‘Nightmare' in pretty English village overrun by tourists with resident injured in parking bust-up over Range Rover

Independent

28-04-2025

Tensions between tourists and residents of ' England's prettiest village ' have escalated, after a local claimed his foot was run over during a parking dispute over Easter weekend.
The picturesque village of Bibury in the Cotswolds is home to just 700 people - but attracts up to 20,000 visitors on weekends.
Described by artist William Morris described as the 'most beautiful village in England', up to 50 coaches of tourists descend daily on the destination, famed for its row of 17th-century cottages on Arlington Row.
The Easter bank holiday saw tensions rise once more between tourists and residents, with one villager claiming to have had his foot run over by a Range Rover in a parking dispute.
Resident Mark Honeyball told the Local Democracy Service that the situation in the village had become 'beyond a joke', while warning that emergency services struggled to move through the traffic.
He said he had his foot run over by the vehicle as he tried to stop a tourist from parking illegally - something, he claims, locals have to do regularly.
"I had to call the police on the day and they couldn't get to me as a Range Rover had very nicely run over my foot in a dispute over where they shouldn't be parking and did a quite bit of damage,' he said.
'It's not broken, just badly bruised.'
He added: "He drove on the pavement. I had another one on Monday who I was asking to move off my drive and he just put his car into gear and drove along the pavement at me."
Bibury Parish Council chairman Craig Chapman told The Independent that the village resembled a 'complete and utter nightmare' over the Easter weekend due to queues of visitors.
He said at one point, cars had to back one mile up the road as a coach carrying tourists couldn't come around a corner on the village's small roads.
'It was at its worst on Easter weekend because the weather was good. It was a complete and utter nightmare,' he said.
He was with Mr Honeyball when it was claimed he had his foot run over, trying to stop people from parking illegally on yellow lines.
He said: 'We have to do something about it - we can't let it go on like this.'
Numbers of tourists have increased in recent years thanks to social media influencers promoting the village as a lazy get-away from major cities such as London.
It is particularly popular with Japanese tourists as the place Emperor Hirohito is believed to have stayed in the 1920s.
Village leaders are working on a plan that could see coaches banned in an effort to reduce over-tourism.
The first decision by the working group of representatives from Bibury Parish Council, police and Gloucestershire County Council is a change to the layout of coach parking bays to stop the vehicles parking or waiting in a nearby layby.
The next stage is to consider restricting coaches from the village, with ideas such as reviewing weight restrictions, finding coach parking outside the village and looking at ways to ban coach stopping and parking.