For those who ride the Hurtwood land on the Surrey hills…

Sonor, didn’t you hear? They closed all the pits thus leaving me with nothing else to do but peddle me communist filth on random internet forums in order to further the cause of the extreme left. 😉

Yeah right on mannnnn….

i was implying a Proudhonist/Marxist theory rather than that of a long haired weed smoker.

Sonor, didn’t you hear? They closed all the pits thus leaving me with nothing else to do but peddle me communist filth on random internet forums in order to further the cause of the extreme left.

I see. A rebel without a cause.

mrlebowski – Member

All property is theft?

Yup, that’s why communists only drink fruit tea.

so is the trail that went from the near the top of bkb down to the road? That was a good trail, shame its been knocked down, more fun than bkb you didnt have to pedal and it actually went fast! But I can see that if those the rules thems the breaks!

brakes – Member

“how does this trailbuilding inconvenience the landowner?”

Well… Someone made a trail and then:

scott_mcavennie2 – Member

“I did see one on Saturday that had been put out of use by lips taken out of drop offs and then large rocks on the landing of the drop off. The same on the run in and landing on a jump further down. No blockage of the trail at all to put riders off blazing down there. So, a ridder can be riding down it, and stack it quite badly.”

It became dangerous, and any riders or their estates could sue the landowner. Simples. I’ve never been to Hurtwood but if they’re allowing any trails and riding at all, that makes them better than most- but instead of saying “Thanks for what we have” people say “Why can’t we also have…” and that stinks tbh.

bigyinn – Member

scott_mcavennie2 – Member

By “put beyond use” do you mean dangerously trashed?

hopefully…..
for the sake of clarity (which scott_m cant seem to work out for himself, being a grown up 13 year old etc), I interpreted “dangerously trashed as oh forget it, can’t be bothered explaining myself to a hard of thinking troll

See, I don’t view things as quite so clear cut as some here.

There’s been one hell of a lot of logging on Holmbury in the last year. Many of the “Legacy” trails, as tolerated by the Hurtwood have been trashed. Now being “legacy”, it should be fine to reinstate them. But while you’re doing that, why not improve them? Some had sections that just didn’t work (bad drainage, or fall line). Some places you can’t reinstate the old line, because it’s either so covered in brash that one or two people working can’t hope to clear it, or the original trail bed has been mashed by having 8′ wide tracked vehicles driven down it. Now is that illegal trail building, or is it trail maintenance? I’d call it the latter.

The “honeypot trails” – BKB and Parklife/Yoghurt Pots are actually two of the worst trails on the hill at the moment – simply due to the sheer quantity of traffic. Sure the machine-built part at the bottom of BKB is fine, but the rest of it desperately needs a maintenance day – deberming/drain clearance, and dealing with all the braiding that’s occurring. I rode Hombury/Pitch/Winterfold these last 2 Sundays and BKB was far the wettest trail of the lot. If somebody wants to organise a dig day, I’ll gladly turn up and pitch in.

Now as far as getting “official” clearance for building new stuff goes, have you any idea quite how much grief it is to actually get anything done. It took what, 4 years to get the old fall line at the bottom of BKB sorted (I was involved on the periphery of it). That’s simply bollocks. Anything has to be built to IMBA standards, and it has to be built to suit lowest common denominator riders who might stray onto it by accident. Hence you end up with an ultimately dull trail. There’s simply f-all hope of being able to create something legal that’s going to challenge a decent rider (I’m not talking stunts/jumps here – merely steep, tight and twisty). It’s no wonder those riders who can’t find what they want simply get on and build it. Quick and dirty poorly built trails erupt, simply because it’s not worth making any more effort when you know it’s only going to last a week or 2.

