Took an early bath from work yesterday afternoon as it was too sunny, and rode Glentress and Innerleithen for the first time in a wee while.

For some unknown (to me anyway) reason, they have strimmed the edges of what seems like the entire trail network – must be 20km+ of strimming!!

Thoughts
– How long did that take?
– How much did that cost?
– What benefit?
– WHY?

We all know these are man-made trails, but why this “manicuring”? They have blasted through grass, foxgloves, bracken – everything? Instead of riding lovely woodland trails with glass flicking the ends of the handlebars, we have what looks like a canal towpath with dead flowers littering the verge. And the bits that were strimmed a few days ago are covered in this dead brown grass which resembles riding through a cut hay field.

Bizarre – I just don’t get it. Why bother spending countless hours? It’s not like the Glentress trails are in danger of being overgrown!

You didn’t trigger the swear filter. Not one random cap. You failed to blame anyone for this. Let alone threaten a horrible lynch mob vengeance. Overall – Lucid and well put with no obvious spelling or grammatical errors.

Therefore E-. Very poor I’m afraid

Possibly because this year it’s

g[r]ass flicking the ends of the handlebars

this year but next year it’ll be considerably closer 😉

Screw it anyway, if you’re riding so slow as to “enjoy” the foliage you’re not riding fast enough 😉

I didn’t wake up until well gone 9am today. The arborists are bring down trees outside and the noises were strangely soothing. Eggs for breakfast, I think…

Sounds like proactive maintenance. Which is a good thing, long term.

Arrrgghhh! Was just about to head down that way to flick my handlebar ends off some grass but now it’d seem I’d be wasting my time!

Thanks for the heads up Dazzlingboy…

Brill..
they were doing it the other week as well.

I love the smell of fresh cut grass.

the b@stards

The Horror!! There are families in Norway wondering how you cope

Succession.

Can’t imagine that strimming the grass shorter will do much to preserve the trail, I have to say. It’s only gonna grow back again in the same place. Verge creep happens low down on the ground imo.

I disagree. This isn’t just grass it’s all sorts of semi-wild vegetation. Keep the vegetation back a bit and the riders will usually counteract most “verge creep”. Several years of growth will significantly impact a trail, all other conditions being equal. Some plants are buggers as well for establishing at the side of trails and then encroaching e.g. gorse, bramble etc. Give ’em a good hard cut and, whilst looking a bit harsh at first, things will stay clearer for longer.

It’s all an action to destroy the wildlife that thrives on these areas.
Once there is no more wild life, the green spaces die off thus opening up more land for development and continuation of the earths destruction.

Or

By clearing verges, visibility is increased so that those riding the trails for the first time can go faster as they can see further ahead encouraging proper trail reading technique. IMO
As we know, these trails are used by more than just experienced riders. Less experienced/able riders are likely to come into difficulty should they not be able to read the trail, so a cautionary verge cutting would ease the risk of accident, therefore claims

Maybe!

There’s plenty of natural trails out there if you need to feel the glass flicking your bars..

Or

The latest craze in 1000mm bars has necessitated wider trails?

Seems I’ve been subtly outranted by some of the replies!

I can’t for a second believe that verge creep (never heard that before) is a risk at Glentress!! And does anyone need the trails cleared so they can read the corners?

I still think it looks cack though.

meh – minor in the scale of things but 3 hours of riding through cut grass – makes you, well, makes me think.

If they fancy coming down my way and hacking back some of the nettles that have over grown half of what I ride that’d be nice- fed up of the post ride nettle afterglow. The downside of being just about the only person to use the trails I guess – I would have thought the amount of “traffic” through GT would have naturally kept it in abeyance.

Blame it on the new Peel centre, it’s seems to be the cause of the worlds problems by all accounts 😥

Blame it on the new Peel centre, it’s seems to be the cause of the worlds problems by all accounts

Dunno bout that, but have noticed that the “old” cafe is constantly rammed, while the new one has tumbleweed and a slight air of desperation.

I can’t for a second believe that verge creep (never heard that before) is a risk at Glentress!

It does happen, even at Glentress. There’s been a few occasions when I’ve been doing trail maintenance at a Trailfairies session and the actual edge of the trail as built hasn’t been where I’d expected it to be. This is partly deliberate. Some trails are built wide with the expectation that narrower ride lines will form and verge creep will reduce the width of the trail. Presumably the Rangers don’t want creep to reduce the trail widths too much in all places.

We have local man mdae downhill trails which since the first one wwas built (about 7 years ago) as a trail that was at least 2 metres wide (plus ‘verges’) are now just rideable once spring growth kicks in. It’s only in the last 2 Summers that we’ve proactively strimmed the scrub from the sides of these trails so I’d say some preventative cutting back is wise in principle.

‘sfunny you’d have thought that 300k riders or whatever it’s risen to now would have thwacked their way through everything within a 2m radius 😉

Seems to be a lot of money being made available to stitch the Tweed offering together:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-14278558

I quite like the brambles that filck the bends in my arms and leave the beautiful multipul scratch marks.

Bring out the agent orange!!!

Any body know where i can source some?

the bends in my arms

Your elbows????