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@ stumpyjon good to hear and upkeep up the grand work at gisburn.
The local resident issue is a good one to hear as we/ MTB are seen as an imposition at the best of time so it is important to be responsible and respectful...use the carpark and keep folk happy as possible.
Bedgebury is £12 at weekends now!
Sure you can still argue it's not much if you only go there once a year, but it's still a rip off, especially for what the trails and facilities are. FC as well. They should be consistent around the country, and usually are.
Normally I'd be happy to pay a few quid for the day if I know something goes to trails and I'm paying for forest upkeep and facilities.
Swinley on the other hand always niggled me since they first announced it. The cheek was the application the council submitted which was advertised to the public. It said along the lines of "we have a budget black hole and need to find more money, and as we lease the car park at Swinley and see lots of cars there, ca-ching!". Seriously, not in those words, but it did say they were doing it to fund budget deficits and how much money they expected to make from the place. They actually make more money than expected now due to increasing numbers from the new trail network and in particular from fines (which being council run, are enforceable).
That combined with the permit for regular users being £100 if you don't live in Bracknell !! (FC annual permits are usually around £40 and give you extra benefits). Bracknell residents get a discount but that pisses me off too as it's encouraging the lazy to drive there when they are near enough to walk/ride or catch the bus and bad for the environment cars doing local trips.
Thankfully I'm local enough to ride in from other places or from home.
Best one is Peaslake. Okay it's not a trail centre, but the Hurtwood have been keen to avoid charging for parking and still manage to. They rely on voluntary donations to manage the place and keep the car park open, so I'm happy to do a regular donation to the Friends of the Hurtwood (there are also donation boxes in car parks and local shops).
(must say.. haldon, although the trails are a bit tame in some ways has very good loo's, cafe and if you don't have change you can pay in the rangers office)
I slighty resent the fact that in some car parks (Golspie, I'm thinking of you!) MTBers are asked to pay but walkers (and other visitors) not, despite there being a set of maintained trails for both.
I'll pay unless I have no cash. But next time I pay at one and it floods, I'll just leave my car to float off and claim on their insurance...
Ah the Great British Mountain Biker. Expects to be provided with trails and facilities to carry out their middle class expensive hobby but won't pay for it, and then moans when the trails become a bit rough and bumpy because there isn't enough money to maintain them...
I avoid paying for parking everywhere. My taxes have already paid for all these government funded projects so I begrudge paying twice. Also most only take cash and I live in 2016 so use cards and don't really carry coins.
I bet you're the first to get a round in in the pub!
The forestry commission are supposed to generate 75% of their own money through the forest estate ie timber and recreation etc etc etc, so your taxes haven't already paid for it 😉
I don't pay but I build. If you think any money paid in FC car parks goes on trails and you are pretty deluded.
At Aston Hill it does. I forget the actual breakdown, but the parking/riding fee is split between the Hill and the FC. The FC also then cover the insurance for the venue (which isn't cheap in itself).
I can't speak for anywhere else as this is the only FC-related bike park project I've been involved in, but it boils my piss when people moan about the centre but then park (illegally) outside to avoid paying toward any upkeep.
If they then drop litter it becomes the holy trinity of piss-boilers.
I avoid paying for parking everywhere. My taxes have already paid for all these government funded projects so I begrudge paying twice. Also most only take cash and I live in 2016 so use cards and don't really carry coins.
Not sure if this is trolling, but I'll bite.
Your taxes do next-to-nothing for Aston Hill. Aston Hill is run by volunteers on FC land but receives no FC or government funding. The FC is being cut to the bone, like all the public sector services. MTBing helps to bring money in which makes it a valuable commodity. Paying to ride at Aston Hill keeps it profitable and a worthwhile use of land for the FC, and consequently remains open. This attitude of "I've already paid for it" does nothing to help MTB centres - and consequently British MTBing - in the slightest.
Linn o Dee, while not a trail centre is full of nice Audi estates at the weekend, none of whom who pay, most of whom use the cludgies though.
Bedgebury is £12 at weekends now!
Is that because it's part of a FC daypass? Thetford is similar, but for my family there's so much other stuff to do it's worth it. Just to pop out for a few hours spin is incredibly expensive. But then if I lived locally I'd buy an annual pass.
(must say.. haldon, although the trails are a bit tame in some ways has very good loo's, cafe and if you don't have change you can pay in the rangers office)
And if you don't pay for whatever reason and someone checks the tickets, you'll get a polite notice to pay £4 within two weeks! That's the parking services on the top level 8)
annual FC pass for all FoD carparks = £23 seems good value for money
Your taxes do next-to-nothing for Aston Hill. Aston Hill is run by volunteers on FC land but receives no FC or government funding. The FC is being cut to the bone, like all the public sector services. MTBing helps to bring money in which makes it a valuable commodity. Paying to ride at Aston Hill keeps it profitable and a worthwhile use of land for the FC, and consequently remains open. This attitude of "I've already paid for it" does nothing to help MTB centres - and consequently British MTBing - in the slightest.
