BC? CTC? IMBA? who fights for land access?

Seems to me that mountain bikers really need to get together and start fighting a bit harder for access rights. Do any of the existing groups put up enough of a fight or do we need something new? Are any of them on side with the rushop edge story?

Might be worth getting on board with the British Mountaineering Council. Quite a few climbers also go mountain biking

I guess it doesn’t matter who it is, it just needs two things. Lots of members and a willingness to fight.

IMBA had a very brief stab at it in the UK but appear to have jumped ship. Using BMC doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

IMBA UK seemed to suffer by being wholly reliant on volunteers. I was involved briefly at the start but couldn’t commit the time and this seems to have blighted the organisation. It just didn’t seem possible to turn it into the commercially strong organisation that you see in the US.

There were some really good people involved to, pity.

not quite jumped ship, but never got the critical mass. IMBA are still around but working with CTC rather than going it alone

Now might be the time for a second coming.

If you can get people to spend as much time over access and shared-trail use management as you they’ll spend on here we’ll do well ..

It’s all very fragmented, CTC are one likely focus point but I’m not sure they really know what they’re aiming at these days either. BC covers a lot also, more race/club orgainisation focused perhaps though.

imo what would work well is pulling together the experience from the local access groups that are making progress for efficient sharing of that how-to info, some central help and guidance for those that are prepared to put the time in locally. A nationally recognised central point may give it all some weight. I think part of the issue is that riders may not fuss as much over an issue 200 miles away as they will when it’s on their doorstep, yet the process and negotiations may well follow similar steps.

BMC is a good call, they’re a very effective group. I imagine if MTB was focused on relatively small/few areas in the way climbing is we’d need to be just as organised to maintain access.

Some of us from then are still plugging away behind the scenes

Local access forums, things like that.

CTC seem to have taken even more of a back seat, I believe Colin P. In his semi retirement is no longer on contract, and Ian Warby was made redundant, so Im at a bit of a loss to what their current off-road offer is. I can only hope they have a plan to revive that, though unless riders demand it, and start beating CTCs door down on the issue, they’re not going to.

The BMC is organised in to local areas such as The Lakes; Peak District; Yorkshire; etc. (they don’t cover Scotland) so the issues discussed are likely to be reasonably local. Meetings are quarterly and, like all such meetings, aren’t exactly rivetting 8) but it’s that sort of humdrum stuff that needs to be done continually to make sure things don’t get out of hand.

Most of the local reps know their equivalents in other user groups so can chat with them and agree a cohesive argument to present to “the powers that be”. It doesn’t always work of course, some times one group wants one thing while a second group doesn’t but that’s life.

imo what would work well is pulling together the experience from the local access groups that are making progress for efficient sharing of that how-to info, some central help and guidance for those that are prepared to put the time in locally. A nationally recognised central point may give it all some weight. I think part of the issue is that riders may not fuss as much over an issue 200 miles away as they will when it’s on their doorstep, yet the process and negotiations may well follow similar steps.

THIS!

I’m right at the very start of setting up a Local User Group where I live and I reached out to Ride Sheffield for advise, they were great, but if would could have an umbrella org that the local groups could be accredited to that might make sense?

Bill, I just read on your local group thread that the CTC were holding how-to sessions on this. Maybe that could be extended to do this – maybe there already is a source of this info. I’m not sure. I asked IMBA a while back relating to some local trail issues but no outcome.

CTC seem to be much more mtb focused in their magazine, but the last couple of years I think road safety has taken over as their main campaign issue. To be fair, no one has died through poor access laws.

Possibly something that CTC are better at locally, but I agree it would be great to get CTC or whoever pushing for more access at a national level.

