This is in reading sulham woods. There is a good 300m squared of clear land i can use. I have some equipment but no experienced riders to help. Any rips on how to make the track. I want to have doubles and only a few berms and flat landings. Thanks in advance

1) Get Help
2) Make a plan and coordinate efforts (if not other riders may start digging off on a tangent from your plan)
3) Make sure you don’t build what the land owner wont like and rip down
4) Think about wear/erosion and drainage

Tools – can you stretch to a mini digger?
If not shovels, pick, saw, spade, whacking thing, bars to move rocks

Got any pictures of the site? What sort of trail are you after? A technical DH track with off camber rots, difficult corners and some drops or wide, fast and jumpy (which is what your brief description seems to imply)

What material do you have available (good dirt) to build the table tops and berms, you’ll need lots and machinery or some good help to build it, again depending on what style and usage level you’re looking towards.

Who will be riding it, just you or will it be open to bigger groups and/or the wider public.

Sounds exciting but very little to go on at the moment.

Buy IMBA’s trail-building book. Really good.

It has good dirt. Its a pine forest and i bought one of these http://www.beepbee.com/military-car-folding-shovel-pick-with-carry-pouch-43cm-p-97922.html#.UsnV380gGSM and i have a rake it has quite afew tees and bushes but i think its council land. There are plenty of videos of the woods on youtube. It also is medium steepness.

If you only ‘think’ it’s council land how do you know you are good to build on it? Maybe ask the question before you get stuck in?

Build anything, ride it, see if it’s rubbish, re-model. You’ll soon find out what’s working and what isn’t. Try to make the best use of the area to maximise the trail. But yeah, just get your spade in innit…

tbh, the council often have more resources to deal with cheeky trail building than private owners so I wouldn’t assume because it’s public you’ll be given carte blanche to build what you like.

There’s been cheeky trails in some woods near me for 15 years. Over the past 3 or 4 some downhill trails were built, often crossing the main through path. After complaints from dog walkers all the trails were destroyed and the only path through had a fence put up on either side of it.

My advice, try and make stuff that ‘blends in’ and doesn’t cross any existign routes taken by walkers.

Keep them quiet (like not posting links to a map of the area on here and not creating Strava segments) once they are built.

Walking the land from top to bottom a few times is always a good start. Look for any natural interesting bits and plot a few runs trying to incorporate as many of them as possilbe. Then ride them. Pick your favourite and ride it a few more times with speed – this will identify which corners could benefit from a berm. Build any jumps on the faster sections and keep the lips shallow and the gaps large. This time of year you can easily spot areas that will flood but it’s worth remembering that the ground will be slow and heavy now – so a gap that’s just doable now will likely be a piece of cake come summer. Looking at a few videos of the area, the soil looks good for building but make your berms and jumps bigger than you ideally want them as they’ll shrink a fair bit once they’ve settled and packed down.

As mentioned put a bit of effort into making anything you build look natural and safe. You don’t want your hard work ruined because of some H&S nazi.

I never ‘build’ anything to start with. Just get in there with your bike and find the best lines. Bikes make the best shapes. Only put berms where you really need to change direction quickly. Sliding around on loose, flat, corners is so much more fun and educational.

Estimate how long you think it will take to build in total.

Double it.

That’s how long walking/marking out the track will take.

And if you don’t have permission to dig there then accept that at best it may get flattened, at worst you’ll end up with a criminal record for criminal danage and have to pay for it to be flattened.

Golden rule do it with the landowner

oh, and do check if it’s not a SSSI,scheduled ancient monument or anything else where fresh new mtb trails *really* piss people off.

sulham woods?
I know the site well, I rode through it on Sunday in fact.

I’ve dug there in the past, There was even talk a while back from some locals about getting the land owner and BC involved and setting up a proper MTBing club to dig and maintain trails, but it didn’t quite come off…

It’s always had plenty of potential for some nice trails, there’s quite a bit of space away from the main Dog walking routes, What tends to cause the issue (IMO) is when someone builds a Big rather visible Kicker right next to the paths walkers use. These invariably get pulled down and then other features in the area get attacked… The once nice swoopy set of berms smack dab in the middle of the woods were fine for a couple of years but got some attention once the route to them acquired a kicker across the path and now they’ve had the supports pulled out and are a big mess.

There’s been a few bigger gap been jumps dug in lately which I reckon will draw some attention by next summer and get pulled out… Are any of those your work?

