Welsh Cycling Industry Unites Against Welsh Trail Centre Closures

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Over 90 separate Welsh cycling organisations have today co-signed a letter to Welsh Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs, Huw Irranca-Davies MS, concerning the NRW Proposal for Organisational Change and its impact on communities across Wales. (Irranca-Davies is Welsh Government’s Minister responsible for Natural Resources Wales).

The organisations and companies involved – everyone from governing body, Beicio Cymru (formerly Welsh Cycling), Cycling UK and the UK MTB Trail Alliance to small, local trail groups like Brechfa MTB and Risca Riders – have listed in the letter their concerns about the current state of NRW funding, its apparent inability to deal with volunteer groups to help itself in this and the Welsh cycling and holiday industry’s concerns about the future of ALL mountain bike trails in Welsh forests, whether sanctioned or not.

All this is pitched against the looming deadline of the NRW’s impending board meeting on September 25th, where much of the fate of trail centres like Coed y Brenin seem to hang in the balance.

You can download and read the full letter here:

There’s a fork in the trail…

Although there has already been a petition with over 13,000 signatures against the potential closure of Coed y Brenin and Nant yr Arian trail centres (enough to guarantee that it gets debated in the Welsh Assembly), the likes of the newly formed UK MTB Alliance are trying hard to get pressure on the decision-makers before NRW turns its back on the mountain bikers that use its forests daily, whether on sanctioned trails or not…

“It’s amazing to see how Wales’ mountain bike community have come together to voice their concerns about NRW’s cuts and the devastating effect they would have on riders, communities and businesses across Wales. Trails in Wales, and across the UK, face a crisis, with little to no money for ongoing maintenance or improvement. Volunteer groups are primed to help, but NRW and other public sector bodies need to radically simplify the way they work with volunteers to allow this to happen. We call on the Welsh Government to reconsider, and to implement our five asks.”

Robin Grant, Chair, UK MTB Trail Alliance

The Five Asks

The letter has five requests that it wants the minister to consider before NRW’s board meeting in a couple of weeks. While you should read the whole letter, here are the requests in brief:

We call on the Welsh Government to direct NRW to:

  1. Align actions and budgets with the Well-being of Future Generations Act, ensuring that decisions made today do not compromise the ability of future generations to enjoy the health and access to natural heritage benefits that mountain bike trails provide. There needs to be a sustainable, meaningful and ongoing investment into the maintenance and development of NRW’s existing mountain bike trails.
  1. Just as importantly, ask NRW to radically change its approach to working with volunteer groups, cutting their internal red tape that’s blocking them from doing so currently, or if not, to look at different models to mitigate the liability risk of mountain bike trails on their land (we have some ideas to suggest here). If it can do this, there are volunteer groups standing by all over Wales (the UK MTB Trail Alliance has over 25 member groups in Wales), ready to not just help maintain and develop community-built trails but also those managed and run by NRW, which would obviously help compensate for the finite financial resources available for their maintenance and development.
  1. Ensure no decision is taken to close visitor centres, even temporarily, while partners are found to run them, or if they are, then to ensure the tender and contract processes are expedited so the centres are closed only for a very short time. The finances of NRW need to be considered in the context of the wider impact on the economies of the local areas around the centres, and how it will impact the Welsh Government’s ambition to grow adventure tourism.
  1. We also urge you to ensure NRW properly consider local community groups as candidate partners to take on the running of these centres, and to make allowances for the fact they will be newly formed and immature entities created in reaction to the potential closing of their local visitor centre. They should not be expected to meet the same criteria that NRW would expect of a normal commercial partner.

5. Improve access to the outdoors: The budgetary issues that NRW face, and the subsequent impacts on outdoor recreation opportunities, help shine a light on access issues in Wales. We ask that the Access Reform Programme be unfrozen, prioritised and included within the current Programme for Government. Access reform offers a unique opportunity to open up access and recreation opportunities all over Wales with comparatively little budgetary outlay, to at least partially compensate for the inevitably reduced NRW recreation offering and ensure future generations can access the unique landscapes of Wales. This could also be an opportunity to legislate for a reduced level of occupier liability on access land in Wales (perhaps modelled on how this works for the coastal margin in England), which, as well as making access reform a much easier sell to private landowners, would also almost entirely remove the liability risk the Welsh Government is exposed to on all of the access land it is the occupier of (including NRW land). If responsible right-to-roam laws can exist in Scotland, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and even Belarus, why not in Wales? Now is the time to change this.

