Went up to local trail centre last night at 4.30, parked and we were the only folk there, grand, paid for the full day rate £3.00 ( half day is £1.50).
Usual faffing and a 16 plate VW transporter pulls in next to us with a rather expensive carbon framed full suss on the back…..he says hello , hi says we, do you think I need to pay?, says he.

So in my reckoning the money goes in some way to paying for the trails and upkeep of the forest.

Yeah says I

Really nobody will check……

So you are driving a fu#+k off van with a bike worth several grand to a trail centre maintained by Forest Commission and local volunteers group and you cannot pay…!?????!!!

I very politely pointed it helped keep the trails open and develop new trails……

Next time says he…..

Rrrrrrrrrrrr,……….

I was and am gobsmacked ,…….. just why would someone ride and probably enjoy a trail centre that has developed over the last few years and not contribute?

Hobnobs?
Seriously this really boils my piss, the lengths people will go to to avoid paying any parking

Same around here, I always pay but most locals park down the road so they don’t have to pay. It’s £2 for a full day or £1 for 2 hrs not exactly extortion

My local swinley. Council run car park…. Trail team swinley get cluck all. We used t have a permit scheme which was next to nothing £20 quid a year which went towards trail maintenance. Now all the car park money goes to council… Probably funding the very scummers that hover in the bushes stealing bikes. So unless you are very clear where the money is going…. Pay / don’t pay.

That’s why he drives a flashy van and rides a carbon bike.

People like that don’t just avoid car park charges, probably also run their home expenses through the business to avoid VAT, weigh through expensive items in the supermarket as loose mushrooms and use hacked TV boxes to avoid the subscription fees.

Should’ve let his tyres down and peed on his windscreen. 🙂

Probably calculating the cost of repairs from all the potholes he went over on the access road! 🙂

See it at every trail centre I’ve ever been to. Folks parked 1/2 mike up the road. Sad really

I think some of the money goes into the trails and even if it goes to the local council who have supported the centre no worries plus councils do need the income to keep other services going.

The cost is not much and I have ridden there for twenty years so value the development.

I went to bedgebury recently when visiting family. £10 flat rate to park, I can see why the layby down the road was full of cars with bike racks on.

he may be rich and tight..

but probably..

That’s why he drives a flashy van and rides a carbon bike.

People like that don’t just avoid car park charges, probably also run their home expenses through the business to avoid VAT, weigh through expensive items in the supermarket as loose mushrooms and use hacked TV boxes to avoid the subscription fees.

You use to see this quite often at the pedalbikeway at the Forest of Dean and they would give you a polite notice saying you have not paid but now they give you ticket and fine you £60 good on them.

Every time that I’ve been to Cannock or Glentress I’ve paid. Anyone who avoids paying.

There’s a great campsite in Bruges with two pitch sizes available. It seems alot of Brit reviews bemoan the small pitch size and lack of parking next to their tent.

Guess which pitch size they willingly booked?

I’m virtually cash-less these days, so it’s a faf for me, but I still pay. At least at FOD TC you can pay in the cafe, £3.50 in change needs some organising!

Afan is a strange case, they cut the price of parking, sacked the Rangers who ran it and you can’t pay to park after 6, even if you want to. It’s like they want it to fail.

Cwmcarn on the other hand take the Mick, got the EU to pay for a new car park, then the council who own it (who unlike surrounding councils didn’t pitch into the project to fund it) put in parking meters, it goes to the council but it’s NRW who maintain the trails. Mostly I’ve got the arsehole because I crashed on Cafall a few years ago, dragged my sore, grazed arse back to my car to find I’d got a ticket for going 15 mins over – apparently if I’d reported the ‘incident’ to the centre they’d waived the charge – but who goes crying to the centre for a grazed knee?!

Should’ve let his tyres down and peed on his windscreen.

Or slashed his tyres and shat on his windscreen.

Cwmcarn on the other hand take the Mick

I think they are taking the mick! They’ve got some right gems on their parking rules sign…

– All persons must leave the car park after parking
– No driving except when parking or leaving
– No music, eating, drinking… cooking or vehicle repairs.