Well said. Glentress trail fairies aren't funded by his taxes either.
^^^^^ on the Glentress point,is there any official FC Trail Maintenance, or is it all voluntary trailfairy work ?
Pimpmaster jazz well said and chapeau to you
Llandegla is now owned by the Church of England. So if you don't fancy paying the parking fees just offer an extra £ at the collection tin next Sunday 8)
where. My taxes have already paid for all these government funded projects so I begrudge paying twice. Also most only take cash and I live in 2016 so use cards and don't really carry coins.
The sense of entitlement is strong with this one..
^^^^^ on the Glentress point,is there any official FC Trail Maintenance, or is it all voluntary trailfairy work ?
ChrisL or Northwind will answer that better but I think FC provide materials and tools etc and fairies provide the muscle. In terms of major official new stuff eg Carls Lane, Cool Runnings I imagine its FCS funding and constructing or their contractors.
7 quid at haldon for a day or 30 quid on a season pass. that pass gets you paring at other sites too IIRC.
volunteer passes are good for all FC sites AFAIK. 8)
Ah the Great British Mountain Biker. Expects to be provided with trails and facilities to carry out their middle class expensive hobby but won't pay for it,
Had a similar conversation with someone who couldn't see why I should need to volunteer. "No other sports expects participant's to maintain the facilities". Clearly no idea how grass roots cricket/football/rugby etc etc manage to exist!
Pawsy_Bear - where do you get one for the FOD? Would be great if it's that cheap!! Thinking of getting one for Cwmcarn too as those two places would cover 90 percent of my trail centre riding.
7 quid at haldon for a day or 30 quid on a season pass. that pass gets you paring at other sites too IIRC.
volunteer passes are good for all FC sites AFAIK.
any idea which other sites? i don't visit haldon regularly enough to commit and where i usually head out from on the quantocks (holford, staple plain sometimes lydeard) don't charge..
as far as grass roots goes. i'm hoping to get in the mix digging at triscombe once the FC have finished their current work. i don't ride those trails much and am not very well connected to it yet (i do know a lot of 'faces' through their bmx past and my skate past). alos, last time there was a dig day they had very limited numbers involved and slots filled fast.
Have to say, a few quid is just about manageable in change, though I do carry very little cash these days, especially coins. £5 / £10+ though is a pain in the backside unless they accept cards (but probably charge a fee for that).
Haldon seems to have shot up a lot in price. I'm usually there once a year and it's a shock each time but I don't see any major improvements. Facilities are nice, sure, but what's justifying the price hikes?
And on frequency, if it's only occasional visit, it's not about affordability, but being sure it's value for the money per visit. I don't like wasting money or seeing money being wasted.
Someone told me at Dalby only 50% pay which I was pretty shocked by, that's across all users.
It's tricky, somewhere like Stainburn gets a lot of caual traffic that will go away, people who stop for 45 minutes after work, but do so couple of times a week, all year. So some form of season pass would be good.
bigjim - Member
^^^^^ on the Glentress point,is there any official FC Trail Maintenance, or is it all voluntary trailfairy work ?
ChrisL or Northwind will answer that better but I think FC provide materials and tools etc and fairies provide the muscle. In terms of major official new stuff eg Carls Lane, Cool Runnings I imagine its FCS funding and constructing or their contractors.
The Trailfairies don't do all the maintenance at Glentress. The MTB rangers do maintenance too and as you say, some work is done with contractors.
During a conversation last year with an FCS employee who'd know these things, they were pretty emphatic in stating that car park income wouldn't remotely fund the MTB side of Glentress. Austerity and drops in the wood price have not done any favours to the FCS's overall budget, either.
ChrisL, thanks for info. I used to ride GT every couple of weeks but haven't been this year. A mate was saying he was there on sat for first time in ages and had seen some changes, and signs of a lot more wear on the red route.
iainc - Member
ChrisL, thanks for info. I used to ride GT every couple of weeks but haven't been this year. A mate was saying he was there on sat for first time in ages and had seen some changes, and signs of a lot more wear on the red route.
Maintenance on the red route can be hard to judge, what some regard as necessary repairs will likely be decried as sanitisation by others. It's impossible to keep trails in a fixed state, they will inevitably wear down to fairly rough surfaces before getting repaired back to fairly smooth ones, so on average over their lifetime they're about right.
Given the current manpower and budget constraints it may be the case that more maintenance is getting left until it must be done than when it could be done, but that's speculation on my part.
