With a half a million pound investment going into trail redevelopment in and around Ashton Court, Bristol, there is a reason for the trails currently under construction being taped off, THEY ARE NOT READY TO RIDE YET.

One more week and the trails will be open for the Bristol Bike Fest. If you know of any riders crossing the tape and riding these trails, tell ’em to keep off! It just ruins Architrail’s hard work.

Does a week make a difference to how the trails bed in?

Serious question, not a comment on people riding it

‘Currently under construction’ so I would guess bedding in isn’t the issue.

There’s a reason the tape is still up!

Just wondering how they’re actually ruining it

Trails not compacted yet? Means the the surface is very soft and gets cut up.

To Uplink and anyone else who is wondering…

The trails are constructed from a deep layer of large sized crushed stone and topped off with thin layer of crushed stone dust. Both layers are heavily compacted with several passes with a whacker plate. The freshly whacked surface is slightly impervious to water. The material underneath starts to dry. As it dries and hardens over a number of weeks, it sucks the top layer down into the cracks between the larger stones. We then top up the dust layer with more stone dust and re-whack. This process is repeated until a solid impervious layer is achieved. It takes a lot of time and effort and depends on the weather a great deal.

If the track is ridden when soft and unconsolidated, your tyres make an impression in the top surface and break the “seal”. If it then rains, water enters through the cracks around the broken edges of your tyre marks. More water in the base material makes it softer for longer and lengthens the bedding in process considerably, making it vulnerable to premature use for a longer period.

So, why are we allowing it to be ridden for Bikefest?

We will be onsite working at Ashton Court for at least a month and a half after Bikefest. After the race, we can easily fix any damage done to the trail quickly to prevent further damage. There is even a chance that riding will actually help the bedding in process, if the consolidation has already reached a particular level. This all depends on weather conditions leading up to the event. Also, such an intense riding period will quickly highlight if we have any issues with the flow in any section of the trail. We can then re jig any bits necessary to ensure they do flow properly in the long run.

Hope this makes sense and persuades a few more riders to keep off the Ashton Court trail (and any other trails being built elsewhere) until they are ready. I’ll qualify all of this by saying that this is not an absolute science and involves a great deal of nuance when applying the rules.

Cheers,

Phil

Architrail

Why don’t you put a few large unmissable explanatory notices up like that at access points to where work is taking place Phil?

At the moment as far as I can see there are just signs saying “work in progress keep off” and a bit of netting. Even the most considerate dental flossing, rubbish recycling good little mountain bike riders who say their prayers to the baby jesus at night might take a look, see that the track looks finished and ridable, assume digger drivers don’t work on Sundays and come to the conclusion that a quick spin will be ok.

That being said, when I was over Ashton Court this morning sans bike and had a quick peek I couldn’t see any tyre marks and it’s looking good. Cheers to all involved.

That’s an interesting explanation. I thought the construction (3mm-to-dust on type 1?) would be reagrded as an unbound construction, not impervious. When we used to lay them, the limestone ones anyway, we’d actually water the top layer to re-attach the lime that was unattached from the quarry. Ie the water would help it to harden very quickly.

A layer of tarmac would finish the job off nicely 🙂