[Closed] Trail centres having more money to spend on the trails

As Simons-Nicolai says, what about a permit system like Swinley?

The permit there is £2 a ride or £20 a year, which i think is a more than fair price.

The land there is Crown Estate as opposed to FC, but they do contribute with equipment when it comes to trail bulding there.

I personally think that you have no right to winge about paying to use somewhere or moaning about the state of the trails if you yourself are not prepared to put the time in helping build and maintain them.

or as above form a club, get people involved, fight for what you want from your trails, but again don't just moan on a forum, put the effort into helping.

If you think about how many people ride Surrey Hills (Leith, Pitch etc) but how many of those are actually paid up members of Friends of the Hurtwood? 5%?

do they do that? Pay someone to pick up litter?

Yep, weekly litter runs at Gisburn, FC staff. Could be trail building if people took their garbage home.

Dalby was £7 about 3 weeks ago, but maybe it's gone up now it's summer

I stand corrected then, £7, still more than I'm prepared to pay, but then I do normaly end up paying that much in the bike shop/cafe. Whereas if I'd paid £7 I'd be doing a quick lap followed by jumping in the car and crying on the way home to to the feeling of being violated.

due to thugs this will never happen so my advise to them would be to put there prices up at the cafe

Stumpy, depressing that they need to do that

Whereas if I'd paid £7 I'd be doing a quick lap followed by jumping in the car and crying on the way home to to the feeling of being violated.

Why? Someone spent a lot of time and money building something that you can ride and you feel hard done by if you're asked to contribute towards the costs??????

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This is a sheep, a heard of them creates a sheep track which you can ride a bike allong, an added bonus is you can eat them, especialy good stuffed with goats cheese mint and rosemary. Try doing that with a trail builder and they get a bit nervous whether you've paid them £7 or not*. Bessides £7 is for the toll road, going for a ride in the woods is free (theres a bridleway). All the £7 gives you is about 2 miles less riding and the ability to ride arround in a small circle in the car park, do a trackstand, wobble a bit and attempt a bunny hop before looking arround to see if anyone saw you**.

I've not problem with paying for trails (I've got my Swinley permit for example) and encourage people I'm riding with to buy one), but OTT car parking charges are different. And most of these trails are funded by EU/lottery/regional development grants so by spending £7 in the cafe I'm doing more for the original aims of the trals than giving the FC £7.

* I'm sure in some more liberal countries this service can be bought.
** You can still do this, you just cant do it next to your T5 for added trail center poser points.

10,000 points get's you the spice rack or cuddly toy

^ actual LOL

Oh and in other news I have a £20 annual pass for the FOD. Check me out.

scruff - Member

How about [s]not[/s] paying [b]and[/b] joining a build day [s]instead[/s]?

FTFY

scruff - Member

How about not paying and joining a build day instead?

Stainburn car park is a dope smoking hot spot, box would most likely get wrecked. A lot of trails have a group attached that take donations.

Gisburn - PMBA
Stainburn - SingletrAction

PS. There's also a lot of dogging at Stainburn, but i believe you can watch that for free. 😈

nearly 30 years ago worked on climbing wall stuff with british mountaineering council at a time when most facilities where very poorly designed and few and far between

- some similar issues in that many thought that local authority sports centres should provide facilities and that price should be capped - the suggested rate being the price of a pint of beer - the numbers never added up
others argued for free facilities built with volunteer labour and some pretty poorly located, sometimes unimaginative, and then badly maintained stuff did get built

then someone had the balls to open a commercial wall, big, imaginative and fun and people queued down the road to pay 4-5x price that many had said was way to much and now most cities have big commercial walls that are good facilities

not that i don't believe that FC, the Water co's and others that in effect hold land in trust for the people (my phrase not a legally correct one) shouldn't provide facilities for enjoyment - other than linking to tourist income there is no market driver

I'd be happy to pay something for using the trails, typically there is a charge for car parking and specific portion could be set aside for trails. As for £9, that's excessive unless I know say half of it is going to the trails. The vast majority of my riding is free on public rights if way or singletrack and in fact a daily lift ticket in the Alps is better value than £9 for parking and no chairlift.

Trail centres could put honesty boxes inside the cafe for example or have a Friends scheme or a donate web page

lets be honest though the best trail centres don't have cafes... (excluding scotland)

Not one person so far has seriously mentioned ride sharing. It's per car, so it's time to make group rides more organised and split the costs (petrol/entry) and let's face it, most group things are more fun done with company.

this is true.

unklehomered - Member
Stainburn car park is a dope smoking hot spot, There's also a lot of dogging at Stainburn, but i believe you can watch that for free.

