Surprising, sure.

My memories of living in the UK is that there's a weird disconnect where "everyone walks" so walkers are treated as in-group and supported in their hobbies of walking, while "only lycra-clad fitness freaks cycle" so they're an out-group and demonised. This also extends to "how dare cyclists not need to pay road tax" when pedestrians also don't and also have essentially the same requirements for road surface quality, and lead to the same resurfacing requirements, as a bike.

Also, the UK romanticises the countryside — not just because it has some nice bits, but as part of its own national identity — and the imagined ideal when I was a kid was some old guy with a flat cap and a walking stick wearing tweed as they walk through it, not a cyclist.

Basically the imagery of 1974 J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar[0] (how did that ever happen?) crossed with Last of the Summer Wine[1].

[0] https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/1974-calendar/aut...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-65715855

Accurate.

This romanticist nonsense also means that adequately lit and drained paths - for walking, cycling and wheeling at all hours - inevitably attract rural NIMBY ire.

"Preserve the character of our rural village with its 5000 SUVs and its manor house built by plantation owners".

Presumably someone's done a Tolkien fanfic where it turns out the hobbits have a bunch of plantations in Numenor or somewhere populated by enslaved Uruks, and the twee-ness is a front for general assholeness and moral hypocrisy?