Singletrack Issue 151: Ydyn ni bron yna?

Chipps wonders what happened to the Welsh Government’s promises for a more accessible outdoors for all.

Words Chipps Photography Amanda

*Ydyn ni bron yna? = Are we almost there?

A few short years ago, the mountain biking public was hopeful that it would soon be seeing a ‘Scotland-style’ increase in Welsh access rights to the countryside and a legitimisation of many of the ‘illegal’ rider-built trails in its woods. Bold statements from Welsh ministers in 2019 said things like: “An accessible countryside supports our efforts to boost Wales as a tourism destination and a magnet for walkers, cyclists and thrill-seekers.” Since then, things seem to have gone quiet so I set out to find out more about the state of trails in Wales from some of the people behind the proposed changes.

Thrill seeking

On the back of several consultations which showed that the public was behind such an idea, in 2019 the Welsh Assembly promised to improve access for users of the countryside. There were high hopes at the time for a massive change in how local riders and visitors would be able to use and enjoy the countryside. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic, Brexit and a general tanking of the economy have combined with the inevitable snail’s pace of governmental process to make it appear that nothing has happened in the last five years.

However, there has been much going on behind the scenes, both on the side of the Welsh Assembly, Natural Resources Wales (henceforth NRW) and trail builders and trail advocates. Much of it has been in the form of tedious paperwork and consultations, rather than exciting berm-building and gate opening, but according to the folks I spoke to, some good things are coming. Eventually. 

Trees and countryside. Not the same. 

There are two important things at play, though, and it’s important to differentiate the two: one is in the management of illegal/rider-built trails in woodland, many of which appeared during the Covid lockdowns. The other is the suggestion that Wales moves towards a more Scottish-style open access to the countryside. While related in spirit, the two aims are separate as far as legislation and progress goes: the issue of illegal trails concerns for the most part NRW forests and can be directly managed, as NRW is effectively the landowner. Meanwhile, the creation or promotion of new bridleways and access across private and public land in Wales, Scottish style, is a much, much bigger issue and needs enthusiasm for change from the Welsh Government. 

Trail collectives, Covid, Brexit and sketchy trails in the woods.

Wherever there are woods, there will be kids* building trails in them. Historically, a few berms and jumps have been easy to ignore, or hard to find, and they’ve not been too much of an issue. However, in recent years, these ‘pirate’ trails have become longer, steeper, better built and, more importantly, easier to find – whether on Strava and Trailforks or in videos, photos and via emails, web posts and social media. 

And then came Covid. With travel restricted and people’s riding radii reduced to a local five miles or so, there was a boom in unofficial trail digging during lockdown. Some were temporary and are already growing over, but other trails were well-built, long, fun and have been incorporated into many riders’ trail encyclopaedias. From the position of the local rider, this was great, as there was no need for a road trip (now increasingly expensive) and local trails could answer the need for steeper/harder/faster thrills that existing bridleways (and even footpaths) might not offer. 

During Covid lockdowns, David Liddy, who advises NRW about visitor management, found himself in the middle of an ‘explosion’ of unofficial trails. He commissioned research into these new trails, using Strava heatmaps, Trailforks and all of the other tools that riders themselves use, to discover the extent of the trails built on NRW land, and found some astounding figures. NRW manages 560km of professionally built, waymarked mountain bike trails in its woodlands, (nearly all financed by the European Union, pre-Brexit) and he estimated there was now a further 250km or so of new trails that had appeared in the last decade, with the majority around the Covid years. 

Liddy was already creating a policy for NRW to be able to manage unofficial trails on its land and with tools like Strava giving him accurate numbers of how many different riders did how many runs on each trail, he could risk assess them and give some idea of the hotspots. In some cases, a couple of trails were seeing 20 or so riders a month – easy enough to ignore – but bigger trails built in more popular or accessible areas were racking up thousands of runs from hundreds of riders. From NRW’s perspective, concerned about public and rider safety, something clearly needed to be done to try to manage this.

Dave Evans is a mountain bike guide and trail builder, but by his reckoning, most of the time he has ‘the most boring job in mountain biking’ because he is often the guy reading policy manuals from NRW, preparing risk assessments and drafting trail management proposals. It might be dull, but without people like Dave, nothing is going to progress. 

In the same way that the UCI or the IOC will only deal with national governing bodies of sports, so NRW and local governments have a very well-defined process when it comes to managing their trails and their lands. They’re simply not set up to deal with an enthusiastic trail crew in hoodies – they need risk assessments and timelines in years rather than ‘by the next sunny weekend would be great’. People like Dave and the North Wales Trail Collective’s Kath Goodey help bridge those gaps between jibbers and foresters. Ironically, in many cases, the forestry managers tasked with this new openness are the same ones who were previously tasked with shutting down home-built trails on their patches. 

