I’ve been vaguely aware of the YouTube channel Seth’s Bike Hacks for a while, but have only ever seen the odd clip, until recently. At the same time that my wife and I are looking for a house to buy, he came out with his Berm Peak series of videos, where he’s bought a house in the middle of nowhere in the North Carolina forest with a few acres of wooded land surrounding it, and proceeds to design and build trails on it. I’ve never been so jealous.

Roll on a few weeks, and after widening our search a few times it’s thrown up an affordable house with ~15 acres of sloping semi-wooded semi-rocky land. ~70m drop top to bottom!

Ker-****ing-ching. Winner winner chicken dinner. J-j-j-j-jackpot. Giggity. Etc.

I. Am. Excited.

But… I am also self-aware enough to know that maybe I’m being foolish…

Firstly, will the appeal of building my own trails wane pretty quickly?

Secondly, will I find the upkeep of this land too expensive or overly time-consuming? I’m thinking that I’ll spend time building and riding trails, and occasionally I’ll wander around with a petrol strimmer tidying things up a bit. I certainly don’t want it to be a manicured garden, though I’m sure we’ll have a bit nearer the house along those lines. I don’t mind taking as much time as it takes to build trails/feautres, but I don’t want to be having to do too much “regular” maintenance. A few hours a week maybe. Unrealistic?

Thirdly… what are the legal implications of owning land in the UK? There’s a bridleway that crosses a narrow part of the land at the furthest point from the house, but there’s also a gravel lane that goes through the land for access to another property further up the hill. What should we be careful of, and what might end up costing us a lot of money?

Completely naive about this, I’ve never even owned a small garden before, let alone large acreage!

There’s a bridleway that crosses a narrow part of the land at the furthest point from the house, but there’s also a gravel lane that goes through the land for access to another property further up the hill. What should we be careful of,

Don’t obstruct the bridleway, if the gravel lane is legal access don’t obstruct that either. That aside it’s your land you can do what you want with it for your own personal use. If you want to build structure (of certain sizes) or develop a commercial use you’ll need planning permission.

With “real” land comes “real” responsibility. Never forget that and you won’t go far wrong. Make sure there is nothing of real ecological value in there before you start digging it up. And don’t forget that you will have to live with and changes that you make. It is relatively easy to turn an idyllic woodland into a muddy weed-infested wasteland. Make sure you are happy to proceed, make sure nobody else is going to be upset if you do (local residents and/or authorities), and try and keep it sympathetic and you won’t go far wrong. Good luck and enjoy.

Bear in mind that if the BW runs adjacent to the area you are thinking of ‘developing’, and has any significant bike traffic, then sooner or later passing riders are going to start sneaking onto your trails.

Buy a shotgun and be prepared to use it. 🙂

I’d love to own a house with woodland. You’ll very quickly get bored with any trails you create but manage the woods and you’ll get free firewood for the rest of your life (after 6 or 7 years if you do it properly).

I kind of manage about 6 miles of public trail that I have created.

Keep it simple, never use wood, only soil & rock for features.
Sort drainage with cambers to stop puddles forming.
It’s more ìnvolving to adapt natural features and existing animal trails rather than just imposing your own features. This also makes it easier to revert back trails which don’t work

Don’t dig robber trenches every where, instead try to find a single source of gravel to quarry.
Place obstacles to stop yourself squaring off the trail corners.
Replant any broken soil like the back sides of back sides of berms & sides of ramps.

Since its your own land consider using a systemic weedkiller to entirely take out brambles. They are the biggest time killer.

I envy you. Enjoy

If its anywhere near derbyshire my 14 year old lad will come help build. Hes got a talent for it already.

I think if you’ve got the opportunity to own it then it is a great asset to have, then even if you don’t build trails or start and get bored you’ve still got that land to do so at some point. It won’t take that much management in my opinion apart from keeping the forest floor roughly clean of fallen wood which you might well do anyway to keep you log pile stocked?

I’ve spent the last two years building a lot of trails around our house in Norway, sometimes fixing old trails up and sometimes building completely new, we started an mtb holiday business up here so we’ve been developing trails for that. I think a lot of the motivation comes from knowing we’re going to make a living from them but that might not be the case if i really thought about it..?