The place doesn’t have that much vertical drop, So I think it actually suits having some more technical lines dug in (keeping any jumps under 1-1/2 foot and inconspicuous) the bigger the jump the more run in / run out it requires and the more of your vertical distance is used up on just one feature…

I’d be Happy to dig there again if you have plans and need some labour…

^^ Sounds like cookea’s your man OP.

I started a thread a while back (here) on a trail i’m building. It’s more of a jumpy, general mountain bike trail than DH (shallow gradient) but it might be of some use. The land was a blank canvas really, but i had to be realistic about what i could physically build so tried to make the most of what already existed. Took a fair bit of building with a bucket and spade but if i had access to a digger this place could be great.

Still got to finish the bastid, but here’s little head cam vid of me riding what’s there.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlS1l_iSkDo[/video]

I assume your only looking at stuff to the south of the road woods (outlined in red below):

There’s the Bowl area that you come to first when leaving the car park area, a bit more open and you can probably build bigger stuff there as the walkers tend not to venture that way, but it’s been pretty well developed previously, you’d just be tidying up old stuff mostly…

There’s a knackered line towards the back of the site (further South) that used to have various bits of wood work and some tabletops in which has simply fallen into disrepair, that would be worth spending some time on, and I think you could get a bit creative, it’s well hidden and enough space to create multiple lines in places, Be aware though that area needs as much drainage work doing as it does trail work, it currently holds a lot of water…

Theres a nice set of Dirt jumps (That are quite well hidden and hence have survived) but I’d leave these, the DJers have it more or less as they want it, every summer they sharpen up the lips, remove the wood that kids have piled up between the packs and crack on…

Then there’s the middle area it’s pretty visible as its the route a lot of the walkers take through lots of lines from top to bottom all meeting up to pop you out into the bottom of the field, That’s the area that’s been dug the most in recent years, I’ve helped put stuff in there, the bits that tend to last are those that are less noticeable… Most of the lines in this section spit you out into the field at the bottom

If you can squeeze a 30 second run out of any of it you will be doing very well indeed IMO and you’ll need to properly turn the line back on itself to extend it… doable though.

i have found the first bit you come to and i have found the big with some rather massive jumps in, however there is a clear peice of land just next to the big jumps bit where i was going to make a track, ive made a small and very steep track before, im not going to make big jumps that land on a small slope or flat, neither a massive gap in the middle. im not very experienced i was just looking to make a track that suits me and is not as obvious as the first part oof the woods you come to. does anybody know where to get reasonably cheap mini shovels rakes etc. thanks for all your help. i have started exploring the woods and i have found the best land without so many broken trees is the place i explain above i have recently been started going most sunday or saturdays.
I had in mind a more beginners/intermediate track

Im not that local, 30min cycle away, so i dont know about the angry dog walkers or anything, but for all i can see there are many track that the dog walkers dont cross so they hopefully are fine with it

By rather massive jump you mean the kicker with a rather “do or die” landing? where coming up short means planting yourself in a Log on the back side? I did see someone hovering around that on Sunday (you by any chance?) TBH in the current conditions, I’ll be giving that one a miss.

I helped dig the kicker for that jump with a couple of lads last Year it was originally just to flat, but someone else put that rather scary looking, lop-sided landing in, which doesn’t really encourage beginners, and will probably be gone within 12 months, local walkers and horiests tend to pull anything that visible out sooner or later…
The section used to have some nice flow and lead you on into the rooty bit after which set you up nicely for the last bit down to the field, it’s all a bit point and shoot for wannabe hucksters now…

There’s loads of lines starting further back up the hill though, you can get from the top to the bottom by several very different routes, and mix up a few of the different features to make it quite challenging…

Go ride it all see what you like, think about what you want to change or add…

If you want to dig in some new stuff that suits your needs, I’ll be happy to help you, there should still be some tools hidden (I left some of them) in the area, basic stuff, spades maybe a bucket or two, I think there was a wheelbarrow somewhere, and there’s a couple of branch covered pits about (watch where you step) which collect rain water and create a bit of clay for piling up to make kickers and berms…

Shoot me an email (in profile) if you want some help on a Sunday, I could spare a couple of hours I,m sure…

And I’m Pretty certain there’s a couple of other STWers in the Reading area, you never know…

Oh and Yep, Both sides of the woods are pretty popular with the Dog walkers, they might not have been out in force on Sunday due to the weather, but I’ve had the odd confrontation up there… Just keep your Head up and try not to squish their furry surrogate child, and remain civil…

and if you go that way on a night ride the car park seems popular with the Doggers too… So maybe don’t, if you can help it.