so. It then stopped and the driver alighted, as did his passenger. The driver walked off to the cows and his passenger, a herdsman, I imagine, drove the Land Rover. I asked this man if the FG was always like that. He was a gentleman of few words and said nothing, perhaps wisely. I cycled slowly alongside for a 100 – 200m at which point the Land Rover stopped behind the cows which had also stopped. There was a car that had been blocking the road ahead but it was now manoeuvring out of the way and once there was space I could cycle on and I did. There was a cyclist waiting to go the other way but I regret that I was unable to pay him/her any attention.

As I passed the FG, I said that I hoped that I never had to meet him or his like again. He was then behind me and I heard a coarse bellow of profanity so I stopped and got off the bike and walked back a few metres towards him. I asked what it was that made him confront a complete stranger with an aggressive, rude and obscene tirade of abuse.

His ‘ excuse’ was ‘I hate effing pricks on bikes’.

I could see little point in further conversation.

I will have enjoyed 68 summers once this one ends and I cannot remember ever having been subjected to such disagreeable and threatening abuse, although there was no direct physical aggression. Over the last 15 years or so, I have cycled many thousand of miles over the South Cheshire lanes and have nearly always been treated with the level of respect and courtesy with which I try to treat others and certainly never anything like this.

To me, this **** clearly has severe personality problems and an uncontrolled temper and, in my view, is in need of professional help. Expressions such as his last, rooted as they clearly are in the same bigotry from which racism and other extreme and dangerous views derive can only serve to threaten normal people.

My sympathy and respect for the farming community has taken a serious blow as a result of this incident and, at a time when farming needs all the support it can get, what I experienced today can only serve to diminish it. I do not know how typical this **** is of his type, but I am pessimistic. The trouble with bad apples is that they taint good ones.

I do not like to do this type of thing anonymously and am prepared to give my name and address and to be identified if there is a sensible way to do so.

I ask therefore whether I should take this further? Common sense says no; no crimes were committed as far as I know and it is not clear what steps I could realistically take but I am concerned that other cyclists may meet this **** at a time when he is even more out of control and that the outcome would be much worse. Any advice would be appreciated.

The least I can do is to alert others, try to find out if I am the only person who has suffered in this way and consider if action could be taken if there are others.


I'd have likely lost my temper and booted his car, mirror or something. May well have came a cropper for it but I require people to not abuse me physically or verbally.
fastpedaller
Posts: 3435
Joined: 10 Jul 2014, 1:12pm
Location: Norfolk

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by fastpedaller »

Username wrote:
I'd have likely lost my temper and booted his car, mirror or something. May well have came a cropper for it but I require people to not abuse me physically or verbally.

Crikey - you'd have had a bad time at the school I attended!
Username
Posts: 289
Joined: 21 Dec 2016, 12:46am

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by Username »

fastpedaller wrote:
Username wrote:
I'd have likely lost my temper and booted his car, mirror or something. May well have came a cropper for it but I require people to not abuse me physically or verbally.

Crikey - you'd have had a bad time at the school I attended!


I had a bad time at school anyway. Like really bad. I actually left school even stupider than when I went in. One example of this is when they tried teaching me about planets. I was learned that there is 9 of them, but googling it tells me theres only 8 planets in the solar thingy. :?
User avatar
Pastychomper
Posts: 432
Joined: 14 Nov 2017, 11:14am
Location: Caithness

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by Pastychomper »

I've worked on a few farms and ran a herd of coos for a while, so I feel qualified to say not all farmers are like that. Most of them are extremely pleasant people when you get to know them, though to be fair I've only managed to get to know the ones who are willing to deal with non-farmers.

When I come across stock being moved by road I always hang back and let them get on with it, but I think it was reasonable for the OP to pull forward to ask if it was safe to pass, and it's unfortunate the farmer was (to put it mildly) holding the idiot ball at the time.

I sympathise: Recently while cross-country running I came across a herd of cows and calves that was on the move - at a canter, right across my path. This was in Scotland, so open access, and I knew the area pretty well. I waited at the top of a knoll until they'd gone past, then ran down a safe distance behind them and met a farmer driving up a nearby track.

I don't know if the cows heard me coming from the other side of the knoll and took fright, or heard the farmer coming and ran to the place he normally fed them, but from where he sat it probably looked like I'd been chasing them. He gave me a tirade of threats and accusations (including one or two he might not have made if he'd known I was familiar with cows) and brushed off the part of my explanation I managed to slot in between mouthfuls. It took me at least a week to return to my normal level of neurosis.

Not fun, but not fatal, and I think it best to let it go in both cases.
Everyone's ghast should get a good flabbering now and then.
--Ole Boot
brooksby
Posts: 495
Joined: 21 Aug 2014, 9:02am
Location: Bristol

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by brooksby »

Tangled Metal wrote:The other questions I have relates to the day itself. Did you need to get past them or could you have been patient for a short while? Is there any part of your actions that are similar to cars whose drivers can't wait seconds to get a big enough gap to overtake with sufficient space for you? Is not wanting to pass four probably jittery and difficult heifers rather than waiting a short period of time not part of the same attitude cyclists criticise drivers for? You had the right to pass down the road, so did they. What was the best way for that to happen? What happened before you got there? Have they just encountered a driver who forced his way through. Have they just had a cyclist just ride straight past the heifers causing a fair bit of difficulty for the herding farm staff?


But his story led me to believe that the Farmer had a meltdown before our Narrator had even managed to ask him whether or not he could get past.
fastpedaller
Posts: 3435
Joined: 10 Jul 2014, 1:12pm
Location: Norfolk

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by fastpedaller »

Username wrote:
fastpedaller wrote:
Username wrote:
I'd have likely lost my temper and booted his car, mirror or something. May well have came a cropper for it but I require people to not abuse me physically or verbally.

Crikey - you'd have had a bad time at the school I attended!


I had a bad time at school anyway. Like really bad. I actually left school even stupider than when I went in. One example of this is when they tried teaching me about planets. I was learned that there is 9 of them, but googling it tells me theres only 8 planets in the solar thingy. :?

Is that because they 'downgraded' Pluto to a 'sub-planet' or similar?
fex54.0
Posts: 6
Joined: 30 Jun 2018, 2:40pm

Re: Abuse and agriculture

Post by fex54.0 »

Several days have now passed since my contretemps with the "FG" and the rush of blood to the head has now subsided and the blood returned to my feet.

I am grateful for the wide range of suggestions and advice that has been offered and I can agree that to take matters further would indeed be futile. I can also accept that this buffoon is not typical of all farmers.

I have used this road for years and will continue to so, in the hope that our paths will not cross again. Should any more unfortunate incidents occur, I will be back on here and update this thread.

Thanks all.
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