Dogging at Thicket can no longer be tolerated

I am writing in response to Mr Lapidge’s letter in Viewpoint last week. We too have been walking our dogs in both the woods and the field at Maidenhead Thicket, parking in both car parks and our experiences cannot be further from his.

Over the years we have stumbled across naked men (we had our two daughters with us on this occasion!), men openly following each other into and out of secluded woodland, having to step over piles of litter, consisting of used condoms, rubber gloves, human excrement and other such paraphernalia.

On a weekend, it is sometimes almost impossible to park your car, to walk the dog, as the car park is filled with cars, either with one man sitting in it waiting, or extremely fancy empty cars that in no way are parked by dog walkers. We now have a number of ‘work’ vans parking there and have seen men appear from the back of them. Just the other day we parked our car and on our return found a recently used condom behind our car, right where we needed to stand to open the boot and put the dog in. This was NOT there when we parked.

While we have no objection to, as Mr Lavidge puts it, ‘what consenting adults do’, they are certainly NOT under the cover of darkness and NOT in secluded areas.

They are allowed to openly flaunt it in areas that are frequented by families. There are cars with baby seats in, work vans with names on the sides, driving instructors, taxi drivers with no attempts made to hide themselves. The article the previous week, said that the police have made significant improvements in the area. There is a police car parked in the car park on rare occasions which empties the car park until it has gone and they all flood back within the hour.

Some cars are in there every day, or every week. It is not impossible to monitor these cars and watch the activity and let these individuals know that this cannot be tolerated anymore.

Name and address supplied