I'm going to partly answer my own question, but is there anything stopping people from just maintaining the trails themselves? In Squamish there is an official trail crew but there's only around 5 of them and hired seasonally, so with 500+ trails in the area it's not surprisingly volunteers (like me) that do much of the work to keep the trails from getting wrecked. So lets say there are braking bumps on your favourite corner at your local trail center.... Is it illegal to throw in a fold-up shovel in a backpack and fix it up yourself mid-ride? Or stash some tools on a quiet day and over time fix up eroded sections to put them back to how they were. I'm not talking building unofficial trails here.
A couple of issues would be the fact that many of the trail centers in the UK are 'remote' so might not have much of a local riding base. Combined with the fact that many of the riders at trail centers drive 1hr+ to get to the trails so probably don't feel that the trails are their responsibility. That said, I used to drive from the east end of Birmingham to help out on Cannock Chase from time to time.
I often wonder if there could ever be a charging system for somewhere like Glentress
Of course there can. The area would need to be clearly identified and a byelaw enacted under Section 12 of the Land Reform Act.
Maintenance of existing trails seems to be the biggest issue, indeed. Lots of trails are fundamentally good to ride, just rutted, broken etc.
I suppose that's what the UK Trails Project is aiming to help by auditing what we have + developing a strategy to protect existing trails.
Doesn't look like NRW are making much money from tourism in their existing centres as they want to offload the Coed-y-Brenin and Nant-yr-Arian:
"I often wonder if there could ever be a charging system for somewhere like Glentress to keep the trails in better condition"
Like the car parking charge?
...that folks with £4k bikes and £60k vans try to circumnavigate?
only £4k on a bike? Have you seen the cost of ebikes these days?
I'll get my coat on the way out 🙂
Always the case..
Rose hamsterley today and the people dodging the car parking charges, being parked just outside of the reach of the anpr cameras each had a 30 grand + vehicle.
It's only about £50 a year to park and the trails won't pay for themselves...
Trail centres were great for getting people to other places, but the tourism angle is just a small one (that admittedly seems to create several £millions each year from the press releases we get to see), the health and wellbeing angle is massive and is more for on the doorstep people/riders - so should be easier to secure some funding to help get trails built - just not with a tourist slant on them. 7Stanes was a great 'tourism' project, but seems to be the one everyone wants to go with, but there are others that are just as viable and don't need as much travelling to meet the requirements (although, I think it would be foolish to assume that each house/street/village/town would have a suitable trail centre on their doorstep...there might need to be some form of travel to get to it, but it is likely to be less specific and more generic i.e some kind of public bus service or rail service - again, aware this doesn't work everywhere).
The current model is always going to cater for the lowest common denominator, so currently it seems to be flow trails and greens and blues. Not a massive issue for a trail centre, but not that many trails have the same sort of flow that is being built in trail centres just now (you don't seem to need to do anything on the bike - you just join the motorway and use the berms to guide you round the corners - they are great fun, but I don't find many of those out on more natural trails. Which, I'm guessing is part of the point of them, they are there to attract riders who can't find that kind of stuff naturally - which is absolutely fine for those who want things like that.
I suspect it will reduce the number of people going elsewhere though...which would be a shame.
@minus Though a shout out to whoever is funding QECP. There at the weekend and the new skills area and mini trail were really popular with the kids. The resurfacing on the top of the blue descent had it flowing great.
@minus, thank you. that would be 3 people for the blue descent and the mini trail (lite blue as we call it) Hoping to have the whole of that section done by March. Started it over 12 months ago, funded and created by volunteers originally by Scott from Southern Enduro. The work Scott and team did won them the award of Best Volunteer Trail in 2018 bt MBTR. The skills area was funded by various external bodies.
It’s only about £50 a year to park and the trails won’t pay for themselves…
@whyterider93 - Check first if the carpark fees go back into the trails, a lot of the time they go nowhere near.
I know UK Trails Project have been mentioned a few post ago, and there's also Robin Grant and his work trying to bring local trail groups together.
I think this is where we need to go for the next few years - a focus on local trails that people can ride from their door (DickBarton's points about wellbeing, etc. resonate with me quite strongly). These might not always be the full gnar (although most places should be able to conjure up at least a little bit of red/black spice in places) but would be accessible and relatively sustainable.
The barrier I see though is that this would require acceptance of, and support for, local volunteer groups by land owners and managers. In itself not insurmountable but the issues around liability and insurance always rear their heads and seem to put the stoppers on a lot of these local projects. That's certainly one of the main reasons FE posit for not engaging with us beyond talking and teasing with 'what if...' and 'maybe...'
Which leaves us with the status quo of small groups digging unofficially, and trails - outside of honey pot areas - that stay (for the most part) used by a relatively small number of 'in the know' riders.
I hope the two projects mentioned can gain some traction in 2024 and make some positive change. Round here, we'll deffo be doing what we can to support them.