Lastly, I can’t help but feel that the Hurtwood is reacting mostly defensively here. I’m all for their open access policy – I genuinely think it’s a great thing, but they can’t actually stop building going on. They can fence areas off, they can put up signs, whatever. The kind of riders who want to build trails will just treat that as another challenge. There will always be holes in fences, gaps in walls etc. Sure they’ll lose the average day rider who obeys the rules, but they simply won’t deter the hardcore builders. They’ll end up chopping off their nose to spite their own face. The only way they could stop trail development is to concrete over the whole area.

Personally I’m not massively in favour of new trails across the Surrey Hills, but I do think we ought to look after what we’ve got better. That’s not just maintenance days, but also riding skills related – not cutting corners, or straightlining. Not riding around puddles. Not riding stuff when it’s sopping wet. Generally treating the land with some respect – then there might not be a need for new stuff. Sadly – that’s as likely to happen as dodgy trail building stopping.

plus 10000000000 what Jon just said.

Not a fan of diggers being used to build trails AT ALL.

JonEdwards: so there needs to be greater flexibility to allow for trail maintenance and unforeseen things like logging closing off trails.

Would a solution be, instead of licensing particular trails, to licence an exhaustive list of specified, suitably qualified individuals with a stake in the local community (say, Nirvana Cycles) to perform trail maintenance anywhere in the Hurtwood as reasonably required, subject to Hurtwood’s right to intervene in any way shape or form, in its sole discretion?

As consideration for the privilege, these individuals could agree to pay financial penalties (or better yet, penalties in kind, like free forest maintenance) on a strict liability basis whenever any unsanctioned trails were discovered. This would incentivise the responsible people to keep the riding community in line. And riders would be disincentivised to build unsanctioned stuff because they’d know that other people would be carrying the financial can for them.

Finally the responsible individuals (e.g. Nirvana) would be required to provide Hurtwood with full details of any trail works, both on a regular (say monthly) basis and whenever works are being carried out, by reference to an OS 1:25000 map.

But Nirvana (or whoever was licensed) would NOT have to get prior approval to build the trails; just to keep Hurtwood informed, make sure that no one else builds stuff, and to knock the stuff down if Hurtwood asks, which it may do at any time for any reason.

More generally – is the relationship between, er, the mountain bike community and Hurtwood regulated by a legally binding document and if so is it public? Out of interest, were any lawyers involved in its drafting, on either side (even on a casual basis rather than in an employed capacity). And who represented the mountain bike community in the negotiations and on what basis?

These aren’t loaded questions in any way, just interested to know the background to all this.

I haven’t ridden the area for months, and other than my ride from the door stuff it’s local to me. I just get very disheartened when I see all the increased trail traffic and erosion which is hardly surprising, as the frequent magazine articles, local businesses and the likes of officials such as IW from the CTC endorse the area. Although I’ve never put in a new trail there myself, I’m hardly surprised that riders are expanding out of the more contrived areas.

It probably still rides like it used to as a night ride – must get back into meeting the old crowd there again!

Out of all of the posts so far, Mr Scargil’s original view is making most sense to me.

Happy riding whatever your flavour!

JonEdwards: so there needs to be greater flexibility to allow for trail maintenance and unforeseen things like logging closing off trails

Roughly

Would a solution be, instead of licensing particular trails, to licence an exhaustive list of specified, suitably qualified individuals with a stake in the local community (say, Nirvana Cycles) to perform trail maintenance anywhere in the Hurtwood as reasonably required, subject to Hurtwood’s right to intervene in any way shape or form, in its sole discretion?

As consideration for the privilege, these individuals could agree to pay financial penalties (or better yet, penalties in kind, like free forest maintenance) on a strict liability basis whenever any unsanctioned trails were discovered. This would incentivise the responsible people to keep the riding community in line. And riders would be disincentivised to build unsanctioned stuff because they’d know that other people would be carrying the financial can for them.

Finally the responsible individuals (e.g. Nirvana) would be required to provide Hurtwood with full details of any trail works, both on a regular (say monthly) basis and whenever works are being carried out, by reference to an OS 1:25000 map.

