PEOPLE in West Auckland are furious after bikers ripped up the grass on their award-winning green last week.
In the same week that England’s largest village green was given two Northumberland in Bloom awards, a quad bike rider tore large furrows into it by making doughnuts.
Neil Simpson, a parish councillor and member of the village’s in-bloom group, said two people riding a motorbike and a quad bike were seen on the green on Friday, October 30, just after 2pm.
He added that the quad biker did several doughnuts on the green before both vehicles sped off. Cllr Simpson said: “There was a near miss with a car at the roundabout – they took off like idiots.
“We were devastated by the damage. There are a lot of people doing a lot of good and it just takes one or two to destroy it.”
West Auckland-in-Bloom, which was formed about two years ago, has received a lot of praise after transforming the village environment by putting in new flower tubs and planting thousands of bulbs. Most recently the group commissioned a new coal mining tub, complete with a chainsaw carving of a miner, as a centrepiece on the green.