I had another moan at me this morning for not riding on the pavement (a place motorists assume is a cycle path because there's a shared use path further along the same road), this happens once a month or so, but annoyingly this time it was from a colleague who cycles... took some arguing to get across the point that no it really is just a pavement and you shouldn't cycle there! I'm convinced that part of the increase in pavement cycling is because there has been so much use of crappy shared use pavements, both by encouraging cyclists to go onto the footway and by giving drivers the idea that cycling doesn't belong on the road. Quite a lot of my colleagues who cycle use the aforementioned pavement simply because they get so much hassle from drivers when they stay on the road. Which is understandable, but very depressing.
About a year ago I started a thread (don't fancy depressing myself by digging it up!) where I was engaged in a discussion with colleagues advising me to ride on the pavement, the most vocal dissing of me for riding on the road coming from another cycle commuter!
Having said that, this particular individual did apologise afterwards. Also he rides some weird mountain bike that has a single granny chainring, so I'd imagine he can't get any kind of decent speed up anyway!