So went for a afternoon walk with SO on the fell and there is a long bridleway, in the past completely wrecked by motorcycles so lots of work been done to upgrade it plus the introduction of six gates….we wander through the first one and close it, it is a good 400 yards from the next and in a dip , see a mountain biker holding open next gate say hello carry on to next gate mountain biker holding open gate …so I says

your mate is down there holding have waiting for you…..

Reply

No we are Strava timing…..he we will be coming down in a minute

Oh…says I and carry on

See the rider coming down flying , step to one side thinking we closed the last gate…..oh well….

So the s this common Strava practise?

People are knobs.

People are knobs.

Very much this

I don’t understand your confusion…your hardly going to get the KOM if you have to stop and open gates!!

I rode up the path yesterday, opened all the gates closed them, looked at the view,…….is that why I am not KOM….??????

Aren’t you going to tell us where it was so we can flag it? 😈

I don’t understand your confusion…your hardly going to get the KOM if you have to stop and open gates!!

And who’ll give a shit?

I hava a top 10 place on a descent that has two gates. I got lucky one time and some walkers held open the top gate for me. Is that wrong, should I flag my time to Strava as incorrect? 😐

Spoil sport!

😆

Edit

I was a walker at the time so….bloody mountain bikers tearing round the Countyside….ggrrrrrrrrrr

Would it have been okay to hold open the gates if no one was using strava?

Add long as they shut them again (which it looks like they were) does it matter?

I had this, rider had passed me then came across two gates open, shut them then saw a third and approaching riders. I shut it ‘oi your spoiling our timed run you **** *****’. I didn’t take kindly to that. Was I in the wrong? Do you think they’d have shut them gates after them and minded walkers climbing up? No.

Bloke who swore threw words over his shoulder and rode off.

Strava IS great as a training aid but not on shared trails and NOT when sheep finally end up on Snake pass. That’s when it becomes dangerous for bikers and cars in a NSL.

Strava record attempters don’t think that far.

The one on the beast seems to be always propped open.

Oh my god what’s going on with the spelling and grammar in this thread it’s doing my nut in.

Tracey yes we noted that a few times, with a rock. Even us awesome riders manage to stop for 2secs to shut it.

I always shut it. Dont want a sheep passing me on the way down.

Another is the gate at the top of the farm on the grassy climb up that ends up at the top of the hagg farm descent.

I’ve never seen a farmer in that field when the gates been open. So I assume it’s ‘us’. On a similar topic a while ago someone said ‘if it’s open I assume it’s supposed to be so it’s not to do with me’. STW Welshfarmer(SP?) corrected him.

“Leave gates as you found them”.

There’s often a good reason for leaving gates open (including access to water for the livestock).

Cant think why any farmer would want his sheep wandering down the beast. I can remember when we first started riding it in the 80s it had a please close the gate for a short time.

Scotroutes are you talking about hefted(?) sheep? Who stick to a certain area, I think it’s a Scottish thing(?)

Otherwise they are displaced and end up everywhere, lost and in a road.

“Leave gates as you found them”.

There’s often a good reason for leaving gates open (including access to water for the livestock).

This.

People are knobs.

Some people are knobs.

Hard to tell what actually happened from the OP, but it involves Strava so I better post something disapproving.

I held a KOM on an “up the hill and down the other side” segment for quite a while. One night I was out with a pal, we were stopped chatting at the top of the hill of that segment when I saw a guy on an absolute mission zooming up towards us. Unbidden, I held open the gate for him and gave him a bit of encouragement as he sped straight through.

Yes, he took my KOM.

To be fair he blitzed my KOM by more than the 10-15 seconds I gifted him, but don’t want to spoil the cool story bro.

Cant think why any farmer would want his sheep wandering down the beast.

Got to agree with that as it’s clearly the boundary of a livestock area, though I do leave gates as I find them in less obvious situations.

Were they Yoofs or middle aged men?

I am surprised folk go these measures to get a ‘ time’, while the path is fairly quiet it is one of the few bridleways around us, so having folk treating it like a race track and not thinking of other users is pretty unacceptable and thoughtless. Scramblers had ruined the track and the farmer and local stables had put some time and money into repairing the bridleway.

Flip side is I inadvertently messed up the plan…..

Middle aged men……I assume!e they watch top gear.