Mass trespass anyone?

gf joined ramblers about a year ago (* after reading that, [and don’t be unpleasant] I’d suggest you know know exactly what gf does and whom she does it with and how to find out more)

This gets her
– walking colleagues in local area
– local area bi-annual booklet of planned walks
(dates/time/distance/start, speed etc etc) (nearly 1 a day some weeks)
– ability to access any other area group ‘book of walks’ and join in
– she has been on a free walk leading course (and is now leading walks)
– she has been on a free navigation course
– they appear to have a mech for dealing with ‘issues’ they encounter

(imho)like it or not when you think of walkers you think rambler, and I think that until mtb has a single, definitive point of contact/approach I think it is to our detriment

Maybe we should ask the ramblers if we can join forces. After all, mountain biking is the new rambling in terms of the demographic.

(imho)like it or not when you think of walkers you think rambler, and I think that until mtb has a single, definitive point of contact/approach I think it is to our detriment

This goes back through years of “tradition”.
CTC was always about touring and BC was all about road racing (talking dawn of MTBing here, late 80’s / early 90’s) and neither had huge membership.

Then MTBing arrived and suddenly there was this cool, different scene where you didn’t need a racing licence (BC) or sandals and a beard (CTC) so it just evolved. MTBIng was by it’s very nature a bit of a maverick, it didn’t fit any preconceived rules and part of it’s attraction was that it was independent.

SO MTB’ers never felt any sort of need to join any overseeing body and overseeing bodies never felt much need to attract them or to work for them. Catch-22. The scene has evolved massively in 20 years through various cycles of boom/bust (remember the early days of XC with 300 riders in Sport class alone?) while Enduro is the in thing now but “MTBing” is wildly different things to different people.

There’s still this big hole of what people actually want the overseeing body (whoever it might be) to do for them. Campaign for access rights? Fund racing and elite medals? Campaign for more trail centres? More off-road cycle routes? (more a Sustrans style strand probably…)
Do you go with an existing body (BC or CTC most likely since they’re the two biggest) or do you create something new (IMBA) or do you go with lots of local advocacy (Ride Sheffield)?

Meanwhile, The Ramblers Association and The British Mountaineering Council have been around for decades so have the extra clout.

Funnily enough, joining CTC gives you access to most of what the Ramblers apparently offer, except a lot of the courses are eye wateringly expensive.

Safety in Numbers – ride in a big group and ride where you please
or go stealthy ride those same routes on your own and ride fast

that is the way forward
definitely

Safety in Numbers – ride in a big group and ride where you please
or go stealthy ride those same routes on your own and ride fast

The Bogtrotters always went with Option A.
I usually go with Option B.

😉

CTC’s conduct over the London motorbikes-in-bus-lanes trials was the last straw for me, they pursued a policy that was proved to harm cyclist safety, apparently because they see motorbikes as rivals for the commuter market! So, bear that in mind if you’re hoping for them to stick up for you. And BC don’t seem to see it as their job- probably quite reasonably to be fair.

I think the comments about non-cycling organisations make most sense tbh- though there’s obviously contention/rivalry issues. But (non-scottish) land access is not a mountain biking issue, you guys have some specific considerations but generally we should be allied with the walkers and the horsyclists and the greenlaners, instead we spend all our effort arguing with each other…

Crazy-legs that’s a good summation of it I think. And while MTB ranges from exploring byways inbetween sleeping in hedges to pinning the lines you’ve dug in at your local spot, it’ll probably stay that way.

In some ways I think the fact that only a few areas with popular non-TC destinations (Sheffield, prime example) have a well-developed access and PR group says that there’s not that many issues to deal with in most areas, or not enough to maintain interest or focus among those willing to work on it? The rest of us just ride where we like, not pssing people off and not digging jumps in etc and it carries on unnoticed apart from the odd local stickman. But when the issues do crop up it’s often too late or seemingly difficult to get anything mobilised, hence why I thought a shared-info central point could help. I guess more of us should be familiar with our local access groups as a start.

I think one of the key factors about in as success in the States has been the fact that it acts as an umbrella and best practice sharing organisation for much more local advocacy efforts.

