Folk paying at trail centre car parks…..or not!

iainc – Member

ChrisL, thanks for info. I used to ride GT every couple of weeks but haven’t been this year. A mate was saying he was there on sat for first time in ages and had seen some changes, and signs of a lot more wear on the red route.

Just to follow this one up in more detail; yes, there’s lots of wear on the red route, it’s just how it works- the trail life cycle, I call it.

When we build a new trail or section to durable GT red spec, it’s generally pretty featureless and smooth, people go sanitised! BMX track! But that’s just not understanding what we’re doing. The day 1 trail isn’t finished, it’s a baby trail. Then over the next years- hopefully a decade or so, it wears, and narrows, and evolves, and generally grows up into a proper bike trail and stays like that for a long time. If it didn’t wear it’d stay boring- great for a flow or jump trail, rubbish for everything else.

Some specific wear is troublesome- anything that goes unsafe or out of grade, anything that stops a bit of trail from working, and anything that causes accelerated wear- water, basically. Overgrowth and hazards. Everything else is both inevitable and essential.

Eventually it goes out the other side and big holes start to appear, the trail surface breaks and generally it gets clapped out. It’s probably the most interesting an armoured trail gets, but it’s also not sustainable- that’s when it switches from wearing in to wearing out and it can happen fast, especially with corner-cutting stravapricks and skidding gopro heroes doing their best to ruin the trails. The black and offpistes can do it because they get a fraction of the traffic. But there’s really very little on GT red that’s in this state and it’s all being watched and generally hotfixed and coaxed along, because if it gets too bad the only way to fix it, is to go right back to the start and BMX trail it so everyone goes SANITISED!1!! again.

Course, this isn’t the only way to build trails, far from it- We do some stuff in a less industrial long-term way but it’s the only way it really works for the main GT trails, given the location, the traffic and the personnel. Other models work better elswhere. Other models could work better at GT tbh especially if it was being started from scratch today but, this is what we’ve got.

^ That’s a great overview of trail life Northwind. Thanks.

Most f the time these things are paid by grant funding, i.e. the grant will be a one off that pays for the trails to be built and the car park to be built.

Then the grant runs out, and to be sustainable they need continuous income.

One way of doing that is to rent a cafe spot, and another paid for parking.

Its expensive parking, but its not just paying for the parking… its very different to a town centre – parking charges are low because you generally go spend a load of money in town / do business. You ain’t spending money in the forest when riding round…. unless you eat at the cafe I suppose.

Maybe the parking should be free, and there should be a gated entrance where every rider has to drop a couple of quid in. This would be nice, but theres all kinds of reasons why it wouldn’t work.

Pimpmaster Jazz – Member

^ That’s a great overview of trail life Northwind

Obviously it’s a faster process with 27.5 tyres.

wzzzz – Member

Then the grant runs out, and to be sustainable they need continuous income.

Yup. And tbh, the biggest issue is that the funding’s completely lopsided. Succesful trail centres make a lot of money, just not for the FC. Sticking with what I know, the value of Glentress to the local economy is colossal but the direct contribution back is really pretty minimal. But the local authorities and businesses are largely happy enough to take the golden eggs then complain if they don’t think the FC is taking good enough care of the goose.

They say Tweedlove is worth a million quid to the local area, how much of that ends up in the FC’s pockets? It’d pay Andy Wardman’s wages for a while…

I hate the fact that my local centre (Sherwood) car park opens after I want to start riding on some weekends. It forces me to park outside and then when I go back to the car after a quick lap I look like a proper tightwad

Northwind – many thanks for your response, extremely useful, cheers

Northwind – Member
Eventually it goes out the other side and big holes start to appear, the trail surface breaks and generally it gets clapped out. It’s probably the most interesting an armoured trail gets, but it’s also not sustainable- that’s when it switches from wearing in to wearing out and it can happen fast, especially with corner-cutting stravapricks and skidding gopro heroes doing their best to ruin the trails. The black and offpistes can do it because they get a fraction of the traffic. But there’s really very little on GT red that’s in this state and it’s all being watched and generally hotfixed and coaxed along, because if it gets too bad the only way to fix it, is to go right back to the start and BMX trail it so everyone goes SANITISED!1!! again.

