njee – surely we have to take into account climate change and how our Autumn/Winter seasons are differing from, say, 10 years ago?

Naturally we all have to take personal responsibility in our lives and make changes wherever possible. However, I find myself getting into the car and driving to other areas to ride because I can't be bothered with trudging around Swinley's messy trails.

Are there actually more people mountain biking these days generally in the U.K.? Bike sales are up but some folk have more than one bike.

In fact, I could start a little rant-ette about how we desperately need an organisation that represents us. We're getting left behind. 😥

If you have a gpx that would be terrific, thank you. 😀

njee – surely we have to take into account climate change and how our Autumn/Winter seasons are differing from, say, 10 years ago?

There's not been any meaningful shift in trend in that period, some wet winters, some cold ones, some hot summers, some sh1t ones!

I do totally understand where you're coming from Pete, and you're better placed than me to know, but I do wonder if 300 riders doing say 3 laps (on average) once or twice a year really does do more damage than the rest of the riders year round?

CG, I'm new to all this 'track' malarky, can you retrieve it from here? That's 4 laps of it though!

njee – I'm an old girl so I do remember cold and dry winters. I do not however remember so much rain!

Surely if the number of competitors were halved, there would be considerably less damage? I'm a simple Soul (bit like my bike really).

In fact, I could start a little rant-ette about how we desperately need an organisation that represents us. We're getting left behind

Hear hear to that. Trouble is that MTB'ers seem to be a very disparate lot (cyclists more so); you only have to see the (good natured mainly) bickering on here about trail riders vs trail centre riders; XC vs DH/Freeride; club members vs we're-definitely-not-a-club-just-a-group-of-like-minded-friends; finding a body to represent the interests of all is about as likely as trying to catch fog in a net.

There have been 3 in the last few months. I think if your local trails got trashed 3 times in 3 months you might have a different outlook.

Which common parts have been used? None of yesterdays course was the same as the Crowthorne Woods course, and as pointed out previously, they only had to use Crowthorne twice as they lost another venue at the last minute.

I do wonder if 300 riders doing say 3 laps (on average) once or twice a year really does do more damage than the rest of the riders year round?

Impossible to say, i suspect. Look at the main trail from the Look Out to Pips seat (what is this called by the way) which has not been raced on recently if at all; volume of riders x shite weather (x poor discipline about riding round the edges of puddles) has turned this into a 10yard wide swamp in the wet. Whereas the races do tend to have much narrower singletrack so the impact is maybe more concentrated to a narrower strip but is an immediately visible impact.

njee – gpx downloaded, thank you. 🙂

theotherjonv – I don't actually see it as a problem but then again I have a very optimistic attitude when it comes to mountain biking.

I choose not to belong to a club. Nothing against clubs, in fact in my running days I served on the Committee and was very active. These days I prefer to avoid rules and regulations and just ride with reprobates from here 😉

But this won't go away and needs to be dealt with.

pete – I didn't realise it was 3 events.

So only a few did more than 2 laps, pads done in less than 2 laps and lots of pushing. It wasn’t that bad then. It does not make much odds as to the number of times a track get raced it still gets mashed.

I believe there is evidence on teh erosion / trail damage question that 300 people in a day does more damage tahtn 10 people on 30 days. Something to do with the recovery of the ground.

Again I think the key here is "responsible" – repair afterwards, don't overuse trails for racing and be prepared to cancel or divert if the trails won't sustain the traffic

well said TandemJeremy in a nutshell

That's an interesting comment because I'd heard the opposite (albeit hearsay that someone on a ride said one time). The rationale being that – using your numbers – there are then 29 days with no traffic for damage to repair, whereas in your case there is no recovery, just ongoing damage.

Agree on the second point, although it is hard to predict in our climate what weather is going to do – who would have predicted such heavy and prolonged rain after such a good period of preceding weather. Gorrick have cancelled races and rescheduled / refunded this winter when it was clear that conditions were going to be unsuitable, so it's not as if there is no thought goes into it.

I still come back to the point that folk pay £20 for a yearly permit or whatever it is for a daily one, expect to be able to ride their bike and then discover an event is in progress.

I, for one, would not like to ride, say, The Deer Stalker with racers on my back wheel. Each lap was 10 miles so that effectively means that many people were unable to use certain trails. That was not fair.

Could I also mention that years ago I ended up riding on part of a Gorrick course whilst out for a pootle. It wasn't a problem, there was a smaller number of competitors.

