Council surrender and Velolife lives again

So it came to pass that the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead finally gave up their vindictive two-year campaign and last week withdrew their application for an injunction - and with it the threat of a jail sentence - against the owner of Velolife cycling café.

But it took the sustained joint effort of Britain’s two biggest cycling bodies, 
Cycling UK and British Cycling - who wheeled into action lawyers Leigh Day - before the council surrendered.

Here’s how Cycling UK summarised the case made against Velolife.

Lee Goodwin’s café and workshop in Warren Row, Berkshire, was made the subject of an Enforcement Notice by the council in October 2017, following a complaint from a neighbour. In July this year the Council applied for an injunction against Mr Goodwin alleging breaches of the Enforcement Notice, which could have resulted in imprisonment for him if cyclists met at his premises.
Perhaps we’ll never know what exactly occurred that finally persuaded the council to back down, but clearly Leigh Day played a major part in preventing the case reaching court.

This was a “victory for common sense” said Cycling UK.

The lone resident’s complaint was that his or her right of access to his or her house was blocked by cyclists outside the café. That’s a fair enough complaint to be followed up.

And it was, by the looks of it, for a sign was posted outside the café requesting no one gather there.

But the whole thing started to go mad when the council claimed that Velolife would be in breach of the planning application if organised meetings or rides began or ended there.  And yet they were unable to explain what exactly constituted a meeting or an organised ride!

And then the story descended into farce as they sent in inspectors to check on cyclists arriving and departing!

What was it that had so spooked the council?
Was this a grudge thing? A council bigwig’s brush with a badly behaved person or persons on bikes?
Taking it out on the whole wider cycling community?

Was this the fear of the unknown? Of  something different in their backyard?  
This strange tribe gathering in their big shiny helmets and tights and colourful jerseys and jackets and sparkling machines, walking awkwardly in their cleated shoes. 

And worst thing of all, smiling and laughing, joking, voices raised in greeting, perhaps drowning out the comforting throbbing noise of traffic.

Perhaps the resident and the council saw those big helmets and shiny skinny clothing and thought, Christ, the aliens are back.

For there are some who would have us believe we were visited by others from some far off place in Biblical times, teaching our forefathers  engineering, astronomy, maths and probably Bingo and Morris Dancing as well. For there is no doubt these activities are the product of a much higher intelligence. 
As a former club hill-climb champion I can only appreciate and envy them their anti-gravity propulsion drives.

Whatever, it is certainly true that people are often spooked by change. Take the story a few years ago of the fear generated among residents who began to shake with rage at the proposal to run heavy freight trains along the hitherto barely used railway line at the bottom of their gardens of their big 
houses.

The fact that the railway had been there 100 years before houses were built alongside it seemed to have escaped them. Bit like moving to live on a main road and then complaining about the traffic noise.

Or people who move into a flat opposite a pub and get a cob on when the place erupts with loud rock music on two evenings a week.

Or this one. City people moving to live in the countryside and then moaning about farm smells; moles digging up manicured lawns; deer trampling flower beds.

The railway was there first, so was the pub, so was the farm and so were the animals. Get used to it.

Back in the 19^th century cycles made transport history by becoming the first mechanically propelled machines on the roads, providing individuals – for the first time ever - with the means to travel far and wide. Including to Windsor and Maidenhead, where they might like to find refreshment and horror of horrors, meet with other cyclists!  Get used to it.
The new Millennium has seen a cycling Renaissance. Velolife is a celebration of that.