I wish they’d do us all a favour and install contactless payment terminals though.

Contactless or cashless….surely a few quid in the car is not unreasonable or a necessity…..wanders back to medieval lifestyle with coins and paper….. 😉

I remember years ago at the FOD, I saw more or less the same thing.
Some tight arse parks just the other side of the line so as to get out of paying. Gets his carbon full sus, spesh if I remember correctly, off the rack of his new sporty car…..I was gobsmacked 🙄

I avoid paying for parking everywhere. My taxes have already paid for all these government funded projects so I begrudge paying twice. Also most only take cash and I live in 2016 so use cards and don’t really carry coins.

But if I ride to the trails from my house , do I still have to pay?

Van & bike on credit; he doesn’t actually have any money.

I went to bedgebury recently when visiting family. £10 flat rate to park, I can see why the layby down the road was full of cars with bike racks on.

The parking money doesn’t go directly to the trails at Bedgebury, either.

The bedgebury fee of £10 is probably the most painful – feels weird they charge so much considering how cheap the others are. But still feels like a good amount of smiles for miles to me as the course is really well maintained. Recommend the annual membership – you can free bike cleaning tokens for that too 🙂

Don’t go to GT much anymore but did always find the £5 charge a bit steep when none of it went on trail maintenance. If going somewhere weatherproof I pop down to Drumlanrig, where an annual pass is £20 😀 a chunk of it goes to aid Rik on trail work and you also get discounted cake and coffee in the Castle Tearoom !

carparks close, the trails do not.

Thetford is also £10.

I’ve paid it before, I don’t know if the money contributes to the trails there or not but it’s just the way it is.

I think cheaper can be had by way of a season ticket for regulars, when I say think I could have just made that up.

You can buy a years pass for High Lodge Thetford for £54.

Up in north wales recently. Went to 4 of the big spots (2 trail centres, 2 mountains). Car park charges were high, but more importantly unpayable unless you happen to carry around a tenner in loose change with you at any one time.

Even forewarned that places charge a tenner so carry that, the notes functionality of the machines were broken.

Consequently the suggested car parking charges were not paid. The visitors centres etc got plenty of my money, so that’ll have to be my support of the national parks.

Bedgebury is exorbitant, and the only reason I won’t ride there again when we are down that way visiting family.

MrsMC has a blue disabled badge. At Glentrool and Kirroughtree it meant we could park for free, which seemed a bit odd given that she then went and rode the green routes. Suspect any money “saved” over the week was spent in the cafes and bike shops.

Local to us, there is no free disabled parking, which is fine. It pays for upkeep and maintenance. At Hicks Lodge, there is a breakdown of what the parking pays for, including staff costs. A season ticket covering Hicks Lodge and Cannock is £40, which also gives you discounts on a few other things. Going to one or the other once a month pays for itself*. Why wouldn’t you pay for the facility that is provided for you?

*Handy if you volunteer for the FC as well!

I’ll P*** the rest of you lot off. I can see a few non payers point of view.
As a FoD resident I resent being asked to pay to park where I didn’t before just so the area can be spoiled. I didn’t have to pay and see no reason for some external organisation, the FC, to charge me to park in what I regard as my own back garden. Of course the lefty, rambler supporters who want access for all will of course agree with me. Fancy charging the great unwashed to access their birth right. Benny Rothman must be turning in his grave alongside Lenin. I no longer go to the shop, not that they made their millions from me, due to the hassle from people purely as 3 quid for 3 minutes is a bit steep.

However I do agree that those poor misguided souls who like riding over sanitised BMX tracks should stick their hands in their pockets.
If I make the mistake of going somewhere that requires paid parking then I reluctantly do.

