Over the last few months, the incidence of mountain biking on Heather Hills has increased exponentially. As the Parish Council have received numerous complaints from parishioners regarding this activity along with anti-social activity from some of the bikers, which has resulted in at least two crime incidents being reported to the police, and crime incident numbers being issued.

Following our enquiries, it would seem that a lot of this extra activity was generated by one semi-professional biker, who was advertising Heather Hills as a good place to exercise, despite knowing that the area was intended for walkers only.  There are, of course, notices to the entrance of Heather Hills stating that cycling and horse riding are not permitted.  This particular individual has apparently a following of many thousands on his FB page.

The Parish Council took the view that this activity was never going to go away and there would always be cycling at some level, and of course, it is impossible to ‘police’ the area.  On that basis, we decided to engage with the biking community and ask for their support to protect this precious resource that we have in Little Baddow.  With that in mind, we had discussions with a mountain biker who works with the

National Trust in Danbury at ‘Treasure Island’ and asked for his thoughts and views.  One outcome of that meeting was that he has posted on the websites he is engaged with to ask bikers not to use Heather Hills.  We can only wait and see if this has any effect.  There were other suggestions made which we are taking on board.

We can only hope that when Covid 19 restrictions are lifted, mountain bikers will find other forms of

exercise to engage in.  We wait and see, and of course, the Parish Council will continue to monitor the situation.