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As above really.
I find the singletrack website very helpful but looking for some new places to try, I look at the Trail guide lacking and found it missing a number of locations, ie Claton Vale in Manchester, Bike park Wales, Coed Y Brenin or anywhere in North Wales. To name a few that I know of.
I would even offer my time to try some of them to help.
I often wonder why the routes featured in the mag do not appear on the trail guide. Not that I've ever done anything about it.
I emailed them to suggest the same thing - put the mag routes in the guide and make it premier. Got no reply.
Love the fact that according to the trail guide there is no good riding SW of the Mendips...
Suits me 🙂
UKClimbing has a nice content-generation system. Users are asked to come up with route cards for walking/riding routes and enter them via a pretty simple template.
Here's the MTB section, fairly limited as you'd expect on that site.
http://www.ukhillwalking.com/logbook/r/find.php#main
I contributed one, would have written a few more (but they ran a competition when they launched the section then never sent out the prizes...)
I wonder if a similar system could work for STW. There would be no shortage of folk willing to upload routes for them.
Love the fact that according to the trail guide there is no good riding SW of the Mendips...
There's none north of Middlesborough either so keep away.
I wrote some of those Trail Guides. At one point (probably 6-ish years ago), they did actually upload the magazine routes to there and I was in discussions with them to do various trail centres.
Then I got another job so didn't have time and I'm not sure what happened with the idea in general.
Having readers upload their own rides is a total pain. You end up with wildly varying standards of route, writing style and photography plus you also have to check everything to make sure it's all legal tracks. Easier to just employ 1 or 2 people specifically for it and pay them on a per-article basis.
I guess with the forum, Strava, other magazines etc, its so easy to find routes and riding mates that it's simply not economical to run your own dedicated Route Guides team. No idea what the page view figures are like for that section...
The Edge bike shops has a really good selection of rides in north Wales and the north west of England. [url= http://www.theedgecycleworks.com/mtbroutes/ ]the edge bike routes[/url]
And I agree with the OP, it would make sense to put all the magazine routes in the ride guide.
All good points. The card I did has been viewed a couple of thousand times I think, but that's linking from what is mainly a mountaineering and hillwalking site.
I guess there would be a demand for it, but whether that kind of user-generated content could reach a minimum standard is another matter.
It's on my list...
It's on the agenda for Monday's editorial meeting. We'll see what we can do to freshen it up.
It's a bit dusty in there.
I do some trail surveying and documenting for the Scottish Rights of Way Society and I know how difficult it is handling input from multiple reviewers. Happy to throw in my tuppenceworth though.
Scotroutes has a fair idea there, what if there was delegates from different areas of the UK who could write up a route for submission rather than free for all?
Mark - Resident Grumpy
It's on the agenda for Monday's editorial meeting. We'll see what we can do to freshen it up.
It's a bit dusty in there.
I have been thinking it could do with a update.
I am willing to lead a hand if needs be (I am from a IT background, and in my spare time make websites and been admin in other forums) and will work for beer or bike parts and only live a few minutes from the STW HQ.
I am thing a free for all with everyone putting in there 2p would not work, it would need to be a hand full of people who would grade them all the same way. Could even have regional reps who could do it in there area, as no one is going to be able to cover the county with out getting paid for it