Last week I had an email from a Woodbridge resident who cycles daily from the Thoroughfare down Cumberland Street.  He tells me:

I have done this on numerous occasions over the past couple of months but last week I was shouted at by an irate elderly lady who said that I was cycling down a one way street the wrong way and that Cumberland Street “is categorically a one way street”.

This has probably happened to  most cyclists using this route at one stage or another. It has certainly happened to me.

Yet these people who shout at Cumberland Street cyclists are  completely and unequivocally wrong.  Cumberland Street, Woodbridge  is – and has always been – a two-way street  for cycles.   The signs at the Cross Corner  entrance forbid entrance, but only to motorised vehicles.

This does not therefore include bicycles, horses and carts, cycle rick-shaws, or any other form of non-motorised vehicle you may care to think of .

In fact – as everyone  in WOodbridge knows once they think of it – Cumberland Street is  only one way for motorised vehicles at the point of Cross Corner. Cars etc can’t cross over from the Thoroughfare, nor turn left as they come up Quay Street.  Everywhere else in Cumberland Street, the vehicles travel freely in both directions.

After  the recent road works at Cross Corner,the street signs  have taken far too long to be replaced but they have now been installed.

But signage alone will not stop people on bicycles getting shouted at. When the  previous signs showing  there was no entry for motorised vehicles were there, it did NOT prevent the occasional mistaken individual laying down the (wrong) law to cyclists.   Until this is firmly in the mind of  everyone in Woodbridge , I suggest the only thing for a cyclist to do is to stop and inform the complainant kindly but firmly of their Hideous Ignorance .

If they need further proof they can be pointed in the direction of this blog.