[Closed] a year on, dartmoor is still lousy for off road

I'm not fekkin havin this.

the bellever rock garden, prince town loop, lustleigh cleave, coombe down and i could go on, are all awesome

morpheus banging on about this again - go back to sleep 🙂

Morpheus, dartmoor_rocks, buzz-lightyear, - I get the feeling I might be about to open a can of worms- can you tell me more? I sometimes visit Plymouth and have often wondered about riding on Dartmoor...

I somehow get the feeling that there might be loads of potential that is somehow forbidden? But I could also be very wrong.

Horrible place wouldnt [url= http://paul-knott.fotopic.net/c1733110.html ]catch me[/url] there.

there is some good riding here but its a distant second to the quantocks....

Dartmoor and Exmoor both come a distant second to the Quantocks 😉

i know. its the only thing i miss about living in taunton.

Sorry dibbs but Exmoor is at least equal to the Q's, just in a different way and you need to know it well else it's just HARD work. 🙂

I think it's rubbish because of :-

the lack of variety,
the abscence of technical difficulty,
the very low height,
the feeling of being cramped in,
knowing that every single trail has been noted and ridden,
not having anything there that scares the beejeesus out of you,
not having miles of sweet singletrack,
not having anything to test you physically,
being really ugly to look at,
not being able to ride somewhere in the park all year,
having huge crowds getting in each other's way and on each other's nerves,
there's no uplift,
it's nothing like a trail centre.

For all of these reasons and many more, Dartmoor is rubbish and as others have pointed out, nowhere near as awesome as it's near neighbours.

you forgot to mention the rain....

good point, that's specific to dartmoor.

the latest off road map update has no new significant routes

If it's the official park authority map that I'm thinking of its a ****in' nightmare to read/interpret anyway. And if you try to piece together a Dartmoor ride on unknown territory by looking at BWs, tracks, etc on an OS map you don't know what you're going to be riding(or walking) over.

There's plenty up on the moor, most of which I've been shown by other riders. That's the way to do it if you want to see whats up there.

IMO the National Park Authority doesn't want to encourage too much riding up there and this is reflected in the content of the pathetic, crappy migraine of a map they put out. So in a sense, you're right Morpheus.

I think it's rubbish because of :-

the lack of variety,
the abscence of technical difficulty,
the very low height,
the feeling of being cramped in,
knowing that every single trail has been noted and ridden,
not having anything there that scares the beejeesus out of you,
not having miles of sweet singletrack,
not having anything to test you physically,
being really ugly to look at,
not being able to ride somewhere in the park all year,
having huge crowds getting in each other's way and on each other's nerves,
there's no uplift,
it's nothing like a trail centre.

For all of these reasons and many more, Dartmoor is rubbish and as others have pointed out, nowhere near as awesome as it's near neighbours.

[img] http://www.ratemyeverything.net/image/21230/0/Not_sure_if_your_serious.ashx [/img]

of course its not serious. woody always gets riled if anyone criticises dartmoor....

i am not woody, i am darth moor, i can kill you with a single thought etc etc

playing the same old tune morph? a year on still no-one cares what you think.
what do you think is going to change?
did you expect the NT to carve some new MTB trails out of the peat for you?
we offered to show you some stuff last year, but you didn't want to come out, did you?
clearly if anything is going to change it's not your mind, so why even bother coming on here? to have a whinge?
have a nice weekend. where you riding? 🙂

i feel a bit sorry for morph, i mean if you haven't found "it" on dartmoor after 12 months of looking, you're never really going to find "it".
maybe "it"'s just not there for some folks.

nevermind, all the more for the rest of us 😀

it's bat country.

Let's get down to brass tacks, how much for the ape?

Been living Nr Haytor for 5 years now - most of my riding is East Dartmoor and I love it - I can ride 5 mins and I am in Dartmoor. BTW I thought the Park Authority has relaxed its ban on OFF Roading (MTB). Cheeky riding is becoming to norm for our group as the permissive paths, bridleways and green lanes are a bit few and far between. I have found as long as you respect walkers (although SOME are just plain arsey wherever you go) seems to be OK. Wouldn't swap if for Norfolk!

order some golf shoes. we'll never get out of here alive.

to come back on topic a bit, there are conversations that can be had with landowners too, in order to gain permission to ride in places where no right of access exists.

Yawn. Wake up and open your eyes morpheus. What exactly did you expect an updated official cycle map to show? Hameldown relocated to Bellever? Jay's Grave re-routed to Princetown?
Most of the MTB mags have had a dartmoor feature over the last year or so. I'm pretty sure they all said it was s*** too. 🙄

@dartmoor_rocks

the bellever rock garden, prince town loop, lustleigh cleave, coombe down and i could go on, are all awesome

Where is th rock garden - found it on youtube and looks ace - missed that one as we don't often ride to Postbridge?

Don't know about a year... I lived in Exeter between 91 and 2002, and SE Cornwall before that.

There are some very good all day trails, especially around the margins of the moor, but access onto the moorland has always been very restricted.

I don't know whether the restrictions stem from the National Park Authority (seems unlikely as doesn't compare with other NPs...), the Dartmoor commoners or the "absentee" landlord 👿