ROYAL PARKS REVIEW GROUP
PUBLIC CONFERENCE ON RICHMOND & BUSHEY PARKS
YORK HOUSE, TWICKENHAM, 14 MARCH 1996
Green Link/London Cycling Campaign observations and recommendation to Sports Syndicate.
We welcome the advent of the new perimeter cycle track around the park, which will make leisure and family cycling more attractive and less dangerous.
We welcome the future closure of the park's roads to through traffic at the busiest weekends, which will increase the attraction and reduce the danger of sports cycling on the park's metalled roads.
We fully recognise the threat posed to the park's delicate ecology by the proliferation of mountain biking.
However, we believe that the new perimeter cycleway will not provide for the needs of off-road cyclists who, by definition, are seeking to ride on areas of land which are neither roads nor tracks. Unless this demand is catered for, the undesirable proliferation of mountain biking throughout the park will we believe continue.
We therefore recommend that a suitable area be designated for use by off-road cyclists, who seek challenging terrain containing hills. We would suggest that the hilly area adjacent to Petersham Park would be most suitable for this purpose. This area, little used by other park visitors, could become a highly desirable spot for local mountain bikers whose activities would be contained, and soil erosion and other damage limited.
Similar schemes have been successful in other parts of Greater London, for instance the Penshurst Off-Road Circuit in Kent (PORC). This may well be worth visiting by anyone considering the provision of a similar facility within Richmond Park.