It may be worth expanding on this a little bit. A typical trail at Glentress is surfaced with compacted type 1 aggregate – i.e. hardcore. This sits within a tray dug through the soft organic soil layer so underneath it is nice solid mineral soil.

The compacted top surface of the hardcore is pretty tough and handles wear and tear pretty well. But it does wear out and as it does so the deeper hardcore that is exposed is less compact and will degrade more easily. So a trail will initially wear slowly, but once it reaches a certain point, it will degrade much more quickly. This can be compounded as once a divot’s been made in the hard outer surface, it will tend to collect water, which will hasten the speed that the less compact foundations will break away.

One way to speed up this process is to shortcut or otherwise ride off the trail. Doing so will quickly scoop away the soft organic soil that lies next to the trail surface. This will expose the side of the hardcore tray, meaning that the less compact hardcore that’s below the surface can be exposed even before the surface is worn out. And again a rut next to the trail surface will collect water, which will work its way into the hardcore tray and speed up the whole process again.

One way to reduce the risk of unexpected line choices accelerating the speed that a trail wears out is to build trails so they’re wider than they need to be. You’d be surprised by how quickly undergrowth spreads over the parts that don’t end up being the ride line. Unsurprisingly though this increases the time, effort and expense required to make the trail and also increases the number of cries of “trail sanitisation!” when riders see a new trail section that’s apparently as wide as a motorway…

Some people complain that roots get completely covered when a section of trail is repaired. This is because it’s difficult to compact the surface of a trail that’s got roots running over it. Compacting is done using a petrol powered wacker plate and this is literally a blunt instrument and hard to work around uneven shapes such as roots. Instead the surface is built up so it’s slightly above the level of the roots. Rest assured though that the top of the roots will still be within the thickness of well compacted hardcore. The roots will become exposed again long before the trail section needs to be rebuilt. Not that it will stop the cries of “sanitised!” but hey ho…

Pimpmaster Jazz – Member
^ That’s a great overview of trail life Northwind. Thanks.

Agreed, thanks Northwind & ChrisL!

A lot of people have strong opinions about the trails at GT without understanding this sort of detail. So common to hear “its so boring and sanitised” vs “it’s completely trashed, worse braking bumps than Morzine” in the space of a single day on a single section of trail.

I guess Sherwood Pines is our local trail centre, being about an hour away. They charge £4 there per car and the machines take card too. I think £4 for a day there with the family is cracking value. The only problem for me is we don’t have a bike rack at the moment so when we go we go in two cars (one has the bikes in, one has the kids) so end up paying double. Still a great day out for £8 though.

Del – Member

7 quid at haldon for a day or 30 quid on a season pass. that pass gets you paring at other sites too IIRC.
volunteer passes are good for all FC sites AFAIK.

It gets you a discount for Go Ape which I think was about a tenner?

And 10% off the cafe.

And removes the need to find change at any time.

I might sound like a snob but when a family ticket to the cinema is £25-30 spending £30 a year to park and use the facilities at Haldon as much as I like it’s such a bargain regardless of where those funds go.

A lot of people have strong opinions about the trails at GT without understanding this sort of detail. So common to hear “its so boring and sanitised” vs “it’s completely trashed, worse braking bumps than Morzine” in the space of a single day on a single section of trail.