I think the problem with races in numbers. A group of say ten rides will follow the leader almost tire to tire. With a race there is far more overtaking. If you take a look at the new track in Swinley with the wood bridge. The single track is ok done quite well, but the end has gone from a 1ft wide run to a 4ft mush with a new track along the side. Now people moan all the time about single track going motorway size, theirs the reason.

PTP – which end? The bridge end, or the other end.

If the latter – that's a case in point. After construction that last section was left unmade for reasons I don't know but it was a narrow ribbon of natural s/track. As it got more used and wetter, people ride around the edges and it got wider and wider. The armoured bit however has largely remained 'as intended' albeit with some folks detouring round the edges of the dips.

I know people don't like the concept of armouring some heavy use trails but this encapsulates why with the popularity of Swinley as a destinational MTB venue, it has to happen more and more otherwise everything eventually becomes 4 ft wide mush.

It was a lack of time, I was riding the Friday they started that and I pitched in for a few hours. Yes I am talking about that bit and that happened after a race. When tracks go wide from normal use it tends to be around dips or tree roots. The entire last part of that track is 4ft wide and of the same markings along the entire length. The start looks like the end.I know the tracks very well and i know how they react to traffic.

I think its great that Swinley gets hammered. Great place to ride guys. As for adjouning areas. Dont go there, nothing to see, move along now.

Group ride in the chilterns. Bonkers idea C_G. Silly thought. No one will be vaguely interested. Trails are trashed already. Not worth bothering about. Stick to Swinley. Oh yes!

Oh and haven't ridden at Swinley since last October, other than a quick scoot after the snow to see all the dameage. Might pop down later in the summer once the trails have had a chance to dry a bit.

Oh, and the forcast all week was a massive dump on Sunday. Maybe race organisers should adapt their plans to suit as such. Like also all the riders; STW group rides included, who have hammered the trails through the winter.

I still come back to the point that folk pay £20 for a yearly permit or whatever it is for a daily one, expect to be able to ride their bike and then discover an event is in progress.

I'm really not sure about that logic, for a start, if you really wanted to, you could just ride the course anyway, you may get people shouting or whatever, but they're not actually stopping you! I lost my race number about a mile into the race, and no one actually said anything to me for the subsequent 4 hours!

Secondly… what about (for example) swimming membership? If there's a gala, you just can't use the facilities, at all. And they can be quite regular. If Swinley was totally shut to all traffic one day a month I'd take your point, but as Gee pointed out, you're not really being hard done by! It's a huge place, with a very small proportion of the trails being closed once or twice a year.

surely we have to take into account climate change and how our Autumn/Winter seasons are differing from, say, 10 years ago?

I find myself getting into the car and driving to other areas to ride because I can't be bothered with trudging around Swinley's messy trails.

Oh, the irony.

I don't mean this in a rude way but reading how this thread is developing strikes me very much of a NIMBY attitude.

Swinley is a big place, I regularly get lost in it, I'm almost positive even I could have found some sweet singletrack to ride that was not part of the race circuit. And there were non racers on the track, I chatted with a couple part round the circuit when I limped by broken bike home on the 3rd lap.

Personally I just think it was down to really bad luck. If the weather had been predicted I expect Gorrick would have cancelled. Just look at that thread about 'what tyres in the wet at swinley' people were still advising you'd be ok on summer tyres (I so wish I'd put my medusa's on)

I'm almost positive even I could have found some sweet singletrack to ride that was not part of the race circuit

Of course you could, 100% of the Crowthorne stuff for a start!

I can't see a lot of the course being re-used, by the time the gates have been closed and holes in fences patched up people will forget about them and return to singletrack/routes tyhey know. From riding it yesterday there was a lot of stuff I wouldn't consider riding again by choice and because of access. The existing trails seem to suffer anyway, they always seem to change between my visits.

From riding it yesterday there was a lot of stuff I wouldn't consider riding again by choice and because of access.

Yep, the whole first 2 miles or so isn't really much fun IMO, virtually all fireroad for a start! I wouldn't bother riding it normally, it was also the worst bit, it seems that there's a lot of folk sharpening their pitch forks with little reason!

Right.

CG – There is plenty of singletrack in Swinley that wasn't in the race course. I am sure you know Swinley well enough to find it.

And as for the organisers and the weather forecast, it was very clear to me even from simply looking at the map posted in advance of the race that the guys had put very careful thought into where they put it. All of the singletrack fell into 2 categories: Armoured stuff which can cope perfectly well with all of the traffic without suffering any damage, and either freshly cut or very underused singletrack which after the race will be largely left alone, simple because nobody rides it anyway.

