Delamere riders/Night ride gang/locals....
I have a second meeting with the FC today to discuss the creation of 'proper' sustainable trails in the forest. We (Delamere Riders Club) were approached by the FC to assist and advise on the trail building in the forest. As a show of faith by them they have started work alongside us on rebuilding the dilapidated 4X track (not much interest to most on here) with more dirt and use of a JCB.
This is part of a plan they have for MTBing in the forest which up until this point has been somewhat confusing due to no-one at the FC taking responsibility for it. They now have enthusiastic memebers of staff there, one of whom has worked at CyB and Glentress.
The first meeting saw 6 members of DRC meeting with 4 of the Recreation Rangers and the owners of Tracs UK, the bike hire and coaching company based in the forest, to discuss the plans. The meeting today is to set up DRC as a proper club with chairman etc with input from the FC so that the club itself can apply for funding to help trail building and maintenance.
I have lived near and ridden the forest for about 25 years and come from a former XC then DH background and at 37 am now representing the XC trails side of things as we have enough younger lads for the jumps and drops dept. Locals all know there are great singletrack trails hidden in the forest but the problem with them is that they turn to mush for 5 months of the year or become overgrown in summer. Also, you can tell by the comments on here that people hear about the forest, drive for an hour and are sadly disappointed when they just find waymarked fire roads. It is this that i want to address - not talking about stoning up the whole forest as it cant be done with the geology of the place. What i would like is anyone with an interest in the XC trails to come up with suggestions on routes and features that need work. The hope is that a race can be staged at Delamere in the future as it has ample parking and is in a good location in the Northwest.
You can mail me at tony_kitson AT hot mail dot com or go to http://www.delamereriders.co.uk and add yourself in to see what the score is. The FC are quite active on the site and we need a few more old boys n girls to get these XC trails up and running.
Thanks
Tony