To veer back to the original subject of the thread, I actually have a permit for parking at Glentress due to the time I put into the Trailfairies but I pay for parking at other trail centres.
[Edit] Given I've managed to spent quite a lot on a new MTB and on a trip to the Alps this year, for me to quibble over car parking charges for UK trails would seem churlish at best.
Swinley is £2 for 4 hours which I think is fine and it takes cards. The annual ticket is steep at £100 though when Cannock is £40. Locals only pay £50 I think, which doesn't include me although I'm only 10 minutes or so away down the country roads.
I do stand by what I say, if it's an FC project or a council car park it's already been paid for and as a socialist I don't see why I should pay for state provided services.
milky1980 - MemberPawsy_Bear - where do you get one for the FOD? Would be great if it's that cheap!! Thinking of getting one for Cwmcarn too as those two places would cover 90 percent of my trail centre riding.
Hadn't realised you could buy a season pass for CC, but it seems you can - £50 a year, I might get one for the sake of convenience, the only mild stumbling block being it covers other places I don't visit, which isn't an issue in itself, but with councils continually evaluating viability of sites, i'd want them to know I bought it for the MTB centre...
Given there's one organisation that funded the various sites and one organisation that maintains them wouldn't it be great if you could buy a season pass that covers the 2 Afan Sites and CC, but that would require two councils to work together... it would be a great data source to help evaluate visitor numbers.
I do stand by what I say, if it's an FC project ... it's already been paid for
But it hasn't.
It doesn't help that not all charges/venues are equal.
If I park at GT for the day my £5 not only gets me access to the trails, but also to changing rooms and an onsite cafe. In fact I went and parked there for a road based ride in the borders for exactly that reason.
Other places the same £5 gets you nothing other than parking.
Personally I always pay, as £5 for a day out is still great value for money compared to nearly anything else.
munrobiker - Member
I do stand by what I say, if it's an FC project or a council car park it's already been paid for and as a socialist I don't see why I should pay for state provided services.
Did you refuse to put stamps on letters prior to 2013 too?
munrobiker - MemberI do stand by what I say, if it's an FC project or a council car park it's already been paid for and as a socialist I don't see why I should pay for state provided services.
What if they decided they could only afford to build a new project if it got some additional funds to support it. You are in favour things just not getting built instead?
socialist I don't see why I should pay for state provided services.
With that remark you just come across as tight!
I do stand by what I say, if it's an FC project or a council car park it's already been paid for and as a socialist I don't see why I should pay for state provided services.
😆
How very capitalist of you.
iainc - MemberChrisL, thanks for info. I used to ride GT every couple of weeks but haven't been this year. A mate was saying he was there on sat for first time in ages and had seen some changes, and signs of a lot more wear on the red route.
Just to follow this one up in more detail; yes, there's lots of wear on the red route, it's just how it works- the trail life cycle, I call it.
When we build a new trail or section to durable GT red spec, it's generally pretty featureless and smooth, people go sanitised! BMX track! But that's just not understanding what we're doing. The day 1 trail isn't finished, it's a baby trail. Then over the next years- hopefully a decade or so, it wears, and narrows, and evolves, and generally grows up into a proper bike trail and stays like that for a long time. If it didn't wear it'd stay boring- great for a flow or jump trail, rubbish for everything else.
Some specific wear is troublesome- anything that goes unsafe or out of grade, anything that stops a bit of trail from working, and anything that causes accelerated wear- water, basically. Overgrowth and hazards. Everything else is both inevitable and essential.
Eventually it goes out the other side and big holes start to appear, the trail surface breaks and generally it gets clapped out. It's probably the most interesting an armoured trail gets, but it's also not sustainable- that's when it switches from wearing in to wearing out and it can happen fast, especially with corner-cutting stravapricks and skidding gopro heroes doing their best to ruin the trails. The black and offpistes can do it because they get a fraction of the traffic. But there's really very little on GT red that's in this state and it's all being watched and generally hotfixed and coaxed along, because if it gets too bad the only way to fix it, is to go right back to the start and BMX trail it so everyone goes SANITISED!1!! again.
Course, this isn't the only way to build trails, far from it- We do some stuff in a less industrial long-term way but it's the only way it really works for the main GT trails, given the location, the traffic and the personnel. Other models work better elswhere. Other models could work better at GT tbh especially if it was being started from scratch today but, this is what we've got.
^ That's a great overview of trail life Northwind. Thanks.
Most f the time these things are paid by grant funding, i.e. the grant will be a one off that pays for the trails to be built and the car park to be built.
Then the grant runs out, and to be sustainable they need continuous income.
One way of doing that is to rent a cafe spot, and another paid for parking.
Its expensive parking, but its not just paying for the parking... its very different to a town centre - parking charges are low because you generally go spend a load of money in town / do business. You ain't spending money in the forest when riding round.... unless you eat at the cafe I suppose.