That’s what didn’t take really off in the uk, unlike trail building there wasn’t the critical mass to put in place effective training regime for how to deal with PROW, it’s hard to attract people to a task with the cards stacked against you and a timescale that makes continental drift seem hurried.

There was definitely a trend towards involvement only coming around at crisis point/firefighting, generally when a bunch of school kids pissed off everyone by building jumps over the local dog walking Spot or scheduled ancient monument, leading to threats of a blanket ban or prosecutions, when everyone else had been getting along fine for years.

soulrider – Member
Safety in Numbers – ride in a big group and ride where you please
or go stealthy ride those same routes on your own and ride fast

that is the way forward
definitely

Mass trespass worked for the ramblers 😉

Though I suspect they were looked on more favourably as many would be older, respectable looking country folk with contacts within councils and government.

Mass trespass by bunch of loutish swearing mountain bikers (as people see us) is more likely to get negative press. Though perhaps less than roadies who seem to cause the blood to boil of every Daily Mail reader just by being on the road.

I seem to recall most of the Kinder people were working class like from Sheffield and Manchester, so the parallels with modern mountain biking are very apt.

Excellent thread, and excellent posts!
I’m sure there are lots of mountain-bikers with useful knowledge and experience to contribute (but if they have any sense, they’d rather be out on the hills . . .)

The BMC’s actually not a bad call on a pragmatic level. They’ve traditionally been seen predominately as a climbers’ body, but recently they’ve started to recruit hill-walkers as well and have a full-time hill-walking officer financed by Sport England I think.

The attraction of representing mountain bikers as well would be the potential for increased membership as well as the cross-over between mountain bikers and climbers – a lot of folk who do both.

Whether they’d be effective in representing mountain bikers’ interests is another matter. They concede that the Ramblers are more proficient when it comes to access rights, but they’re not without expertise themselves.

Personally I’m sort of happy with the system as it is, because the legal situation and what you can ride on the ground with some basic common sense are different things, but that’s another argument.

There’s no central voice really, but there is good work going on in various places by local groups and individuals to work with landowners, land managers, councils and the like. Though when it gets formal it all gets tied up in legal issues and dealing with complaints from other land users.

Generally I feel the open access policy that Scotland has is the approach to take, but it will be very hard to achieve. I also believe the ideal is to have an automatic risk acceptance in that whatever and wherever you ride is simply at your own risk. If it’s private land, no right of way or no explicit permission, the landowner should not be responsible for accidents on their land by riders on it. A trail centre takes more responsibility however but still should place most the risk acceptance on the rider. It’s mountain biking. It’s not safe by nature.

True, I’ve always been happy with access to what’s there, my concern is what’s happening in the Peak where fun stuff to ride is being physically altered. No one is saying we can’t ride it, they’re just making it so that we don’t want to.

Personally I’m sort of happy with the system as it is, because the legal situation and what you can ride on the ground with some basic common sense are different things, but that’s another argument.

That’s another reason why MTBers don’t feel the need to join any sort of overseeing body. Regardless of The Law about where you can and can’t ride the vast majority of people operate a sort of self-policing common sense policy of riding trails that are suitable for them at that time. I mean, there are BWs not just in the Peak District but all over that I’d never consider riding on a summer weekend or in rubbish weather regardless of “my right” to be there.

Equally, there are FPs that I consider fair game and while that sort of approach is (by and large) tolerated, there’s little point to anyone joining a governing body to campaign for trail access…

The MTBing approach so far has been keep it quiet and sensible and it’ll be fine.
(from http://www.cheekytrails.co.uk/ )

CTC page on off-road access:

CTC Off Road Access Page

I don’t see BC getting involved (you can’t race on PROWs) and IMBA seem to have melted away…

Though CTC have recently lot/got rid of their off road co-ordinator. Maybe we should start pressuring these groups to provide support to the likes of PDMTB/RideSheffield, and fielding their own members in areas where groups like this don’t exist?