Yep, it was me who touched this subject before. Any farmer who has rights of ways on his land will have had to deal with issues of gates ending up in a different position to how he/she intended them to be. For that reason I can assure you that if the gate is on a right of way and the farmer really wants it to be left open he will have made it pretty clear that is the case by tying it up with copious amounts of baler twine or even by removing the gate altogether. Obviously if the farmer is in the area with quad or dog then he may just prop the gate open to move something through it but this should be obvious. And any farmer worth his slat should be checking his livestock daily (unless it is on the open hill) to ensure it has adequate access to feed and water. In this case if a gate has been mistakenly closed by a user of the ROW then it can be rectified easily. If the gate has been left open when it should have been closed however the best scenario is half a day wasted getting stock back where they should be. The worst may be sheep on roads or males/females getting together when not wanted, or flocks mixing with neighbouring animals and transferring disease or worse.

So unless a gate on a ROW is obviously “open” (ie closing it has been rendered rather difficult by human action) then please close it, regardless of how it is found.I would rather go round opening gates after people than sorting out the issues of one that hasn’t been closed.

Thanks for the clarification – very informative.

http://www.ramblers.org.uk/

Leave gates and property as you find them and follow paths unless wider access is available

A farmer will normally close gates to keep farm animals in, but may sometimes leave them open so the animals can reach food and water. Leave gates as you find them or follow instructions on signs. When in a group, make sure the last person knows how to leave the gates.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-countryside-code/the-countryside-code

Leave gates and property as you find them and follow paths unless wider access is available
A farmer will normally close gates to keep farm animals in, but may sometimes leave them open so the animals can reach food and water. Leave gates as you find them or follow instructions on signs. When in a group, make sure the last person knows how to leave the gates.

http://www.northpennines.org.uk/Pages/CountrysideCode.aspx

Leave gates and property as you find them

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/countryside-code

Leave gates as you find them
If you find a gate closed, close it when you pass through to prevent animals straying. Farmers sometimes leave gates open to allow animals to pass from one field to another to graze or drink.

http://onlineborders.org.uk/community/epg/countryside-access-in-scotland

Gates & walls
Please leave all gates as you find them and ensure that if you have to open a gate, you
close it securely behind you.

Of course, said farmer could always apply a sign sayng “please keep this gate closed” or “please close this gate” – I’ve seen a few like that.

I’ve emailed the address in your profile Welshfarmer.

🙂

There’s a KOM near me called “Gates open, Gates closed”. I didn’t realise it was there until one day I ended up in the top 3 and when I thought about all the gates had been open that day (farmer harvesting).

@scotroutes. I realise that the advice to leave gates as found is still promoted as best practice and in many parts of the countryside where ROW usage may be light and or sporadic it probably still holds true. However, that advice was first written years ago, and since then many areas (especially in the honey pot ones like AoONB and NPs, that many of us choose to spend our free time) have seen exponential growth in the amount of recreational usage they have. 30 years ago we could probably count the number of weekends in the year that people would walk through the farm on one hand. Today you need to have been born in Norfolk to have enough fingers and toes to count the people walking through every hour of every day in summer, and most weekends throughout the rest of the year. It is not uncommon to have coach parties of 50 walking through with 20 minutes between first and last persons. If we could guarantee 100% of the time that the public left gates as they found them then that would be great. However, it just isn’t happening so I will always advise closing gates when there is any ambiguity as to whether it should or should not be open. Obviously the usual proviso of using common sense (where applicable) applies 🙂

You need some Danny Mackaskills fence flipping, they you will deserve the KOM!

Some idiot is FAR FAR more likely to leave a gate open, than that gate NEEDING to be left open, without obvious sign, by the farmer.

I always close gates.

People have held gates open so other riders can get a clear run for as long as I’ve been riding bikes, it’s not automatically twattery just because it has the word strava in it.

And yeah, I don’t think “leave gates as you find them” works any more, if it ever did. And impact of leaving an important gate open when it has to be closed is probably worse than the opposite.

Whats the problem?

Strava apart, seems sensible and considerate behaviour. Gates closed, riders happy, win:win….

Ridiculous.

Nobody has actually said whether their Strava time was being logged on a GPS watch or an i phone so the discrepancy between the two renders their run null and void anyway. Everyone knows times are faster on an i phone.

I am surprised folk go these measures to get a ‘ time’, while the path is fairly quiet it is one of the few bridleways around us, so having folk treating it like a race track and not thinking of other users is pretty unacceptable and thoughtless.

Plenty of those around..