Sorry if this has been asked before, but was at Swinley at the weekend, for the first time this year, and wondered why the new black section, which looks virtually finished, isn’t open yet. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on riding it, but it just looks as if they’ve spent a lot of time and energy on something that isn’t quite finished.

A few people say they know why but won’t say, nobody has said definitely why.

Rumour is Crown Estate are nervous about liability.

Long story short

Crown estate saw it, shit themsleves, and changed their mind and I believe its gonna be flattened, its been sitting pretty much finished for a year? now, which is stupid

I’d assumed that might be the case. If they were worried about people injuring themselves in the old jump gulley, then the possibility to go really big (in terms of injury) in the new stuff doesn’t seem like much of a solution.

Which black section? Satan’s Grotto or the free-ride area? Or is there another new bit that I’ve not seen?

Satan’s grotto AFAIK is/was open but is only black in terms of being difficult to ride cleanly (it’s more of a black graded climb).

The freeride area; TTS said they wanted some trails with jumps/drops to replace jump gully and address the issues with that. CE said OK. TTS went a bit mad with the scale of things. CE said no-chance that’s opening but no one announces anything or what the plan is moving forward.

[edit; beaten to it]

Why can’t they just knock a few feet off the jumps and/or make them roll-able?

Yes, it was the freeride area I meant. And apologies – I see this has already been discussed on another thread today!

It’s a woodland, not a theme park. There isn’t an entry fee or a gate. You may have to ride around “closed” signs, but there’s nothing stopping you adding your own tyre tracks to those clearly visible from the fire road on all those features. I assume those people weren’t arrested.

True, it’ll be awkward when you smash your face up and have to explain to the ambulance driver why you were in there…

Swinley are notoriously lackluster about closing things properly. A bit of stripey tape that rips in minutes is their limit. Other centres pur proper plastic barriers in. The number of people still riding the open sections is tribute to this, I see people exiting both tanktraps and the other one regularly despite the closures.

Thing is closing things properly is very difficult. At QE we have tried using, barriers, tape, mesh fencing and every time people ignore it, rip it down and ride through/round/over it.

So I do have a lot of sympathy for any trail building team who are trying to keep stuff closed for maintenance or build work as it’s an impossible task. Also negotiating with any body for building new trails is a slow process. I can only speak for QE where we submitted a plan over a year ago and it still isn’t agreed due to snails, changing plans within the park and possible discovery of a colony of elves. I’m sure TTS are working hard to get it open/changed but these things take time to sort out.

Swinley are notoriously lackluster about closing things properly. A bit of stripey tape that rips [/b] gets ripped down [/b]in minutes

They’ve used those big orange/green plastic pedestrian barriers, they’ve used orange barrier fencing, they’ve put logs on the trails, they’ve deliberately not finished the visible entrances to trails. Self entitled dicks will always be self entitled dicks.

The difference between Swinley and other trail centers is the volume of riders, it’s phenomenally busy compared to somewhere like Glentress, and therefore get’s more idiots.

My point was that the park bit has none of these things other than a closed sign (that I’ve seen, I’m not going near that trail even if it opens!).
The tape closing off the other trails is hopeless though, and inevitably ends up as plastic blowing around the woods choking baby birds. I went to Haldon recently who’d used solid plastic barriers so it was clearly closed even if someone did move it a bit, and nobody could easily rip it leaving the trail looking open. Also big barriers tend to encourage being properly cleared away again.
You’re right, the self entitled crowd will always go anyway. I’m happy for people to sneak into the park at their own risk and it looks like Swinley are too. I’m less happy about people using the trails closed for woodland management purposes as that does make our sport look like ignorant dicks. For this reason I’d like clearer barriers like those at Haldon.

I think people get hacked off with closures for ground nesting birds as well, so increasing the chance of them ignoring legitimate closures.

I’m sure they do, but that’s the price we pay for shared woodlands. If we don’t respect ground nesting birds we get no legitimate woodland trails like what we had before. Seems a no brainer to me 😀

I’m sure they do, but that’s the price we pay for shared woodlands. If we don’t respect ground nesting birds we get no legitimate woodland trails like what we had before. Seems a no brainer to me

yes, but what seems particularly stupid to me is that they build the trails to restrict the mountain bikers to something like 2% of the forest, so effectively increasing the safe areas for the birds, and then still shut the trails.

Seems a bit pathetic to me.

Seems a bit pathetic to me.

It did seem a bit daft clearing a section of forest that was densely packed with trails for the birds, which would then mean the trial had to be closed all summer. But then that section wasn’t native/deciduous so maybe the overall plan is like other forests, to clear the pine in section leaving areas for ground nesting birds whilst re-growing deciduous woodland. In 10-20 years that area might be quite different and somewhere else might be cleared.

Conservation/ecology obviously trumps leisure uses, otherwise it wouldn’t be countryside.

Conservation/ecology obviously trumps leisure uses, otherwise it wouldn’t be countryside.

except that they had just cleared a big section of forest, and do so regularly. They have also cleared big areas of horsell common and turned it into a swamp in places.

It goes down with the other sensible decision to only be able to hard-surface the trails with (in-organic) material taken from elsewhere in the forest, so the trails aren’t really all weather ‘cos they use that ginger rubbish.

except that they had just cleared a big section of forest, and do so regularly. They have also cleared big areas of horsell common and turned it into a swamp in places.

