Anyone else just a little bit excited that there are now two plans underway to create new trail centres/bike parks in the north east?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-41983842

Durris is the chosen location for the planned NETCO-driven bike park, whilst Tarland, slightly further west is actively looking to develop its current site to a much wider range of trails.

Wouldn’t say excited exactly, but good to see more options in the area.
Will almost certainly visit as Durris would only be an hour or so from work for a summers evening ride.

Scotland ..
I might have got a bit more excited if it had been England ..

That ^ 🙁

I was onto the local council in the summer to try and get something going but I’ve heard nothing and had no replies to emails either. Meh.

It’ll fill at least some of the gap in location of managed trails across Scotland, as following the work in the 7Stanes, no work has ever really progressed in the NE, despite there being lots of sites in some far more remote areas to the west.

Still a long way to go, but good progress being made.

Worth considering donating to the current Tarland Trails 2 crowd funder (for planning application) if you’re in the North East and supportive. Important financially and as a demonstration of public support. Closes 1st December.

https://mydonate.bt.com/events/tarlandtrails

Just chucked a few quid their way, but I can’t actually see what it is that they are planning, other than something bigger than the “little skills loops” that are there now.

Have a look at the trail map here: https://www.facebook.com/tarlandtrails

(It was uploaded on the 11th November)

I’m from north of Aberdeen and once the ring road is opened Durris becomes a lot more accessible.
I’m also hoping Tarland manage to get up and running

Looking forward to the next few years

Oh that NE.

Aye, the actual NE, not the bit in the middle 😀

Hang on.. Northumberland is in the Middle East? That explains a lot….

You mean the middle ages don’t you scotroutes 😉

Have a look at the trail map here: https://www.facebook.com/tarlandtrails

(It was uploaded on the 11th November)

Ah, of course, I should have realised. Everything is on Facebook these days! Thanks. It looks interesting. Good luck to them.

Is this £9.6m of log cabins, cafe and riads? Leaves enough change for 32.3m of ski run, a km of singletrack and a pump track?
I might be a bit to cynical though…

Planning approval has now been granted for the Tarland Phase 2 project by Aberdeenshire Council (I can’t find a news link anywhere, but it’s on their Facebook page)

Woop, woop!

Is this £9.6m of log cabins, cafe and riads? Leaves enough change for 32.3m of ski run, a km of singletrack and a pump track?
I might be a bit to cynical though…

Yay, eco-tourism.

We’ll conveniently ignore the thousands* of tons of CO2 produced by people driving to places like Glentress every year.

*no idea, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? A car doing the trip from London would be about 0.2tons for the round trip.

It’s not really the thread for discussing this, but in the grand scheme, creating a decent trail centre in the NE may result in fewer trips to Glentress from that area.  Right now, if you live anywhere in Aberdeen/shire, the nearest family-friendly centre is Glenlivet, which gets pretty monotonous given that there is only a single red trail (and a shorter blue which shares about 50% of its length with the red).

It’s not really the thread for discussing this, but in the grand scheme, creating a decent trail centre in the NE may result in fewer trips to Glentress from that area.  Right now, if you live anywhere in Aberdeen/shire, the nearest family-friendly centre is Glenlivet, which gets pretty monotonous given that there is only a single red trail (and a shorter blue which shares about 50% of its length with the red).

Just my pet peeve whenever any of these things get built in Scotland.

As a particularly crass example

Shetland – population 22,000 – swimming pools 7

Reading – population 220,000 – swimming pools 2 (I think, they had to close two because they needed massive refurbishment and one is now a temporary structure so I think there’s two open but no diving facilities).

Wrong.  Five pools on Shetland, and in any event it’s a completely irrelevant comment, as is your previous comment.

The point of the post was to celebrate the hard work put in by a lot of people to get this project moving, all of it done by unpaid volunteers who simply want to try to create something positive in an area which would benefit from more visitors.

Thanks for the updates. I must admit, I hadn’t realised that Tarland 2 was not in the same place as Tarland 1. Could be fun to drop into the new trails from Presendye 🙂

I know someone who was at the planning meeting and said that there were some really good comments made about the positive economic benefits, physical activity promotion (especially for the young) as well as increased visitors (both day and overnight).  The opening of the café in the village would have been almost unthinkable a few years ago, but now even with Tarland Phase 1 pulling in more and more visitors, it is allowing that form of enterprise to develop.

On a slightly smaller scale but no less exciting for us, our own little bike trail & pump track project in Banchory was given full planning permission last month. There’s still a bit of work to do before spades hit the ground but hopefully 2019 will see it completed.

https://en-gb.facebook.com/deesidebikecollective/

Wow, I’d forgotten about that project – so much going on at the moment around here!