Comes down a lot to what kind of trail it is.
IMO most (not all) of the red at GT is clearly designed to be a flow trail, and as such a ‘sanitised’ surface that allows you to carry speed into the various berms/jumps/drops is appropriate.
Certainly last time i was there (GT7) braking bumps were causing most of the field to totally ignore the entry to a couple of berms as it was faster (and gave less of a beating) to take an inside line to the centre of the berm and then scrub speed and turn tighter.
In an ideal world we’d have a 2nd (way-marked) red with a different character to appeal to people wanting things a bit rougher.

fifeandy – Member

Certainly last time i was there (GT7) braking bumps were causing most of the field to totally ignore the entry to a couple of berms as it was faster (and gave less of a beating) to take an inside line to the centre of the berm and then scrub speed and turn tighter.

When was this? The only places there were noteworthy braking bumps on this year’s GT7 course, were on sections built for the GT7- not part of the red. They don’t use much trailcentre at all for the Seven

(I solo’d it on the fatbike so I know where every bastard bump on the lap was 😉 )

One way to reduce the risk of unexpected line choices accelerating the speed that a trail wears out is to build trails so they’re wider than they need to be.

Backing this up, it’s what’s done at Aston Hill. It’s common to build or repair a trail and then cover half of it in brush again, leaving just a centre section clear.

Going the other way I saw a photo of the Afan valley the other day – having not ridden there for a few years it was great to see how ‘natural’ it’s looking.

Pimpmaster Jazz – Member

One way to reduce the risk of unexpected line choices accelerating the speed that a trail wears out is to build trails so they’re wider than they need to be.

Backing this up, it’s what’s done at Aston Hill. It’s common to build or repair a trail and then cover half of it in brush again, leaving just a centre section clear.

Going the other way I saw a photo of the Afan valley the other day – having not ridden there for a few years it was great to see how ‘natural’ it’s looking.[/quote]

It can be a good technique but if you build a trail twice as wide as it “needs” to be then it’s going to take twice as long to build it! When the Trailfairies are doing maintenance work we usually can’t leave a trail section closed at the end of a session, so sometimes we just won’t have the manpower or time to employ resource intensive techniques such as this. 🙁

@Northwind – Magic Mushroom.
There were for sure worse bumps on the natural sections of the course, but clearly bad enough to upset the flow of the trail.

It can be a good technique but if you build a trail twice as wide as it “needs” to be then it’s going to take twice as long to build it!

Very true. 🙁

fifeandy – Member

@Northwind – Magic Mushroom.

Pff. Just going to have to disagree on that, there’s no noteworthy braking bumps on magic mushroom, and the only thing on the section that can “give a beating” are the root plates that most folks choose to use the alt lines for (which is by design).

The trail isn’t supposed to be smooth, and it’s supposed to have different ways to approach it- naturally in the middle of an endurance race people will ride it differently to on a saturday afternoon, where magic mushroom is a 2 minute dash (I just rode it normally, roots and all, because I’m a terrible XC racer)

munrobiker – Member 
I do stand by what I say, if it’s an FC project or a council car park it’s already been paid for and as a socialist I don’t see why I should pay for state provided services.

What would Corbyn do I wonder? He’d insist all trail centres were publically owned and parking was state funded. No one would pay at the car park, we’d all have equal rights to a parking space and everyone would have to drive a Trabant. We’d also have state supplied mountain bikes, all the same.

Gisburn is pretty much the same, once we’ve finished the current bit of new trail (massively engineered, the whole length is bench cut and fully pitched under the gravel with sumps, drainage pipes and upside ditches dug well away from the trail it should survive an apocolypse or Gisburn riders and rain) we’ll probably spend a year on big repair projects, rebuilding sections from the ground up, adding new features. We will get accused of sanitising it but at least it last a few more years.

I think you’ll find most of the damage you see at glentress is made be various parts of my body and bike sliding along, down and sometimes across various features.

Most of the braking bumps aren’t in the way if you can ride properly, they’re all caused by golf that can’t ride properly and go in too fast on the wrong line and then grab a hamfist full of brake. Anyway regarding non paying at GT, or really boils ma piss. Andy Wardman is one of the nicest, hardest working blokes in mountain biking. He does a ton of work behind the scenes putting forward the case for new trails and by not paying for parking you’re giving the FC plenty of ammunition to say no. It’s also a slap in the face for the likes of Chris, Northwind and a handful of others who do far more than their share of work. Chapeau gentleman.

