Oh dear, Mr Lee (Letters, June 19), you will open the floodgates with your letter about the London-to-Brighton cycle ride but it is obviously your intention to strain the sometimes fragile relationship between car users and cyclists.

I'm sorry your journey took so long on Sunday but, surely, if it normally takes 15 minutes by car, you could have walked it in not much more time - or even cycled?

You also go on to propagate the myth that cyclists don't pay a thing you call road tax.

Oh, yes they do. Everyone pays for the roads.

Roads are paid for from your council tax not, as many people mistakenly believe, from vehicle excise duty or car tax.

Car tax money goes straight to the Exchequer and is not ringfenced for spending on roads at all.

In fact, most road upkeep is paid for by the district and regional councils from . . . yes, you've got it, council tax.

So cyclists do pay road tax.

Many cyclists also drive and contribute to the overall system by paying the taxes and duties on their pollution producing, environmentally unfriendly, natural resource sapping, metal boxes on wheels as well.

My family have two such machines. Our access to such a good road infrastructure, with whatever vehicle, is a privilege not a right and the roads do not belong to any one group of people but to us all.

As to the 27,000 cyclists on Sunday, well done one and all for the money raised to support the British Heart Foundation and its fantastic work.

Many of the cyclists had not ridden a bike in years and we should respect the effort it takes to ride the 58 miles from London to Brighton.

Tell you what Mr Lee, come and meet some of us with your bike one Sunday morning and we'll take you on a gentle ride round some of our wonderful county's hidden backroads.

It could be your first ride towards your own participation in next year's London to Brighton.

-Mike Brampton, Goring, Worthing