Coed y brenin
It was only eight years ago that Coed Y Brenin was opening new trails and skills parks like this…

So, what can we do, then?

The organisers of the letter seem confident that government processes will ensure that the letter gets seen and will hopefully result in a face-to-face meeting with the Minister ahead of the NRW board meeting. So, while now is not the time to get the pitchforks and online letter writing campaigns out, those times may come to pass if nothing comes of it.

What you can do, is consider donating to the (volunteer-run) UK MTB Trail Alliance as it looks like it’s going to have a lot of work ahead of it, regardless of which way the NRW meeting goes. If you’re a Welsh resident, it might be worth finding out how your local MP views the current situation and, nationally, the cycling world needs to be prepared to defend the cycling rights we currently have and enjoy as it no longer seems that we can rely on always having them.

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Home Forums Welsh Cycling Industry Unites Against Welsh Trail Centre Closures

Viewing 12 posts - 41 through 52 (of 52 total)
  • Welsh Cycling Industry Unites Against Welsh Trail Centre Closures
  • 1
    finephilly
    Free Member

    It’s a fair point about shops / distributors and manufacturers not being consulted about the letter. Whilst not directly affected, i’m sure manufacturers would be concerned about the health of trails.
    However, i disagree that 3rd sector organisations are looking for a handout. What is being requested is for investment in public infrastructure for health and recreation which anyone can use. Who isn’t interested in that? Especially when the cost of continuing trail provision (by maintenance of existing routes, tender the cafe and shop, employ a local ranger/small team for day to day management) is relatively low when spread across a large population/ from NRW or general taxation.

    Anyone who thinks maintaining leisure access from public money is a wasteful, needs to wake up and apologise.

    thegeneralist
    Free Member

    Problem is that it comes from a different, and future, budget….

    So they ain’t going to give leisure and rec more money now to save money in health later on.

    Crazy, but…

    1
    Gribs
    Full Member

    I recently had a week and a half on holiday in Wales. On the Wednesday we drove down to South Wales and on the way stopped at the Forest of Dean. It was busy. There was a decent choice of trails that seemed in generally good condition and the cafe had food. After a couple of days at BPW we were heading to North Wales so called in to Nant Yr Arian as it seemed a good spot to break up the journey for lunch and a ride. The cafe was shut (on a sunny Saturday ffs). We rode the red route anyway which was pleasant enough but very old school xc and it’s elevation was 30% higher than stated on the trail map. There were far more people there to look at the red kites than riding.

    FunkyDunc
    Free Member

    I’m in the camp of the mtb industry has decided its direction which is bike parks and uplift, and big travel / capable bikes

    The industry is now geared up to people who don’t do the sport for fitness reasons. Plus riding round a trail centre on YouTube looks boring compared to someone going down a manicured burned bike park jump line.

    Llandegla IMO has stolen most of CyB footfall. It’s close to Manc and Liverpool, why would you keep going another 1hr +

    What I don’t understand is why bike parks don’t have more XC/Trail riding integrated in to them. Revolutions Bike Park said they were going to but no sign of it yet, Dyfi could do and create a massive area combined with the other stuff near by.

    The fact is many people don’t want it, or are prepared to pay for it

    Re reversing budget cuts, I’m not sure. What other services would be cut instead?

    Bruce
    Full Member

    I think that when CYB was first opened there was a shortage of legitimate riding in North Wales. I always enjoyed riding there as it used to be fun with swooping, flowing single track. Then as suspension bikes became more of a thing two things happened. The original cafe was closed and moved across the road as well as the trails becoming rockier to provide more thrills for people with 130mm full sus bikes.

    That was the point my partner stopped enjoying trail centres and we ceased to go. I would sometimes go on my own until I got rammed by a knob on an ebike.

    I will never go to a bike park as it’s not what I do and I am sure that lots of people enjoy them and have a great time. The problem is there are relativly few and from the photos I have seen they are a blot on the landscape.

    I can easily drive to LLandeglla and ride but it’s packed and and not that great to ride. CYB is a long way from population centres although I would consider riding their gravel trails. I would never go that often to ride gravel.

    We now ride mixed road and limited offroad locally and with occaisional trips to ride in the Lakes, Peak District and Dales to limit our environmental impact. If we go to Scotland we will take bikes and ride while we are away which make me envious of the people who live there as the scope for riding is massive.

    Maybe it’s time to decide that CYB has had it’s day and build facilities for cycling near local communities with the money.

