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If you ride in East Devon, you may know the trails in Harpford Woods....some lovely singletrack and techy runs.
Well they're mostly gone 🙁 some pretty serious logging and forestry work by the lovely Clinton Devon Estates has turned most of the hillside into a network of muddy tracks, and any bits of trail left are covered in brush and branches.
I hadn't been up there for about 5 weeks, and went there on a loop the other night. Tried 3 or 4 of the trails, but all are destroyed from about 100 metres in. Oh well.
Been meaning to get up there and check it out
Assume it will recover ok once nature has taken its toll and cleared it up a bit or not?
Not so sure. Some sections might be ok with a bit of clearing, but in other places it looks like they've dug out parts of the hillside to make access for the vehicles possible. It would need some concerted effort and a team of trail pixies to put in weeks of work to get it even remotely rideable.
It really is the most destructive logging work I've seen in the UK. There used to be a nice footpath that local dog walkers and joggers used that ran parallel to the stream down from the old railway bridge. That's now a 4 metre wide trail of destruction.
Is this the shortish downhill tracks at the eastern end of Woodbury?
No, that's the Yettington trails, but they've recently been partly buggered up by Clinton Devon Estates too!
Harpford woods are just East of Newton Poppleford either side of the old railway that goes from Tipton to Bowd.