Edit: The last news item on that CTC page is dated Feb 2014, and many of them aren’t particularly relevant to PROWs/MTB access

wrong thread.

When agreements are made with land owners, it may get into purpose built trails and then is it “sanitisation” or trailcenterisation (word I made up) and is that good?

Watch the Tea & Biscuits Trailer Here.

There’s a place for trail centers, and love them as much as any other place to ride really. I’m fine too with formalising local trails where there’s a need to manage access in a busy congested area, e.g. to formalise formerly messy link of not that interesting trails anyway like the new part of Summer Lightning on Leith Hill, which is a great effort between those involved in making it and those responsible for the land and the council.

Then again, natural rocky bridleways of the Lakes and Peaks that are part of the landscape are not the kind of thing that should be turned into smooth tarmac like surfaces to make them “suitable” for bikes, walkers, horses etc. The attraction of them to pretty much all those groups is the rocky nature of them. Left alone they are fine, but as soon as you get into discussing access or management of them, land owners or those responsible start looking at legalities and risks and decide sanitization is better for their own liabilities.

If you are in the South Pennines then PMBA http://www.pmba.org.uk/

is good group to join as:

1. membership is cheap and the group needs numbers to show representation
2. it does good things and has an interesting mixture of people including those in LA’s attending
3. you can get active if you want in supporting the actual work

they have a rep on the Lancashire Access Forum and potential to get on more

if you want to deal with access issues and what is going on up in the Peak the LAF is the place to be as it has the (limited) ability to hold the LA to account as it is a statutory body. A good question would be why has the work at Rushup Edge been prioritised against the backlog of other things to do?

If you want to take practical might create a new bridleway type action then you need to be nice to the horsey people. They have at this game a lot longer, have well established groups actively gaining new bridleways and have courses to train people. I plan to join the BHS to get access to their programme http://www.bhs.org.uk/access-and-bridleways should be interesting when they ask about Dobbin 😉

I would also suggest nice approach to join a bridleway group
http://www.bhs.org.uk/access-and-bridleways/affiliated-bridleways-groups-and-rider-access-groups

we have significant mutual interests on access and the more engagement there is the less the stereotypes get rolled out by either side

Not read all of the above, but I was involved in some of the early IMBA-UK stuff. We had a booth at one of the 24hr racers and hardly anyone bothered to enquire who we represented and what we stood for. It was very very dis-heartening though possibly we choose the wrong type of event to attend.
Anyway, I really believe that mountain-biking will never enjoy the same political clout the Ramblers enjoy because (a) mountain bikers are generally self-interested and are not willing to put in the consistant effort required to get things done. In the UK, you are spoilt for access and availabilty of trails, so why bother? In north America, you don’t get to ride until you build your own trails so there’s plenty of incentive to battle for access or get your hands dirty building trails
(B) Until a critical mass of mountain bikers retire and have time on their hands to spend days and days sitting on LAF and suchlike, they’ll always be outflanked by the horsey set and ramblers (who tend to have the spare time and mindset for this sort of thing).
Anyway, I now live in Vancouver where NSMBA are making huge progress for mountain bikers because volunteering time is a way of life over here (well, for a lot of people anyway)

To answer your question – the scottish government.

(a) mountain bikers are generally self-interested and are not willing to put in the consistent effort required to get things done.

This. In spades.

In the UK, you are spoilt for access and availability of trails,

We also have Trail centres. IMBA UK had it stacked against them, because access was already granted, so I don’t think anyone saw a need for them. Add to that the “individualistic” nature that still persists in mountain biking in the UK, belonging to an organisation or club isn’t cool in some peoples eyes.

Of course we could do with an organisation when the sh*t hits the fan. Metaphorically speaking.