    Where I live the council with British cycling built a pump track in the park which is a huge sucess may be local facilities in Wales might work better. Cycling facilities should be about local kids not just people who have transport and long travel bikes.

    1
    jameso
    Full Member

    I’m in the camp of the mtb industry has decided its direction which is bike parks and uplift, and big travel / capable bikes

    The industry is now geared up to people who don’t do the sport for fitness reasons.

    I’m going OT but The Industry’s influence and what people want & buy are 2 parts of the same thing – consumer demand. We can all buy XC 120mm lightweight FS bikes if we want them but still they don’t sell that well. Bigger bikes, E-FS etc are what sells so that’s where the efforts are focussed. I said a while back that MTB would be a powered sport in time and while oc it won’t become exclusively electric, the trend in that direction is strong. 90%+ of the bikes at the last trail centre I rode at were e-bikes. Though there’s still plenty of us who like to pedal, popular MTB culture isn’t really pedalling culture like it is in road and gravel.

    Perhaps trail centres should cater more for e-bike use, perhaps that makes it too specialist based on the price of E-MTBs. Not sure on that one tbh.

    What I don’t understand is why bike parks don’t have more XC/Trail riding integrated in to them.

    I think XC riders have a more old-school get-out-there attitude, they’re more likely to ride a mix of trails and byways in any area and less likely to travel to do a loop? More likely to be happy riding natural rails or loops that take in teh good stuff in an area. I used to live near Aston Hill and in 10 years I rode the XC loop maybe 5 times but rode natural trails in the area 10hrs+ a week year round. And there’s trails like C-UKs Traws Eryi to cater for longer ride aspirations, I expect we’ll see more of those pre-mapped longer distance trails with route guides published.

    jameso
    Full Member

    Are you just staying the obvious or do you mean ” a good trail remains a good trail even as time passes by”?

    If so then it’s patently obviously bollocks, because the bar for good trail rises hugely as time goes on..

    Only if we see MTB as all about progression and going bigger/faster etc. See my previous point about the bigger/harder/gnarrer influence in MTB or road sportives etc. It’s only one way of seeing riding. I’d enjoy the original Afan trails as much today as I did then, on a bike I ride now. There’s also BPW for another day’s riding.

    1
    Del
    Full Member

    it’s patently obviously bollocks

    No, it’s an opinion. You appear to be confusing your opinion with objective fact

    thegeneralist
    Free Member

    1) Sorry for my rudeness.

    Coming back to the discussion…

    Only if we see MTB as all about progression and going bigger/faster etc. See my previous point about the bigger/harder/gnarrer influence in MTB or road sportives etc.

    I don’t think that’s the case here. I wasn’t saying tht CyB isn’t gnarly enough, I was saying it is neither gnarrrly enough nor flowy/ jumpy enough. It sort of sits in the middle in this no man’s land…. The Red Bull in particular is rocky and twisty enough to require a fair bit of control and effort, but not gnadgery enough to give satisfaction. On the other hand there are minimal flow sections on it and hardly any decent jumps. There’s loads of fire road downhills, but enough gnarr to preclude a gravel bike.

    MBR has that awesome jumpy section, but it’s a long slog to get to for someone whose main goal is jumps.

    The Beast has a reasonable length, especially if combined with Red bull, and that’s CyB’s main plus…. Long interesting XC at a semi consistent difficulty without having to navigate.

    It’s got nice scenery, and nice views, but by no means epic. If you want long epic XC, and are willing to navigate, and surf the internet, then there’s loads better.

    2
    Clover
    Full Member

    Interesting though the debate about whether CyB trails are any good is, there’s a basic mismanagement issue

    The bike shop is independent, run well and does ok on the current visitor numbers.

    The parking and cafe is run by NRW who don’t seem to be good at getting money in eg:

    Car park machines regularly out of action – leaving a major part of the site’s income on the floor (& no there isn’t a penalty for the provider)

    Cafe run badly (see comments above about opening hours, food selection etc) also leaving income for the taking.

    Get those sorted by people who know and are invested in the area and the financial picture would look different and enable better trail upkeep and development.

    chakaping
    Full Member

    Totally agree.

    Hope the community interest company being mooted does get off the ground.

    As I said on a previous page, it’s not going to suddenly become a goldmine, so get a sustainable solution in place now.

    Ambrose
    Full Member

    Curveball.

    Do NRW or any other similar bodies have an advertising presence?

    If I was Mr and Mrs Average with 2.1 kids on holiday and I saw something like CyB being advertised I think that I might be tempted to give it a go.

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