The south east might not be considered a mountain bike mecca however where we have the north downs on the doorstep and a reasonable, if not sadly diminishing amount of countryside on the doorstep. In a 20 minutes cycle from my front door, I can be fields and trees and on my way to trails amid a myriad of bridleways, byways and footpaths. We are fortunate to also have a nice local community of trail builders who help to keep things interesting with trails and features. Then there is the winter and while some places weather this better, a lot of the local area becomes a swamp of clay and chalk.
Its at this time my local forty minute drive away FC trail centre (Bedgebury Forest) becomes golden. It gives me around 20k of fun trails that I can ride without too much fuss and minimal swampiness thanks to the abundance of type 2 that has been dropped there over recent years. There is a lot of criticism levelled at it being too this or not enough that but as a local attraction catering for all its good to have on the doorstep and saves me from the local swamp during the winter months. If people want super mega techy gnar it really isn't the place for them but suits my needs and large amount of other of other peoples too.
Parking is around £9 for the day however the amount of this that goes back into the trails is practically negligible with the majority going on the visitors centre and family attractions. I park outside and ride in.
Every six weeks or so I then jump into my T5 and drive to Wales for a couple or three days to get a break from the world of work and ride some more fun and interesting places where I can find all the super mega techy gnar I can handle. I will stay in a local BnB, Airbnb, camp site or sometimes tucked away in a quiet little spot where I can crash in the back of the wagon. I will go to the local shops, cafes and pubs and like to think that I'm investing some money, however little into the local communities. The trail centres give me the hub to aim for and from there I have gone on to explore the local areas either on bike, walking, running or out for a drive and have been doing this for about 10 years now. In that time I don't think I've ever paid more than £5 for parking.
I will always be grateful for the variety of places I have to ride locally and always indebted to the adventures and tranquillity that trail centres elsewhere provide.
It always amazes me the excuses people will find to avoid paying for parking.
The money might not directly go to the trails, but it will still contribute to the running of the entire site, and justify the existence of maintaining and building trails.
Strange how plenty of folk will happily pay upwards of £40 for a days riding at an uplift centre like BPW, but moan about paying just a few pounds to park and help maintain the trails at a non-uplift served trail centre. But are they the same people I wonder?
It’s just same old story of naieve ignorant people getting persuaded into something by a bunch of con artists
Now I intensely dislike Brexit, and it has made my life more difficult, but this sort of out of touch and elitist comment might makes you realise why people maybe voted for Brexit in the first place. If I had someone with a £4k+ bike and a £60k Transporter van calling me thick or ignorant because I was struggling to find well paid work in my ex-mining community then I might too have voted for Brexit just to spite them. I suspect that a lot of Brexit voting was just a big F-off from the forgotten working class communities to the people who thought they knew better than them, what was good for them. We should have listened to them and addressed their concerns somewhat I guess rather than assuming they were all just stupid and racist. But ah well, it's done now. An own goal to some extent!
Riding styles have changed also. There's definitely a move to harder steeper trails. So the original stuff looks tame.
There are new spots out there but without funding they just remain niche to those in the know.
How new is Golfie? It wasn't a thing I remember back in the day.
Thrunton? Used to have a nice xc loop but it's only more recently that it's become a destination you'd go back to.
Needs dedicated people to champion cause. Most of it was done by people with passion and energy. Doesn't stack up when you look at the business case on paper.
It's a massive undertaking to start from scratch. Didn't most of our current trail centres get built off the back of local riders building? The development came in making the trails more suited to large numbers of riders?
Personally I'd like to see the existing places maintained and added too. More realistic. Why certain venues haven't tried to build on the gravel hype is a mystery. Kielder is a few dozen wooden posts away from having 100s miles of gravel riding. Many other FC sites could also make this work. Potentially allowing other stuff to be supported.
Kielder is a [s]few dozen wooden posts[/s] map reading lesson away from having 100s miles of gravel riding.
How much hand-holding is really necessary? A small "inner" loop with arrows pointing away from it saying here be dragons should be sufficient 😀
The forestry are probably waiting for some smart person to pitch the idea to them. They'll then pinch it, put it through a mangle and come out with something else and then look to capitalise by limiting the solution to very select places.
I'm aware forestry land is now pretty much a tree factory as the recreation stuff has been left behind...I wonder if the government will ever relook at privatising the forestry - when they looked at that last time, suddenly forests were made available for recreation...might need a shake up like that again (although maybe not the same as privatisation is exactly what this government wants for everything).
How new is Golfie?
Not very. First downhill races were there in the 9os before they moved over to Traquair side.
How much hand-holding is really necessary? A small “inner” loop with arrows pointing away from it saying here be dragons should be sufficient 😀
I think that's part of the problem with Kielder. It's TOO big. There's a lot of potential there for things to go very wrong given the lack of mobile signal, the lack of any nearby amenities and the massive PITA it is to get to the place.
