Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 55 total)
  • Private woodland. Is it possible to make money out of riders?
  • Mugboo
    Full Member

    This is completely hypothetical as I don’t own a wood.

    Are they any good examples of woods around the UK that are privately owned and have found a way of making riding pay?

    The place I have in mind doesn’t welcome riders but has two official footpaths running through and lots of potential.

    Just wondering if I could present the owners with a good case for trails..

    Northwind
    Full Member

    Llandegla’s biking business model is based entirely on getting other people to pay for things then taking the profit- nice if you can make it work.

    butcher
    Full Member

    I think the main hurdle would be insurance.

    br
    Free Member

    Private woodland. Is it possible to make money out of riders?

    Based upon previous posts’ on STW, no…

    Rorschach
    Free Member

    Northwind ain’t wrong…..

    Mugboo
    Full Member

    I don’t think it’s possible as it would rely on riders paying for a pass to ride a wood they can already access illegally.

    I’m just dreaming..

    james
    Free Member

    Does Drumlanrig sort of fit this ‘model’? Do/Can they ‘only’ charge for parking?

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Chicksands, aston hill and PORC?

    Swinley (but the system’s more abused there)

    although all of those places like llandegla rely on donations of time + money to build the trails which you’re unlikely to get if there’s no access or cheeky trails to start with.

    mAx_hEadSet
    Full Member

    nice bit of dry cynicism their Rorschach… even Northwind should know llandegla use almost the same economic model as the Forestry Commission in Wales the good old tax payer pays for it all….. if it means the government has less money to tip into propping up the moribund windfarm industry.. keep doling our money out boys….

    Mugboo
    Full Member

    No chance of charging for parking either.

    druidh
    Free Member

    Drumlanrig is privately owned, but they have a number of income streams.

    What about Golspie?

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Completely hypothetically it should be possible, but would need an unusual set of circumstances. There’s loads of places in the UK are v weak for mountain biking – literally nowhere decent to ride. How many of those are over an hours drive away from anywhere decent I’m not sure, much less but still probably some. Local riders would pay to ride in these locations. Problem is they’ll pay to ride something good, not something mediocre, and good requires big investment in MTB terms. The nature of the sport also means you’re talking several miles of trail before you can talk about having any sort of facility to offer.

    A wood is likely not going to be enough, and it sounds like your wood where riders are already riding anyway wouldn’t work. You’d need a coincidence of captive market (no local trails, limited scope to build anything substantial, driving anywhere good a total ballache) then capitalise on this with a quality development. So it sounds like a bit of a pipedream by and large but could maybe work for some spots in the UK if a real visionary got hold of it.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    mAx_hEadSet – Member

    even Northwind should know llandegla use almost the same economic model as the Forestry Commission in Wales the good old tax payer pays for it all…..

    You can’t be serious? Llandegla (Tilhill? One Planet?) uses public investment to generate private profit. FC doesn’t- all operating surplus remains in the public purse.

    Mugboo
    Full Member

    Garry – I think you’re right. Glossing over the investment needed, stopping riders riding it for free would never work would it?

    People moan about car parking charges as it is..

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    People moan about car parking charges[u]paying for anything[/u] as it is..

    Think you had a typo there…

    If you had the space, the volunteers and the time you could build the trails then follow the forestry model and lease out the Shop/Cafe space until the business is built up then boot them out for some higher paying corporates.

    turboferret
    Full Member

    UK Bikepark I think is another example, I think they own the land there, but I may be wrong.

    Cheers, Rich

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    I wonder if there are any trails anywhere in the world that are pay-to-ride in the simplest sense. Plenty will charge indirectly for car-parking, and there’s bike parks of course with uplifts, some places have a yearly membership charge with a tag on your bike – but XC trails through the woods with a hut at the bottom with a sign saying ‘Adults £10, children £5’ seems like it would be hard to do.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    this place only allows walkers but has some nice singletrack, I can imagine if they had more land and could set up a separate biking area they’d do quite well;

    http://www.wildernesswood.co.uk/

    gingerss
    Free Member

    I reckon I know the wood you’re talking about. It would make for some very good riding wouldn’t it! Trouble is there’s too much about, in that people can park elsewhere and access other services, e.g. cafes etc.

