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Both interesting and concerning in equal measure.
Ref to wholly irrelevant incidents is ballix by the council. How many pedestrians killed by iegslly driven cars around the country ? That by the same logic should mean banning all cars, trucks etc.
It does also show how Strava is a own goal.
Fight for universal open access not crumbs…
I am with you on that. Though i maintain that setting traps to ensnare yourself along the way is not a particularly bright thing to do. Which is what Strava does, like it or not.
It seems the Council have been fair but whether we like it or not there are more than mountain bikers using the countryside. However, the examples of reckless cycling shows they couldn’t find any at CHCP. The Council won’t want to consider a financial solution (I’m surprised they were even considering one a few years ago) due to today’s economics.
The bikers should attend the Council meetings if they haven’t already and work with them developing a realistic cost effective solution. It may mean raising the funds themselves with the Coucils blessing and reassurance any projects are seen through
Dannyh – totally with you on that, I’ve stopped using Strava, but must confess to having ridden many illegal trails as fast as I could in years gone by. Does anyone know if you delete your Strava account does it delete your times etc info too?
Banning MTBs wont stop the people who’ve built and rode there from continuing. It may put off the hordes of Stava using noobs who probably don’t know where the proper trails are and therefore end up bombing down the paths.
What pissed me off the most was that Welsh trailbuilding Knight saying Cave Hill isn’t suitable for MTB. It’s like saying Fort Bill is unsuitable! He rated every trail he was shown as black/double black. That’s what we build and ride. So instead they built a few kms of blue runs on flat ground. That’s great for beginners but did nothing for the riders who’d been campaigning for proper trails for years. Rowen Sorrel or Phil Saxena would have a field day if let loose up the hill.
I’ll not mention the 6 months of hard work spent building a prime jump spot that was destroyed a week after the Welsh fella was shown it. Or the £80k spent rebuilding them to council standard (i.e. shite!)
For me dannyh has hit the nail on the head. If you want to build trails and you want to keep them then they have to be secret. That means no Strava; careful planning of trail heads and exits and don’t use or cross FP’s. If you can’t stick to those rules then expect to have your trails destroyed and don’t whine they are.
I used to live near Nannerch in N.Wales and I would ride the ‘Scousers Trails’ on FC land there. They weren’t sanctioned by the FC and for its time they were pretty extreme (probably still a black run now) but the FC turned a blind eye and let us get on with it. That was until gap jumps over fire roads where people walk appeared and surprise, surprise not long after that the trails were demolished.
As Euro says, I think the issue is the council assuming that a mountain biker is a mountain biker and a trail is a trail. I’ve not ridden the Mary Peters trails (the official “replacement” for Cave Hill) but they look like they’re geared to beginners to put it mildly.
If you want to ride technical trails then the options around Belfast all involve a drive of an hour or so, from a city with some of the worst traffic congestion in the UK. So it’s no surprise that people are building and riding closer to home, and will probably continue to do so regardless of bans.
@jim the saint – That wasn’t the end of the story though because after the Scouse Tracks were demolished the FC worked with local riders to establish official trails at Foel Gasnach, which are still going today.
Would it not be better overall to avoid breaking the rules currently in place while working towards getting them improved?
The council is not there to prevent people having fun. It’s primarily concerned with not getting sued (in the event of accidents/injuries).
The suggestion of ‘carry on breaking the rules but keep it secret’ does come across as irresponsible, at best.
It could be argued that technically Strava doesn’t prove use of a path by a bicycle, it just proves that someone has followed a certain route in some manner and recorded it… I could set some pretty stonking times on road routes on my motorbike I’m sure!
open access and building dh style trails are two completely different arguments but i’m not sure what the issue is here.
sounds like locals building trails that the council then (as usual) declares them unsafe and removes them.
I want open access. I want to ride legally anywhere that has public access.
I enjoy riding local, handbuilt trails (second only to going up an actual mountain I reckon) but thye need to keep a low profile and be away from other users as much as possible.
if its under the radar it remains so. as soon as your mixing with dog walkers and horses all hell breaks loose if you ride like a plonker..!!
To be fair to ‘the Welsh trail building knight’ it does depend what he was asked for. If the Council were behind his work, ‘a few Kms of blue’ probably resulted from a need to consider more than just the Trail Gods. Given the level of engagement it seems odd that the needs of more experienced riders were ignored, I imagine there’s a lot more that deep local knowledge would be needed for going on here.
It does sound like the Strava data is what has really knackered the case though. If the local riders wanted to show they could coexist responsibly with other users in the CP then posting evidence of razzing down the footpaths was pretty dumb.
Sadly this is exactly what people were warning about back when Strava was a new thing. If you’re riding somewhere you shouldn’t be, posting Strava is asking for trouble. “If it’s not on Strava it didn’t happen” goes both ways.