@northwind. Rooty bits are fine – as you say, they are like that by design. Also totally agree its a different trail on an XC hardtail 5hrs in compared to weekend warrior on his enduro sled.
I just kinda think that if there’s an obvious high speed berm on the trail its ‘broken’ when the most efficient way round it is not to use it.
Not a complaint in any way, just an opinion/observation.

@steven, i can’t ride properly, so that’s probably part of my problem 😳

Got my pass for the FOD online for £24 for the year I know there are loads of fee parking in the FOD know a lot of them just think its worth the money for the pass in the pedalway as I think it is safer than some of the other places.

Odd that you only have to pay to park at places that already have a cafe and bike wash to make money off you.

Parking at Brechfa, for example, is free.

I do stand by what I say, if it’s an FC project or a council car park it’s already been paid for and as a socialist I don’t see why I should pay for state provided services.

The FC funding from govt only amounts to about £20m. That’s covers their statutory duties such as providing safe free public access (on foot, and not necessarily with cafes and toilets etc) and environmental stewardship such as protection of at risk habitats such as heathland and peat bogs and species of plants and animals, ancient monuments etc. The rest of the money they make to pay for their business is generated through trading income such as selling wood, cafe income and car park charges.

For the FC to exist as it is today and provide the range of other (non essential) things such as toilets and bike trails, play facilities, viewing platforms and the like it needs to pay for them somehow as they’re not part of the fc’s statutory remit. The govt isn’t giving the FC money to pay for trails for bikes, why would they do that.

The FC has to charge for parking at trailcentres to cover the cost of running the centre and all the non core activity there. Not all the money from bikers gets spent on trails, it gets spent on running the whole of the centre just like cafe income gets spent across all the activities etc. At some centres its timber incomes and estates incomes from other parts of the business that are propping up the trailcentres. If more people paid at centres you’d find it would soon enough start to find its way into better facilities as there’d be more money to go round. It’s easy to justify additional budget for more stuff if there’s an upturn in income. Any additional trading income doesn’t go back to the govt anymore but gets saved up to pay for investment in the business, generally meaning new cafes, bike trails etc

joshvegas – Member
I think you’ll find most of the damage you see at glentress is made be various parts of my body and bike sliding along, down and sometimes across various features.

Well in that case I think your moral obligation to actually make it to a Trailfairies session is pretty absolute! 🙂

I wholeheartedly agree with Steven’s comments about Andy Wardman – he’s a top bloke. And it’s always great to hear kind words said about the Trailfairies!

And it’s worth pointing out that a lot of FC maintenance work is done by volunteers. I started in the summer at Hicks Lodge. The Ranger is responsible for that, which is the National Forest cycle centre, and another site. They contract in some of the big machinery type jobs, but a lot of the signage, brashing, drainage and trail maintenance is down to one paid bloke(who’s also the car park attendant/traffic warden) and a team of volunteers.

Who are all heartily sick of **** ragwort!

I popped over to Hopton Wood the other week, would’ve gladly paid a couple of quid to ride the trails there. In comparison to FoD, the Verderer’s trail has gone right off after they repaired huge sections awhile back, all testy sections were sanitised.

ChrisL – Member
joshvegas – Member
I think you’ll find most of the damage you see at glentress is made be various parts of my body and bike sliding along, down and sometimes across various features.
Well in that case I think your moral obligation to actually make it to a Trailfairies session is pretty absolute!

Not wrong can i bring my own mattock?

joshvegas – Member
Not wrong can i bring my own mattock?

I have done so in the past and various ‘fairies bring their own preferred trail tools so I doubt anyone will try and stop you. 🙂

Like most people I pay the parking fee’s and don’t really think about it. But access to the forest is a good thing, so is the exercise and recreation that comes with that access. I’d like to think that access should be free of charge. Here in Wales things like museum admission is foc, payed for from general taxation. FC parking, footpaths and mtb trails should be the same.