You obviously hang around there at some unusual times, I've never experienced either in years of going there. 🙂

Yes it's our land, but if not for the FC the trail centres wouldn't exist (1)- we're not paying to access our land, we're paying for the value-added of the trails they've built on our land.

£3 for parking is an incredible bargain. That's less than half a cinema ticket.

The irony is that most trail centres make more money for the local area than they cost- I was amazed to read the Laggan report and discover that it recouped the initial build expense in a single year. But the problem is that this money goes to local businesses and local workers rather than to the trails, so when the hat goes around for money to build or rebuild, there's not a seperate budget of "money we made off trail centres". The financial argument for building trails is untouchable, but that's not always enough.

boriselbrus - Member

In most places the trails do not benefit in the slightest from the car park money. The money goes to the FC centrally then each centre begs the FC for money to build and maintain its trails.

That's a [i]heck[/i] of a leap of logical faith there. Parking revenue is an overall benefit to the FC, how delighted are they when people don't pay? How unlikely is it that this is a consideration when allocating funding?

@BANana really? weekday afternoons or evenings, sitting in the boot eating a sandwich between laps, 2 or 3 cars pull in, see someone's there, turn around and drive out... probably more workplace affairs than dogging, guy and woman drive in behind each other, turn round and leave. Or a car full of Youfs... See it loads... either that or they're scoping for bikes in cars...

Isn't the £9 parking charge for Dalby aimed at people who are doing the Forest Drive? There's another car park half way round the XC loop which has a much more reasonable charge.

Also you've got a bike park, a DH course, a black XC trail, and a World Cup XC course there. I wonder how much a privately run bike park with the same facilties would charge. IIRC High Action at Churchill used to charge a similar amount for a 1/4 mile loop of North Shore.

My understanding of Dalby is you don't pay to park, you pay for the toll road. The car parks are free.

From the FC/Dalby website

Forest Admission Charge

Car £7.00 6am-4pm £4 after 4pm March to October, £4 all day November to February

Grizedale is £6 or £7 to park all day and while its not cheap it seems reasonable for the facilities you get. Having built a few car parks I can see how they can justify the costs. Its pretty much a standard cost across the Lake District for popular spots.

Last night in Hawkshead we noticed the car park now has EYES! Yes some sort of SPECS numberplate recognition camera is watching the entrance/exits and you have to key in your reg when you pay. We got there at 7:4pm5 and you are meant to pay up to 8pm and strangley we didn't and I wonder if we will all get a £90 fine....

Its a shame about the risk to honesty boxes, as they allow people to contribute in times of person plenty (beginning of the pay month) and too still ride at the end of the month when maybe can't afford to go to the pub/see a film, but can just stretch to the petrol to their nearest forest. But as seems to be the case from comments here, honesty boxes more of an issue at unmanned sites, not places with VCs. Sadly I'm not aware of a truly secure model, i.e. forged in sky iron by an armoured bear.

Anyone aware of any? any cunning solutions? A sign about the local trailbuilding group may help but I think it would need to be something more immediate,

"yes I have a couple of quid in change in my pocket, yes I right now am buzzing from a ride and feeling gratitude."

later we forget or spend that amount on beer on the way home, huiman nature as much as anything. Also if a box looks like it will, or has been seen to get knocked off, i wouldn't want to put my money in.

I dug a 2 meter long "trench" that was a foot wide and maybe half a foot deep infront of my garage.

It was mud and rock. This was on Saturday, my back muscles and back of my legs still hurt 🙂

It must be a lengthy process to dig stuff and creating trails. Respect.

I actually just had a business idea. Ooo.

I think £7 is fair enough for a day out, Wife would pay that to park in York to go shopping and spend more money.

I have a pass which works out good value. I don't get why people moan about it, If you don't want to pay go ride the miles of moorland you've wasted petrol driving past to get to the trail centre.

Swinley might be charging for parking so, according to the rumours.

I think £7 is fair enough for a day out

It's all relative, and I think trail centre parking costs stack up very well against the price we pay for other hobbies/interests.

Whereas a parking charge of £7 sounds a lot on face value, in reality it's peanuts for a day's activity.

For example, my local mulitplex cinema charges around £7 for an adult to see a film ... and that's for only 2-3 hours 'entertainment'.

The cost of a Premier League football match ticket is ridiculous for just 90+ minutes.