I popped along to the open day yesterday after work – really interesting and pretty impressive trails getting built. They are underway already and being built in 3 phases, such that when a phase is finished it can be ridden as a full looop. First Phase, which is the section nearest the main top car park, will be finished in a few weeks. Surfacing will be Type 1, finished with whin dust, which will aid the bedding in – very similar construction to 7Stanes etc, so durability should be good. There are a load of technical features, and they have the trail designer from the Beijing course working on the detail of those. The whole thing will be finished by Christmas, and they have provision to do further works in 2013 once feedback is made on tweaks that are required. There will be another period of pre commonwealth Games trail tweaks to adjust for the competition itself.
All in all a very positive addition to our trail centres and although only 5.5km in length, it certainly looks like it will be right up there with the best of the technical trail centres.
The organisers are keen that it starts to get ridden asap. With my GMBC hat on I suggested I would encourage riders to get over there for later in the summer, by which time the first phase will be ready, and poss the second. Riders are welcome to ride the full route, which is marked, in advance of building work, but obviously to keep clear of actual construction
Good to know Iain.
Certainly handy if you live in EK, pretty close to me too!
What are they like technically how does it compare to say CV (which at a guess would be its nearest equivalent)
Cheers
Rich
Rich - looking at the maps and their 3D computer models I'd say it is more like an olympic course than CV stuff - quite a lot of interesting stuff in a small space. It has the benefit that there are also loads of walking and basic narrow paths intersecting the place, so there seems to be scope to mix it up for different abilities