Have just read the initial consultation report on the development of the Yorkshire Dales Nation Park.

YDNP report

Its really clear from reading it Cavers, Green Laners and Shooting groups actively involved themselves in this.

Any mountain biking input is to my eye absent.

How do we get national groups involved? Am I wrong to think that they should be doing it anyway and putting our views forwards?

Cycling UK met with YDNP staff this summer, discussing a number of plans for improvements in off-road access and gave a presentation to the LAF. However, National Parks staff remain bound by both the difficulty in increasing access, particularly to access land, under current legislation and by the cost/resources implications of rights of way legislation. Nothing can be magiced up easily

As such, the current concentration for Cycling UK is on affecting changes in national access policies, particuarly regarding access land, see the Trails for Wales campaign, and a number of behind the scenes efforts like the House of Lords select committee on NERC act, and meetings with LAF’s and govt departments such as Council for National Parks, DEFRA and Natural England. But there’s only so much resource that can go round, particularly people with specialist knowledge on things like rights of way and commons legislation.

A lot of the groundwork for increased access therefore has to, necessarily, be at a local level, there are some groups and individuals doing stirling work, particularly lobbying for things like the reinstatement of the Wensleydale railway through to Hawes. There needs to be a realisation within the MTB community that resources will always end up being pushed to ‘widest benefit’ with projects like this rather than improvement of enthusiast level facilities, and that’s why they need to begin to work together to develop things, particularly regards ROW claims and identifying key links

Over in the Lakes, the Lake District Mountain Bike Association are providing a really good source of consultation and input for the NPA, and I think that there is huge potential room for either a Yorkshire Dales Mountain Bike Association or a wider one encompassing the NYM to fulfil a similar role over there. If anyone was interested in doing that then I would be happy to put you in contact with other groups in the region and nationally to help it come to fruition.

Sounds like there’s a need for a Ride Sheffield type group covering the Dales.

There’s a lot of conflicting aims get presented with things like this: all the way from “I want to do whatever I want wherever I want” through to “If it wasn’t illegal I’d shoot anyone who set foot on my land”* Things take time, as openmtbkie says, nothing can be magicked up easily. Sometimes the conflicts are within one user group: I know of one instance (not in the Dales) where the NP wanted to put in a footpath but it crossed the land of two neighbouring farmers who didn’t see eye to eye. If one said OK then the other would say no and vice versa and the NP couldn’t get agreement from the two

For many years I used to climb and there are crags in the Dales with limited access even after twenty plus years of negotiation.

The national park have put some trails in place – the section of the Pennine Bridleway between Cam Head and Newby Head is an example. It isn’t even a right of way on the 1997 OS map. I don’t know how much that cost in either time or money. I can think of a few examples in the southern Dales where footpaths could be upgraded to bridleways but in at least two of those the landowners are very much against increased public access.

You have to sell the benefits of any change to others, things like: every visiting cyclist spends on average £26.50 per day in the local communities; upgrading the path between X & Y to bridleway status would provide a safer route for cyclists than the road which has had X accidents in the last ten years. That sort of thing. You need to know what buttons to press, the Dales like most rural areas struggles to keep young locals in the area with the result most communities are aging so anything that can be presented as helping that is going to raise interest particularly if it doesn’t involve large scale infrastructure that spoils the character of the area.

* These may be an exaggeration 😉

We at Peak District MTB are having some good results by just making ourselves known. Who’s produced the report? Who’s involved in its preparation. Even by asking those basic questions you begin to get somewhere.

If people want to try and get something together, please can they include me. I live in the YDNP, I ride a lot there (and abroad), I know pretty much every BW in the Dales. I Took time off work to work on the NERC Bill (April 2005 to spring 2006) on Part 6 along with RA, CLA, GLEAM and the rest (CTC were there but in name only). I also know many of the personalities at the Park.

C

Also happy to pitch in with any Dales-based advocacy group.

this is a useful document to start with too…a collection of advocacy case studies 🙂

The Advocacy Files – a celebration of effort

Thanks all for the sanguine views and thoughts on this.

Does anyone know of any local groups in place before any thoughts of setting up a group is looked at?

@martinhutch & ChrisE. Ill PM you later in the week.