Pity the tufted ducks: Regent’s Park hasn’t been this manic since Donald Trump militarised it in 2018, and his very oedipal Chinooks terrorised the birds. Read about Trump’s father Fred, and you will understand him, and the Chinooks. But Trump left, and the cyclists multiplied.
I don’t live in London, so I don’t see the mission creep. The last time I was in the rose garden in the Inner Circle it was a weekday afternoon in early spring, and it was empty, doing what it is designed for: peace in a howling city. But that was then. Last Sunday morning the Inner Circle had the sound of approaching war again: of cyclists using it not as an oasis, but a velodrome for athletes who aren’t that good. Give me the thighs of my dreams so I can sit on you, is their cry. You share an oasis but dominate a velodrome. Regents Park is two circles. They are going nowhere, and they know it. That’s the point.
This is not about cycling, because there is nothing wrong with cycling. Rather, it is how they cycle: on slender whiny bikes in a pitch hateful to the ear in a costume that says we are better than you – though strong bodies never looked uglier – and much too fast. A woman was killed in the Outer Circle in 2022, and it wasn’t the cyclist’s fault apparently, because there is no speed limit for bikes. He was travelling at 29mph, a speed lap. Riders are encouraged by fitness apps to boast about their speed online: academics say this creates obsessive tendencies. There is a voluntary guideline of 20mph for cyclists – the legal limit for cars in the park – but guidelines are made to be broken.
When I heard this I thought: it was always going to be this way. An elderly woman, defined in reports as ‘a grandmother’, as if she existed only in reference to others, would be killed by a cyclist near a rose garden, and it would be her fault for existing in his space. Nor is it about exercise – they call it recreation, because they are appalling – because there is nothing wrong with exercise either. But they should be on an exercise bike, or a racetrack. They act like they are: a dog walker was hit in the same spot in 2024.
I can understand cycling on the Outer Circle. There’s a good chance you might run over Peter Mandelson
Sunday morning is a time for families and lovers. Don’t whine about the rights of the single. You get a council tax discount, and you get to sleep. My near collision was absolutely my fault: she wouldn’t need expensive lawyers to traduce my corpse. I lingered in the road asking my boy if he wanted sugar in his tea from the café. Out she came, racing ghosts I cannot see, screaming, ‘get out the way!’ in the voice of the American liberal who can take no more infringements on her liberty. She was, coincidentally, dressed as a beetle that wants to fly away but lacks the wingspan. If it were me, I would have slowed down or moved into the empty oncoming lane. But since this is about ownership, not pleasure, she did neither. She rode at me, screaming. She is like the bodyboarders of Sennen Cove – they race into idling paddlers in groups – but at least they stay in the sea.
I can understand cycling on the Outer Circle. It’s a real roadway with eight sets of traffic lights – the cyclists ignore them – and there’s a good chance you might run over Peter Mandelson. You’d probably get off. (See above). But the Inner Circle was designed for the contemplation of the nightingale’s song. It’s outrageous that tradesmen cannot use the park at weekends, if in their vans – tradesmen have children too, and weekends – but these ghouls can. Of course they are rich: they moan about their £4000 bikes being stolen by gangs, and I smile at this, though I shouldn’t.
Their defences are absurd. Cars kill more people than cyclists, they say: well, so does Ebola. So would the Martians if they visited Regent’s Park, as they did in The War of the Worlds, and perhaps they could deal with the cyclists. It’s hardly the point. Ban cyclists from the Inner Circle now, and not just because they call it a “0.65-mile loop” and, as such, are unworthy of it.
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