Be careful, Big n Daft – the BHS have Castration Clinics 😯

I’ve been involved in trail building and advocacy for over a decade, principally with SingletrAction (as a volunteer builder, point of contact with FC, Chairman (and now Vice Chair), advocate for Ilkely Moor access, speaker at IMBA UK conferences, Bradford LAF rep’)*

I’d suggest people just get involved locally in the groups that exist. If they don’t exist try and set one up. All it takes is a Facebook page, usually, and an enormous amount of persistence and patience 😉

You’ll also need IMBA’s advice (which I can’t find easily at the moment) about being a good advocate (and how to spot a bad one), trust me on this 😉

We helped support the guys at PMBA when they set up and it’s really interesting talking to them and attending their meetings (when the chance arises) as they have some very different members / focus / ideas. SingletrAction is, at it’s core IMO, a volunteer trailbuilding and design group. Very much focused on creating and maintaining trails, mostly on FC managed land (Dalby, Guisborough and Stainburn).

PMBA is chaired by a chap called Andy MacNae who’s ex-BMC. I also met (at PMBA’s last Hog Roast at Gisburn) a chap called John Horscroft (IIRC) who is very keen to set up a trail builders alliance or some such umbrella organisation.

We even tried to set up a local STA group to develop the trails at Wharncliffe but that sadly didn’t work out. Really glad Ride Sheffield and PDMTB exist and are making headway on things now.

I’ve tried / am still trying representation on an LAF and so far I think it would be fair to say I’m still struggling with it. The make up of the group is more towards the retired, middle class, walking and riding type. Not criticising, just observing. It’s true no bugger really seems to understand MTB though 😉 Only a year in and have had to miss the last two due to clashes with other commitments.

*blowhard 😉

IMBA caught on in the US for a number of reasons:

– Bikes were being banned from lots of trails (still are in places)

– There is no CTC equivalent

– MTB didn’t fit in to existing groups like the Sierra Club

But IMBA is struggling in some ways in the US, too. While they seem to have a pretty good lobbying program at the federal level, at the state level, less so. They have one paid regional person that often has to cover several states; that’s waaayyy too thin.

They also have a gap between individual members and the national organization. They’re trying to get local clubs to affiliate with IMBA (join and you’re a member of both) but I don’t know how successful they have been. One draw for groups was insurance, but they had to cancel that rather abruptly, which caused some bad feelings.

For instance, recently the Pennsylvania Game Commission was considering licensing trail users on state game lands. IMBA sent out an email with a few talking points. I probably got it 20x from various email lists! 🙄 And I thought that their points were not good ones. And no links were provided to more in depth info. So all that you could do was forward the talking points… 🙄

Their trail crew (teaching trail building) is awesome, but they used to have 2 crews, not just 1. But their trail building book is the best, by far! I just got their bike park book, but haven’t done more than flip through it.

My view on the IMBA situation; the weekend MrBluementhall attended a trail building event at Coed(MBR)trail is when the deal was done. The deal was brokered by the Welh & Scottish reps, Daffyd & Karl Bartlett. MrB and a few others went on a road trip to try and aquire some sponsorship in the same way as the US group is funded. This failed and there was a fair bit of disappointment and questions of what now?
However FC for whatever reason said they needed the IMBA guide lines and systems to persuade funders that they were capable of delivering the major plans for Coed and for the Scottish crew, Dalbeattie and improvements to Mabie. This was before 7Stanes and 12-3yrs ago so my memory of that weekend has faded along with lots of other stuff that went on around that time and others will have a better recollection 🙄
With the help of Pete Laing the plan for Dalbeattie was drawn up. IMBA trail crew(joey & ??)visited Mabie and helped firm up the plan for that.

The came F&M which spawned 7Stanes and the rest is history…..

With some help from the fledgling Stanes crew a group of kids from DofE created a couple of new sections and repaired others before FC support was withdrawn.

As for setting up an IMBA group? No one was interested. The reason, FC are creating everything we need/want!! In Scotland we can go where we want 🙂
There are a number of groups in the area but no “clubs” and FC won’t support volunteer groups. I have tried and given up, time for younger riders to take on the task.
There is no maint staff, it is all contracted in when required.