I’ll try explain how I feel about the trails, building and riding them, it might be a bit rambly as thoughts come into my head though, sorry. We’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours trail building, if you want to do it properly, then it takes a long time! You can do quite a lot with 70m drop, after doing some trail building courses I was surprised to learn that around 7 degrees inclination makes the ideal trail! Things like A-line, Skyline in Queenstown and maybe stuff at Glentress will all be around 7 degrees (overall) as it means you can ride without really pedalling or braking. This of course means your trail will be longer and take a long time to build, making a proper berm for this trail takes days for example.

I feel like trail building is super satisfying but I think it also needs a point to give you the motivation, or rather to keep that motivation going after the initial excitement. In that I mean something like I mentioned before, we do it for our business but if I just did it for me then I reckon I would get bored quite soon. So maybe it if it a project with a bunch of mates, or for the local club to come use or if you have kids who can learn on them etc. I’ve also found that because you spend sooo much time building the trails and you often ride them over and over testing stuff when building then by the time it comes to ride them properly it is not that exciting, you maybe get a little sick of them. It is WAY more satisfying at this point to take other people or see other people ride your trails, so point above applies to that, if you just make it for yourself I reckon you might get bored quickly but if you have a group of people coming to ride them then it feels more satisfying.

As for maintenance – If you build down under denser forest you’ll have way less maintenance as less can grow. We’ve build stuff in dense pine forest and there’s no maintenance but we’ve also built in areas where they’ve recently cut down the trees and man stuff grows fast there, especially brambles as mentioned above! It’s not so bad for maintenance though, like I’ve been up to strim the trail of brambles maybe 3-4 times this summer, so every month or 2, not every week. If you want trails to last and be less maintenance then it usually takes longer but build. Thing of drainage and where water will go, use rocks to build up the base of the trail instead of wood (it will rot in a couple of years).Don’t use the first layer of soil, dig the more ‘black’ looking organic stuff off the top and use the proper soil underneath.

I enjoy it for 99% of the time, I can’t remember too many times I’ve been out there and though screw this, I’m having a crap time, probably mostly because I can do it on my terms and work as much as I decide. I think it is often mostly enjoyable because you can see results immediately, you put your spade in the ground and move dirt and there you go, you’re making a tail. On the other hand you will often have moments of wtf am I doing? I’m out here in this forest in the middle of nowhere hitting this ground with a mattock, why the heck? Who even cares haha. When you think of it completely objectively, it’s such a random activity, maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, point is I think it is worth it and you’ll enjoy it if you’ve got other people to enjoy it with.

Told you I was good at rambling!

Some examples of what we’ve been building
(We’ve used wood as support it plenty places 😉 )

Thanks for the input guys – at the moment we think the house maybe needs too much work doing given what’s left of our budget after buying it, hopefully the EA can send some further photos over before we bother trekking up there to check it out.

My son watches Seth religiously and is wondering why we don’t move to house with a small forest in the garden…

Sorry, off-topic but taking of Seth, I was researching bad radio reception in my van the other day and this video came up. Had to do a double take 😂

hopefully the EA can send some further photos over before we bother trekking up there to check it out

I wouldn’t trust anything from the agent. You absolutely need to go and see it yourself. Even if this one doesn’t work out it’ll help inform your decision on another.

Don’t underestimate the amount of effort required to build trails alone. I struggled make real progress as a teenager on my dad’s farm. Was much more enjoyable barrowing tons of rock a day volunteering with singletraction.

Also, if youre the only person riding them, they will get overgrown quite quickly.

Theres a lightly used bridleway about a mile from my house thats impossible for the summer months due to growth.

One way to manage it might be allong the lines of Herts Shore where Jedi works? A small club of riders that can build/maintain/ride/insure the trails without having to turn it into Swinley? Or do you have a local XC race series? Could they use it as a venue (needs parking etc) and in return you get the trails cleared a couple of times a year. Downside is if its a wet weekend your trails are ruined for a month whilst they recover.

Sadly, having got in touch with the EA today, the house has already been sold (STC) – it just doesn’t say so on rightmove.

Shame. So given its stc, can we have a link to it for a bit of Monday afternoon daydreaming?

Don’t worry, I have found you an alternative

House for sale with some land

Come over to Ireland ,you’ll get far more for your euro n leave the Brexiteers to it .
Daft.ie is irish site for property.