Biodiversity needs a diversity of habitats. Wetlands in particular are in short supply as a lot of them were drained for agriculture, towns or sea defenses. Ditto the clearing of managed woodlands to create heaths. If you did nothing the heaths would become deciduous woodlands, so you aim to create as much heath for ground nesting birds as is being succeeded (either naturally or deliberately) by forest.

Large areas of monoculture pine forest are rubbish for biodiversity, they block the light 365 days of the year and influence soil chemistry meaning you get no ground cover so you tend to find nothing lives there.

It goes down with the other sensible decision to only be able to hard-surface the trails with (in-organic) material taken from elsewhere in the forest, so the trails aren’t really all weather ‘cos they use that ginger rubbish.

They had to use material from within the forest, which is entirely sensible when cycling ceases to be the new golf (or windsurfing, remember that?) they don’t want thousands of tonnes of limestone (which in particular would mess with the soil pH, although there’s probably other reasons).

The entrances to the runs & features looked chained up to me, not something you can easily rip down without bolt cutters at least.

limestone

who said limestone?

point remains that the closing of the routes over new cleared ground is pretty pathetic. If they cleared the ground for the birds then leave it for the birds and put the trails elsewhere, and if they cleared it to make the trails then leave the trails there, don’t close them because the birds are stupid enough to avoid the other cleared areas.

A bit of stripey tape that rips in minutes is their limit

Some unofficial drops are chained off. Helps that there are trees to hang the chains from.

who said limestone?

Crushed limestone is a good material for armoring trails as it dried hard (like clay would, but unlike sand) and doesn’t turn to mud when wet (like clay would).

The point being that the ginger mush is the best they could get in the forest.

point remains that the closing of the routes over new cleared ground is pretty pathetic. If they cleared the ground for the birds then leave it for the birds and put the trails elsewhere, and if they cleared it to make the trails then leave the trails there, don’t close them because the birds are stupid enough to avoid the other cleared areas.

The (unofficial) trail was there for years before the area was cleared. Presumably the plan to clear that area was in place it was just a lack of communication of that fact by whoever deals with ecology at CE to TTS before they spent time armoring it.

The point being that the ginger mush is the best they could get in the forest.

why does it have to come from the forest ? most of that material used to much further north before some big chunk of ice dragged it down here anyway.

why does it have to come from the forest ?

Because the site is an SSSI, which among other things means you can’t just dump a load of material from elsewhere there without considering the consequences.

https://necmsi.esdm.co.uk/PDFsForWeb/Citation/1004040.pdf

most of that material used to much further north before some big chunk of ice dragged it down here anyway.

Oh we could reintroduce dinosaurs, they’d take care of those pesky ground nesting birds too

This (up there) shows the difference between short term “I want my fun and I want it now” thinking and long term sustainable habitat management. In 5 or 10 years the young saplings will be big enough to mean the ground nesters move to a new cleared site and the trail starts to run through woodland again. That’s not long in the life cycle of a forest.

To balance the whingers I think they’re doing a good job of clearing the rhodies while avoiding both official and unofficial trails – it’d be a lot easier to just allow collateral damage to the trails while they’re working but they seem to be making an effort to keep the network open as much as possible.

They’re not clearing for birds. It’s a working forest harvested periodically. You’ll notice that the closed sections tend to be reused old trails not new builds, as they try and avoid building new stuff in somewhere due for harvesting soon, but reused trails have a random shelf life on them. Once the trees are harvested the SSSI takes precedence over mtb each summer until the trees reach a certain height again. That’s the govt’s rules not crown estate kicking in.

Are people really using it?

[url=https://flic.kr/p/VjPGu2]Tape[/url] by Alpine160, on Flickr

Going back to the original question, I heard the story that the freeride area was opened for bike magazine journalists, one of whom took a big tumble. That incident made Crown Estate get a bit nervous. Could just be a made-up story though……………

Speaking to a friend who helped build it, the original issue with jump gulley, was access, it was very difficult to get an ambulance to people there, the reason the new “freeride” section is near the visitors centre and alongside a large fireroad is access, but due to the number of people that broke themselves riding jump gulley and tried to sue Crown Estate, Crown Estate are now nervous about the features there and funding isn’t really forthcoming either.

That’s the govt’s rules not crown estate kicking in.

With all the ‘Crown Estate’ getting nervous / being sued comments coming up it’s probably worth noting that the Crown Estate is a government department, not a mysterious royal entity.

Going back to the original question, I heard the story that the freeride area was opened for bike magazine journalists, one of whom took a big tumble. That incident made Crown Estate get a bit nervous. Could just be a made-up story though……………

I heard similar, broken back I think? I also heard that the plan was for progressively larger jumps leading up to the one pictured above to deter those who wouldn’t make it. These needed to be built after the bigger stuff due to digger access etc but once the above happened, it was all put on hold.

With all the ‘Crown Estate’ getting nervous / being sued comments coming up it’s probably worth noting that the Crown Estate is a government department, not a mysterious royal entity.

Nope pretty sure it is a mysterious royal entity 😕 Wrapped up in the weird history of Monarch owned but passed control type things.

Like Jersey & Ships caught display skull & crossbones

With all the ‘Crown Estate’ getting nervous / being sued comments coming up it’s probably worth noting that the Crown Estate is a government department, not a mysterious royal entity.

Were there any successful attempts to sue CE?