Taxi25

No one wants to pay any tax though do they!

Can we expect 100% of the general population to fund our trailcentre habits? If that was the case all we’d have is green trails and blues at a push to get fat kids and their parents off the couch.

Agreed, but reverse that. I haven’t been to a museum in years, but I guess some of my tax goes towards them. Can the beard history lot really expect the general population to fund their museum hobby.

nairnster – Member

Agreed, but reverse that. I haven’t been to a museum in years, but I guess some of my tax goes towards them. Can the beard history lot really expect the general population to fund their museum hobby.

No, that’s why most of them (who dont charge for tickets already) ask for contributions to support them. 😐

Oh, and they will all charge for parking.

Tricky one this…the money doesn’t actually go towards trail upkeep, it gets swallowed up in the big machine and is used for whatever, the trail budgets are not feathered directly by this car parking charge.
In a lot of cases, a huge portion of cost to build has been from funding raised for it so isn’t directly out the FC pocket.
The cost in a lot of places is a rip-off for what is there…and people feel genuinely aggrieved by having to pay.
The trails are built and provided by other funding, the FC have failed to plan a cost-effective maintenance schedule and lump this in to help raise funds for the overall FC scheme.
Saying all that, I pay every time but I do it grudgingly as I know none of it is used for trail upkeep or development.
It also provides a slightly more accurate idea of car numbers so entirely possible to show big differences in suggested numbers and reality…

Access is free of charge…arrive in/on a non-motorised believe and you don’t pay. You aren’t paying to use the forest, the fee is to allow you to park your vehicle in a parking space at a car park…if you don’t use the car park, you don’t need to pay.

Dick

Absolutely.

What we also forget is these places aren’t generally just trailcentres, they are all things to all people. I work for the FC so call me biased if you like but sitting on the fence as a biker and guy with a family if you can take your family to one of these places for a whole day and all of you ride the trails, use the toilets, use the environment to picnic in, play on the play equipment and walk the walking trails, run the parkrun etc all for between £5 and £12 per day I think that’s pretty good value. It does cost a lot of money to run these places and the alternative is that they just don’t exist and there are no trails. Then as the centre doesn’t exist there’s no mtb ranger on site/ nearby to organise volunteer programmes and the wild trails just dont have anyone to manage them as well.

I work as a volunteer at a FoC site that has trails.
The parking charge is £5 ,and according to the staff ,95% of people pay it. When i walk around the car park i just don’t see that figure.The parking charges are not enforced unless the reg no comes up as a serial offender.
The majority of the trail building is done by volunteers with the FoC supplying some equipment and materials.
Its not just cycle trails that the volunteers work on but virtually everything else.
We are told all the time the Commission is short of money and car parking fees will rise year on year,currently £5.My centre has the funding for number plate recognition cameras for the parking and may come into place next year.

Access is free of charge…arrive in/on a non-motorised believe and you don’t pay

You know thats such an amazingly good idea I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it already. So good infact, I invite you to come and share the experience with me. I’ve taken the liberty of knocking together a brief itinerary.

According to google its 86mi to Glentress (my nearest FC trail centre) by bike.
So I figure if we leave around 1am, allowing for a couple of short breaks we should be there by 10am, cafe will be open and we can grab some breakfast.
Probably hit the trails around 10:30, and if we keep the pace up, we should be able to get a lap each of the red and blue in time for a late lunch around 1:15pm. Another quick lap of the red will take us to about 3:15pm, sadly no time to stop for cake as we’ve still got a bit of a trek home again. Guessing we’ll be a bit tired on the way home, so may be a bit slower. Figure we can make it home by midnight including a brief stop at the chippy. ~200miles all in, should make for a good day.

When did socialism extend to ‘everything state provided should be free access AND should provide transport to the people to get them there’?