    They could probably set up something fairly specialist though such as some very good DH runs, don’t know if that would attract people to pay if they did a really good job…?

    For xc stuff it’s in an area that’s already very well served.

    DaveyBoyWonder
    Free Member

    I’ve often wondered about this. I used to a lot of fishing and day ticket waters are commonplace – almost the equivalent to trail centres. But, theres also syndicate waters where you pay a yearly fee to have a quieter lake/river which offer the chance of bigger fish. Suppose a mountain biking equivalent may be some private woodland with something out the ordinary – something the likes of Glentress etc don’t offer. Dare I say it, something like Stainburn. It’d have to be a small scale I suspect to have any chance of getting your money back – theres no way you could buy thousands of acres of land a’la Glentress and charge people to ride. You’d also have the problems of people just riding into the woods and riding. Stainburn-esque facilitie would be easier to manage by restricting access to one point.

    Like I said though, you’d need to offer something you can’t get elsewhere. My proposal would be Stainburn but with some smoother whoopy(TM) singletrack that would be like one huge pump track – genuine singletrack though, inches wide through beautiful landscape with optional super, mega tech sections. And some jumps. You’d need to constantly be evolving the trails though so offer something different all the time.

    Sounds like it’d be really, really hard to make money out of it. Unless you did it somewhere devoid of any other decent accessable riding.

    DaveyBoyWonder
    Free Member

    Oh, and what gingerss said, I think somewhere with a range of downhill runs would stand more chance of making money, purely because in most areas of the UK, that side of the sport is less available than the XC-ish side which is already well served by world class trail centres. Hamsterley for example, have been charging people to ride the downhill runs for years and seem to be doing ok (well, they’re still around!). Plus they evolve their runs quite often I believe to offer something new regularly.

    MrAgreeable
    Full Member

    This is the only pay-to-ride XC trail* that I know of in the UK

    http://www.spirthilltrail.uk.com/

    Maybe drop them a line?

    *Yes I know Viceroys, Aston Hill etc have XC loops, but by all accounts their bread and butter is the DH/4X stuff.

    FunkyDunc
    Free Member

    Does this woodland begin with Co ? I’ve just been looking at your previous post and trying to work out where your based 8)

    I’ve often wondered if Wharncliffe would be suitable for a chair lift and charging for use of it as the majority of the riding in there, DH or XC involves climbing up a big hill! Surely if you just put in a chair lift and charged for use of that it then takes away any insurance issues as your not charging for use of the trails themselves, and it avoids the problem of people using trails and not paying.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    this place is pay to ride;

    http://www.deersleapbikes.co.uk/about-deers-leap-park.aspx

    Just south of East Grinstead in Sussex, Deers Leap Park has 240 acres of dedicated mountain bike tracks of every grade from family-friendly trails to single track and north shore in the woods.

    MrAgreeable
    Full Member

    Surely if you just put in a chair lift and charged for use of that it then takes away any insurance issues as your not charging for use of the trails themselves,

    Unfortunately not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupiers%27_Liability_Act_1957

    MrAgreeable
    Full Member

    wwaswas, I’d guess that any income from the trail at Deers Leap is secondary to income from the bike shop.

    jonba
    Free Member

    I object to paying for access. I will pay for something if there is an obvious benefit. You’d need to have proper trails and not just clear a track through the trees.

    You’d also need to keep costs low as anthing more than a fiver makes me think a bike place is expensive. I can park in the lakes for a fiver or at glentress so this is what you are competing with in my eyes (obviously if you have a captive marke then you might do better).