Drives me nuts. People get realyl hung up on the “does the money go to the trails” thing- sometimes it’s ringfenced, often not but even if it goes in the big bucket, that’s where the money comes from anyway. Revenue streams inwards help to keep the FC interested and keep us as a user group they want to work with (just as litigation, dangerous trailbuilding and fare dodging make us a group they want to throw in the sea)

The bigger picture on “does the money go to the trails” is probably more important… Few if any trailcentres actually pay for themselves. (I suspect absolutely none, when you take into account the initial build) So saying “wah wah, our parking money should go to the trails” can easily be turned around into “OK, have the parking money- and nothing else”.

mattsccm – Member

I didn’t have to pay and see no reason for some external organisation, the FC,

You think the FC are an external organisation in the Forest of Dean?

I’d would say something too, entitled prick by the sound of it.
A small parking charge is nothing, tell him to go and park in a city and let him argue it out.

I’m more shocked these days when I turn up somewhere and there is no fee to park (Stainburn and Langsett for example). Everybody knows how generous us yorkshire folk are when it comes to putting our hand in our pocket

Just an observation… but I reckon the proportion of people happy to pay a trail centre parking charge, versus those who would rather not – probably corresponds roughly with the numbers of those prepared to pay for a ‘P’ on here, versus those who aren’t…

I always pay to park – I usually have at least one other rider with me, so that reduces the cost but, when compared to other activities, it’s not really expensive (£4 for a swim, £8 for the cinema, etc.)

What does annoy me, though, is when they make it hard for people to pay, by having astupid rates – like £1.90 per hour, which pretty much means that you pay £2, due to not having change. Then you have the “How many hours will we be?” dilemma, which usually causes you to pay more than necessary.
The final, annoyance, is the out of order payment machine – as encountered during our recent club ride/BBQ…

https://www.strava.com/activities/692294199/shareable_images/photo_based/261519/1/25b01fb4-4711-4184-bf0c-64e522736fc6?hl=en-GB&v=1472486046
(Please excuse my spider writing – it’s my inner child, trying to escape)

I don’t pay but I build. If you think any money paid in FC car parks goes on trails and you are pretty deluded.

I’d rather put money into trails rather than parking companies pockets, but can’t see a good way to do so. TVTA hasn’t really got anywhere yet so unlike things like WORCA I can’t donate.

/troll

If I go to the FOD on my own I usually just park at Speculation or Cannop for free (designated FC car parks) as I tend to ride the off-piste stuff sometimes with a lap of the main trails if I’m feeling energetic. If I’m meeting friends there then it’s easier to meet at the main car park and I’ll happily pay. Does that make me a bad person?

Happy to pay at other places, CYB for a fiver is a bargain, Llandegla for £4.50 is decent and Afan for a pound is too*. Considering that spending 2 hours at a cinema costs roughly £15 (ticket, parking, drink) paying a few quid to park so that I can access purpose-built trails is good VFM IMO. Plus the FC/OPA etc can quantify visitor numbers from car park receipts helping them get any funds or to justify a facility. Cwmcarn ran into this problem with the recent ‘They’re trying to close it!’ saga brought on by the tree felling. Loads of locals were using the place for riding and dog walking but never paying so it looked far less used than the reality.

* if you want any cash to go directly to the trails there’s a trail fairy donation box at the cafe entrance.

Well I know money from Gisburn parking goes into the trails, FC is about to arrange for several hundred tonnes of gravel, a digger and tracked dumper to come in to help out the volunteers. Contractors were in earlier this year resurfacing the Park Wood section. Much of the money also goes to support the new toilet facilities which aren’t cheap to run but are free to use.

As Northwind says trail centres don’t make money but any revenue stream they help to generate makes them desireable in the eyes of the senior management. If you’re local buy a season pass.

£10 at Bedgebury is a piss take. I pay£60 for an annual pass, but use it with the kids/dog too. I often park in the layby due to short car park hours.

If you buy your Bedgebury annual pass through the bike club then it all goes to the trails.

The bit I resent is that the FC treat the different sites as different cost centres so I can’t get a generic season pass. I’d pay quite a lot for that (have NT membership for the same thing), but pretty much each site has its own season pass and I don’t use any individual place often enough.

So I’m then into paying odd (and very variable) amounts, for times I don’t know how long theyll be, into machines that half the time aren’t working.