Sir – I am writing to you to express my extreme disappointment and disgust in your council. I came here as a visitor and this is how you treat me.

When, after our first-time visit, we tried to leave Oxford (around 6.30pm on a scorchingly hot Saturday), I found it difficult do so due to extreme congestion.

In fact, I travelled in circles attempting to escape a morass of vehicles. Since it was my first time here, my concentration was involved in making sure I didn’t crash into a vehicle, cyclist or pedestrian, and negotiating seething traffic and confusing road signs.

I was unaware that I had momentarily driven into a bus lane. I was preoccupied with preserving human life. I did not drive into it deliberately in order to avoid queuing (a habit I despise in other drivers, by the way). I simply wanted to leave the city and drive home. On my return, I was shocked to find a demand for an extortionate sum of money. Your council are no better than highway robbers who pointed flintlocks at the innocent and demanded they stand and deliver. I am disgusted and dismayed at such blatant attempts to squeeze money from the unsuspecting traveller in a manner of which Dick Turpin would have been proud.

Your attitude towards visitors and tourists is appalling. Where is your sense of decency and compassion and notion of fair play? You are a disgrace! I will never darken your doors again.

Good luck with your new roundabouts, obviously long overdue. I hope you put my stolen money to good use — perhaps a statue of a highwayman, with pistols cocked, pointing at the drivers as they whizz round in a state of high anxiety and confusion.

Brian McCusker, York