Maybe the parking should be free, and there should be a gated entrance where every rider has to drop a couple of quid in. This would be nice, but theres all kinds of reasons why it wouldn't work.
Pimpmaster Jazz - Member^ That's a great overview of trail life Northwind
Obviously it's a faster process with 27.5 tyres.
wzzzz - MemberThen the grant runs out, and to be sustainable they need continuous income.
Yup. And tbh, the biggest issue is that the funding's completely lopsided. Succesful trail centres make a lot of money, just not for the FC. Sticking with what I know, the value of Glentress to the local economy is colossal but the direct contribution back is really pretty minimal. But the local authorities and businesses are largely happy enough to take the golden eggs then complain if they don't think the FC is taking good enough care of the goose.
They say Tweedlove is worth a million quid to the local area, how much of that ends up in the FC's pockets? It'd pay Andy Wardman's wages for a while...
I hate the fact that my local centre (Sherwood) car park opens after I want to start riding on some weekends. It forces me to park outside and then when I go back to the car after a quick lap I look like a proper tightwad
Northwind - many thanks for your response, extremely useful, cheers
Northwind - Member
Eventually it goes out the other side and big holes start to appear, the trail surface breaks and generally it gets clapped out. It's probably the most interesting an armoured trail gets, but it's also not sustainable- that's when it switches from wearing in to wearing out and it can happen fast, especially with corner-cutting stravapricks and skidding gopro heroes doing their best to ruin the trails. The black and offpistes can do it because they get a fraction of the traffic. But there's really very little on GT red that's in this state and it's all being watched and generally hotfixed and coaxed along, because if it gets too bad the only way to fix it, is to go right back to the start and BMX trail it so everyone goes SANITISED!1!! again.
It may be worth expanding on this a little bit. A typical trail at Glentress is surfaced with compacted type 1 aggregate - i.e. hardcore. This sits within a tray dug through the soft organic soil layer so underneath it is nice solid mineral soil.
The compacted top surface of the hardcore is pretty tough and handles wear and tear pretty well. But it does wear out and as it does so the deeper hardcore that is exposed is less compact and will degrade more easily. So a trail will initially wear slowly, but once it reaches a certain point, it will degrade much more quickly. This can be compounded as once a divot's been made in the hard outer surface, it will tend to collect water, which will hasten the speed that the less compact foundations will break away.
One way to speed up this process is to shortcut or otherwise ride off the trail. Doing so will quickly scoop away the soft organic soil that lies next to the trail surface. This will expose the side of the hardcore tray, meaning that the less compact hardcore that's below the surface can be exposed even before the surface is worn out. And again a rut next to the trail surface will collect water, which will work its way into the hardcore tray and speed up the whole process again.
One way to reduce the risk of unexpected line choices accelerating the speed that a trail wears out is to build trails so they're wider than they need to be. You'd be surprised by how quickly undergrowth spreads over the parts that don't end up being the ride line. Unsurprisingly though this increases the time, effort and expense required to make the trail and also increases the number of cries of "trail sanitisation!" when riders see a new trail section that's apparently as wide as a motorway...
Some people complain that roots get completely covered when a section of trail is repaired. This is because it's difficult to compact the surface of a trail that's got roots running over it. Compacting is done using a petrol powered wacker plate and this is literally a blunt instrument and hard to work around uneven shapes such as roots. Instead the surface is built up so it's slightly above the level of the roots. Rest assured though that the top of the roots will still be within the thickness of well compacted hardcore. The roots will become exposed again long before the trail section needs to be rebuilt. Not that it will stop the cries of "sanitised!" but hey ho...
Pimpmaster Jazz - Member
^ That's a great overview of trail life Northwind. Thanks.
Agreed, thanks Northwind & ChrisL!
A lot of people have strong opinions about the trails at GT without understanding this sort of detail. So common to hear "its so boring and sanitised" vs "it's completely trashed, worse braking bumps than Morzine" in the space of a single day on a single section of trail.
I guess Sherwood Pines is our local trail centre, being about an hour away. They charge £4 there per car and the machines take card too. I think £4 for a day there with the family is cracking value. The only problem for me is we don't have a bike rack at the moment so when we go we go in two cars (one has the bikes in, one has the kids) so end up paying double. Still a great day out for £8 though.
Del - Member7 quid at haldon for a day or 30 quid on a season pass. that pass gets you paring at other sites too IIRC.
volunteer passes are good for all FC sites AFAIK.
It gets you a discount for Go Ape which I think was about a tenner?
And 10% off the cafe.
And removes the need to find change at any time.
I might sound like a snob but when a family ticket to the cinema is £25-30 spending £30 a year to park and use the facilities at Haldon as much as I like it's such a bargain regardless of where those funds go.