One thing that Dave Evans reckons has helped change NRW’s attitude to home-built trails is a move to an outlook of  ‘Volenti non fit injuria’ – ‘to a willing person, injury is not done’. This gratuitous bit of Latin means that if a rider has enough information to decide whether a trail is for them, and they have deliberately chosen to ride it, then the landowner can’t be held responsible. This puts the responsibility on the rider, rather than the trail builder or the landowner and, as long as the trail can’t be accidentally ridden while doing, say, the blue loop at a trail centre, and it doesn’t end with a huck to flat onto either the A470 or the children’s petting zoo, then it stands a chance of being managed. From a snow sports angle, NRW is creating virtual ‘You are now leaving the limit of maintained trails, proceed at your own risk’ areas of off-piste trails. 

Let’s dig! Oh, wait… 

Note that I say ‘managed’. This isn’t an open-season call to anyone with a spade to come and dig. It means that NRW is aiming to take a snapshot of where the current state is with rider-built trails and try to manage them. As Kath Goodey points out, it’s currently actually illegal for trail builders to try to maintain the trails they’ve already built and, in order to get that access, there are some sacrifices to be made.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your outlook, most of the sacrifices are in time and paperwork. NRW has identified ten or twelve ‘hotspots’ of trail building around Wales and is aiming to work with those groups to legitimise their trails. For someone like Kath and the North Wales Trail Collective, this probably ‘only’ involves a dozen trails (a similar amount that the Tweed Valley Trails Association is looking to manage). In some cases the trail builders are aghast at the idea of having their trails ‘managed’, but NRW is keen to do it as subtly as possible. 

In addition to ensuring that little Billy won’t accidentally ride down it thinking that it’s a legit blue forest trail, and equally ensuring that it doesn’t plough down a footpath or through a nature reserve, the trail needs to be built sustainably enough to prevent erosion and ‘ribboning’ of the hillsides. NRW is encouraging the trails to be listed on the Trailforks app, so that as much information as possible is available to the rider; they can do their own research – and the ‘wiki’ nature of Trailforks will mean that trails find a consensus of difficulty as riders add their own comments on how hard or easy it actually is.  

One other concern that Kath’s builders have is that ‘less skilled, less stoked and less awesome’ riders will come and ruin their trails if they’re made more public. To this, NRW’s Dave Liddy points out that these ‘secret’ trails are still built on public land which is there for all to enjoy. And, besides, there are no secrets in the woods any more – which is why NRW is taking a management approach, rather than one of destruction. 

Let’s ride! Oh, wait…

This is all good news for riders looking to ride more off-piste, hand-cut trails and there’s a real momentum to get things sorted. However, it all takes time. Kath Goodey, Dave Evans and their volunteers have spent the last 18 months assembling massive folders of documents, site drawings and risk assessments for the trails that they’re hoping to get approved. NRW then gets six weeks to pick those plans apart, perhaps sending them back for reworking, and then, eventually, the working groups can start maintaining and cataloguing their trails knowing that only the ‘right’ riders will be wanting to ride them. It may be slow, but it’s happening. Unlike perhaps the widening of Welsh trail access… 

Ride where you like. No, we didn’t mean that.

This second issue, that of improved public rights of way, is understandably more complicated and deserves its own extended feature another time. Currently cyclists (and horse riders) in Wales still only have access to 22% of the rights of way network and the whole country suffers from the same parish-by-parish inconsistencies in recording trails that England has. Despite commitment from the Welsh Government in 2019, a lot less has happened here than on NRW’s land and progress has actually stalled, which recently prompted Cycling UK to relaunch its ‘Trails for Wales’ campaign with the addition of ‘…we can’t afford to wait’.’

As Sam Jones from Cycling UK states: “We’re not calling for full-scale open access like in Scotland, but a single classification of trail that removes the barrier and stigma of footpath, bridleway, byway, etc., and where riding is restricted on a case-by-case basis – say for instance where there’s a high risk of erosion and environmental damage.

 “Opponents to this want the far more restrictive and labour-intensive access on a case-by-case basis, which would take too long, cost too much to implement and is pretty much no change at all. As part of a wider coalition we wrote to the minister in charge suggesting they can even begin trials on government-owned land without the need for legislation… but you’ve guessed it… no response. Yet.”

So… trails in Wales then? When?

Not immediately, is the short answer. However, what might not be obvious from our position is that there’s been a whole load of work going on behind the scenes in the last five years. Admittedly, there’s also been a certain amount of ‘volunteer fatigue’ going on, and some exasperation that the Welsh Government has seemingly forgotten its bullish words to campaign for better bike (and horse, and kayak, and climbing) access in Wales. Realistically, big change won’t happen soon, and (for better or worse) every election cycle brings newly elected officials with new agendas, but if those agendas line up, then the work has already been done and can be continued. 

We can’t count on seeing free access across Wales any time soon, but we should hopefully get a few more sanctioned off-piste options in the not-too-distant future. When that happens, and you’re shredding your way down a trail, give a thought not just to the trail builders with their spades and wheelbarrows but to the legal and logistics crews as well, with their risk assessments and spreadsheets. It’ll have taken a lot of paper and pen pushing to give that trail a sustainable life ahead of it.

Thanks to: Dave Liddy, Visitor Management Advisor NRW; Kath Goodey, Trail Collective North Wales; Dave Evans, Bike Corris; Phill Stasiw, MTB Wales; Andy Braund, Trail Ranger NRW North Wales; Sam Jones, Cycling UK.