    Personally I think you’d do better building trails and trying to make money through other means like a cafe or shop.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    I’ve often wondered if Wharncliffe would be suitable for a chair lift

    It’s only about 100m from top to bottom! To put that in context Fort William is 600m! You’d struggle to justify an uplift transit van at Warncliffe!

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Your idea is before its time a little

    But give it a few years and trail centres will be like golf clubs – you won’t pay to get in, you pay to keep other people out. 🙂

    bajsyckel
    Full Member

    Much forestry in the UK is a commercial in one respect or another. As others suggest, very few areas could even make enough money to maintain any access infrastructure or manage the wider environment, let alone “make money” from riding. However, there have been (financial) incentives to allow access through permissive bridleway access – usually for a specified period of years. The DEFRA or Natural England websites would have details of how these operate in England. It certainly wouldn’t make you much money and is fairly similar to other environmental or “stewardship” subsidies available for other forms of landscape management (the FC have details of these – for instance the Woodland Improvement Grant, which can cover public access IIRC). If the area you are thinking of has owners who are amenable to the idea and would welcome some financial input for little additional management hassle this kind of thing could have been relatively straightforward to set up. I don’t know if these schemes are continuing though and the idea of paying to ride does not sit well with me personally.

    scu98rkr
    Free Member

    “You’d need a coincidence of captive market (no local trails, limited scope to build anything substantial, driving anywhere good a total ballache.”

    Old east Midlands Quarry perhaps ?

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    Isn’t Penshurst (PORC) pay-to-ride?

    Not sure how many people get away with just turning up and riding, it’s been years since I was there. They have a load of DH runs, a couple of jump spots, pump track etc so there’s certainly the trails to ride even though it’s a relatively small area. Car parking, cafe etc on site.

    Problem is with a random wood is controlling the access to it and making sure that there are the subsidiary bits there that people expect when they’re paying. Cafe, car parking, changing facilities etc.

    tracknicko
    Free Member

    swaffham might be your best example. TINY wood. used for enduro mx practice.

    make real money out of it i believe.

    Mugboo
    Full Member

    So, on a most basic level, the most obvious problem is that people do not want to pay to ride?

    That and it’s impossible to actually control access which means it would be trust based…

    And yes Funky

    richc
    Free Member

    No chance, it seems to be a fairly common theme on here that a lot of MTBs are too cheap to pay for parking, let alone riding trails.

    So unless you could Police it, and could manage the ‘trespassers’ who claim the shortest route is along your trails you would be stuffed.

    FunkyDunc
    Free Member

    A few problems with that wood…

    1. Where would you park
    2. Its really quite small isnt it.
    3. Ocassionaly I ride through it to link 2 nice bits of moorland, and dont want to have to pay (granted its private), but would you give me a discount for only passing through?
    4. The locals would love it as it would give them plenty of opportunity to nick expensive bikes to feed their drug habbit.

    Would the local council be more willing to do some thing on the other side of the hill where the kiddies play ground etc is?

    stever
    Free Member
    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    So, on a most basic level, the most obvious problem is that people do not want to pay to ride?

    This is a basic mindset that people have – cycling is not unlike hiking in being seen as a fundamental activity that cannot be taxed or charged. People should be free to ride their bicycles up and down the highways and byways of our sceptred isle, by God. And who here would argue with this?

    There’s some cognitive dissonance at work though – as is often mentioned, people don’t think twice about spending £50 on their bike to fix a problem, but ask for £3.50 for car-parking and it’s a major cause of hand-wringing angst. So actually I think you could over-turn the resistance to pay-to-ride quite easily if everything else was right with the trails. It’s getting the trails right and policing access issues already mentioned that would be really hard. If the development is quite small I guess that makes it easier to control.

    ianv
    Free Member

    Its too small, and it would be a struggle to create anything in it to justify charging.

    The best way a private operator can make money would be through providing an uplift, like at UK bike park or Revolution. There is no possibility for an uplift there and the runs would be too short to warrant one anyway.

    Never ever had a problem with using it anyway so I think it would be wasting your time trying to legitimise anything.

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 55 total)

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