hello
I took the opportunity to ride at Hopwas today and usually my trail nose is bang on, but today all the trails I found ended in some rather fresh looking barbed wire fences. Are the trails still there or has the woodland owner stepped us their security?

Isn’t the MOD the landowner?

Thought it was tarmac?

There’s been some pretty nifty building going on in places.

North on the canal from the Tame Otter crossing over by the bunker…

Left: there’s a bombhole with multiple tracks ending in it. A couple of ok, but not amazingly well thought out drops into it & one absolutely retarded (nasty landing & run-out), but very solidly made drop going into a step-up. Further up the hill there’s a decent gap jump with a couple of options into a sweeping berm.

All of that was very soggy leafy a couple of weeks ago and hard to ride in control on.

Right: there’s some tracks up the hill along the way as you go round but there’s a brand spanking new one maybe half a kilometer along with some superb berms and a tabletop (that I think should be 3 times as long 🙂 ) Someone’s also stuck a step-down in about 2/3 of the way down
cos they weren’t very impressed with the small drops/jumps to flat (this may have been me )

Carry on further round and there’s a drop line and a couple of jumps.
Bit further round there’s a bigger drop with a very nice run-out – yet to do this, but so much work has gone into the construction it’d be rude not to some time.

The bermy one: http://www.pinkbike.com/video/343250/ (needs a sweep)

Edit: Tarmac (Lafarge) & MOD own it apparently. Looks like it’s not gonna be quarried for some time to come – http://friendsofhopwaswood.co.uk/

thank you Rob, I will have another go.