I ride the forest regularly, and there is a lot of work going on to maintain these trails which never gets announced in any public way – and a lot of the Gorrick/BOB people are involved with that. That is quite aside from the officialy sanctioned resurfacing and cutting of new trails which occurs several times a year.

EDIT:

Also, 2 laps of 4, brake pads gone after 1 and a half 🙂
Largely enjoyed it, except for losing feeling in my feet.

Blimey, the keyboard warriors have a massive presence on here this morning!

Doesn't that go both ways? You're criticising an event you weren't involved in!

Putting the impact (or not) of racing aside, I think the bigger issue is that going forward Swinley could do with a better strategy for maintaining and developing the trail network given what to me, a long time user and Crowthorne resident, are becoming very heavily used trails. And nothing wrong with that of course, just that the ad hoc nature of offical trailbuilding (I would disagree with the assertion above that re-surfacing and cutting of new trails goes on several times a year, because I haven't seen much evidence of it – what I have seen are some trails that don't fit the 'XC' nature of a lot of BOB/Gorricks 'offical' trails being intentionally put out of use (admittedley occasionally for good reason), but I digress).

The answer isn't to become a BOB member because not everyone is keen on joining that particular club. It would be better if the currently interested parties (the CE, FC, BOB etc) could develop a mechanism at least to allow more inclusive trail building and maintenance efforts. How to get more funding to move things forward is a different question of course (but a start would be to get some of the cash presumably gained from allowing the use of the forest for filming and use it repair some of the damage done).

Can I just pick up on the point made above concerning NIMBY attitude? Some of the respondents on this thread are locals who have seen huge changes in trail conditions together with associated increase in numbers of riders at Swinley.

I would say we are in quite a good position to comment, particularly petetheplumber who has been doing sterling work in keeping a popular trail in good order. Simply, the races have become too large.

Over the years it has changed enormously but us locals are not saying 'keep away' to everyone! I don't consider it a huge area but will freely admit there are many trails I don't ride due to lack of skill.

Actually, what would be very interesting is knowing how many riders use Swinley at the weekend. Pity there isn't a counter set up one weekend.

Well said auric 🙂

The races have got smaller and less numerous, when I started doing the Gorricks 10 years ago there were fewer venues which got used more often, and often larger fields.

The recreational riding has increased more I'd say.

Back to my point on the superhighway to Pip's Seat, which has not been used for racing in my recollection, yet is probably the most trashed single trail in the forest. There are a dozen different / less used / more sustainable routes to the same point but every day riders continue to plough through there, avoiding the puddles and widening the track far more than any race has done.

Regarding trail maintenance and without opening gob too widely, it's important that a good relationship is established with the new Forest Warden (or whatever the forest big-cheese is called) appointee as recently there has been some friction with the previous incumbent.

allthepies – what happened then?

Without sounding pessimistic, I can't see anything changing. The car park can't cope with the sheer volume of vehicles so it seems unlikely that trails will be improved to accommodate more mountain bikers.

The Cafe can't cope with the number of users, it's also getting pretty expensive too.

As already said, many families use it although fortunately they don't venture far. But more bikes could mean even more close encounters with unsupervised children when heading for the trails.

The car park can't cope with the sheer volume of vehicles so it seems unlikely that trails will be improved to accommodate more mountain bikers.

The Cafe can't cope with the number of users, it's also getting pretty expensive too.

Which are both totally unrelated to racing and suggest that the growth is coming in the leisure riders (which I'd agree with!).

The races have got smaller and less numerous, when I started doing the Gorricks 10 years ago there were fewer venues which got used more often, and often larger fields.

Really? I thought the fields had got larger at Swinley.

It’s an odd point to state there are lots of tracks to ride. The last crowthorne wood race left large pieces of track mashed and crap to ride. Just to be clear there is only one corkscrew there is no other bit of track like that. So when a race organisation has a race on that track after the snow rain and worst winter ever that seems a bit inconsiderate. I have never seen anyone working on the trails and last year with little work myself I rode 3 or 4 times a week. Does this happen can anyone say I fixed this bit of track please speak up.

I have never seen anyone working on the trails

I was riding the Friday they started that and I pitched in for a few hours

Eh?

Sorry never seen anyone doing maintenance or repairs after a race.

there are strict guidelines about when work is allowed – all to do with bird nesting times and a whole lot of other stuff which impacts on this. But that's a fair question, and one Gorrick would really need to answer as opposed to me.