Rural Yorkshire’s residents subjected to ‘misery’ due to influx of motorbikes, says crime commissioner
Here is another spin on unwelcome “townies” in a rural setting. This is a thoughtful article showing that we need to remember there are two sides to situations like this. We do need to soon start welcoming visitors back to rural settings if we are going to have any tourism jobs left for the longer term. This story tells us:
As residents of the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors national parks and surrounding areas braced themselves for a continuation of what some claim has been record numbers of motorbikes visiting the county in recent weekends, North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan said residents were being subjected to “alarming and unfair behaviour”.
Her comments follow calls from members of a Yorkshire Dales National Park advisory body to launch vehicle-free days to recapture the tranquillity of the strictest lockdown period and chairman of the North York Moors National Park Authority Jim Bailey stating the area was not the place for “noise for the sake of making noise”.
Mr Bailey said while those living in the park area needed to be accommodating as it was unclear how visitors may have been affected by the pandemic, there was “a need to be more tolerant, and that goes both ways”.
Meanwhile, residents and visitors to the national parks have made scores of complaints this week about motorcyclists using machines with noisy illegal exhausts.
Heather Walker, who lives near Grassington, said she had been suffering “ear blasting” noise from motorbikes from 5am on a weekend morning until dark.