Too much paperwork for most people to be interested. Maybe if it was a simple form that someone could down load stating location, the work proposed, and a brief set of guidelines, with an answer guaranteed back from the hurtwood within a week, you might get somewhere. But again, if they say no, what’s going to stop the building happening anyway? And anyway, why would a company sign up to this if there was a chance of them getting financially penalised?

I would also suggest that Nirvana are absolutely NOT the right people to be involved., Whilst they undoubtedly created a lot of the legacy network, they also seem to be one of the worst offenders for just bashing in a new trail because the one 10 feet away is knackered, or just because they feel like it. (this is a personal opinion/issue)

More generally – is the relationship between, er, the mountain bike community and Hurtwood regulated by a legally binding document and if so is it public? Out of interest, were any lawyers involved in its drafting, on either side (even on a casual basis rather than in an employed capacity). And who represented the mountain bike community in the negotiations and on what basis?

I don’t believe there’s any legal types involved except by accident, or any documents. Could be wrong though.

The “mountain bike reps” are/were assorted people who live in the area and ride bikes, mostly its middle aged weekend warrior types (sorry!). The hardcore DH/FR/jumpbunny types quickly got pissed off with sitting in meetings that didn’t go anywhere when they could just go out and do what they wanted instead.

Mountainbikers simply aren’t interested in playing politics/club games in the same way that the horse lobby, roadie clubs, the Ramblers Association are, so the representation is inevitably poor.

I want to ask this again

What gives you the right to think you can just build trails without any reference to any standards on someone elses land?

This is not responsible access.

We need to be careful here, we need to be grateful to the landowners in the Surrey Hills, if we loose access there’s very little in the area to match the quality of trails. Yes, the current trails are getting overused, traffic will only increase as more riders are drawn to the area. The Access All Areas debate in this months mag is very timely, we need more riding areas in the South East, a great potential area is Ashdown Forest, which has for as long as I can remember has a strict no bike policy, surely allowing access could ease some of the traffic at Surrey Hills and reduce the need for people to build new trails. There’s also the North Downs Way which people seem to forget about, time to think further afield.

I know a lot of people don’t want to hear it, but a modest network of well built trails is the only thing that will be acceptable to everyone, long term. The simple reason that trails don’t get built steep, for example, is that they won’t last more than a few months. That’s just tough – some mountain bike trails is better than none. It is a minority of riders that don’t find that kind of trail fun.

It’s very easy for some people to grumble about increasing numbers – but that’s a point of view that I don’t understand. I live here, and always have, and I don’t want everyone to “clear off my hill”. You might think that you were here first and others should stop ruining it for you – but I can assure you, you weren’t here first.

I’m uninformed. But it sounds like there are basic holes in the agreement (e.g., what happens if a prescribed trail is blocked by logging – can we put in a replacement elsewhere?) and it would help if there was someone with legal experience involved. I’m only a trainee but are there any lawyers reading this thread who would be interested in helping, if it comes to renegotiating this stuff? Or would formalising the arrangement put Hurtwood off the whole thing entirely.

What I was suggesting was having some kind of license (say an annual one) permitting a specified list of people (a short list) to perform works necessary to the upkeep of trails already in existence, and to construct new trails where existing trails have been made impassable for any reason, subject to an obligation to tell Hurtwood after such works are carried out and on a monthly basis also, and with the caveat that Hurtwood can come in after and say the trails have to be removed for any reason it likes, but for the avoidance of doubt there would be no need for lengthy negotiations with the Hurtwood prior to any such works.

A group like Nirvana would be incentivised to sign up to this (and penalties if other idiots build stuff) by their ties with the community and their interest in furthering mountain biking in the area. Actually, Nirvana would be perfect. If they’re the worst for adding new stuff (I think they’re great), surely they’re the best ones to incorporate in a legal framework.

Better to have them inside the tent pi$$ing out, than outside the tent pi$$ing in, you know? Plus they have local knowledge and real links with the community. IW/CTC do not, in my (uninformed) opinion.

That’ll be £75 for that bit of drafting by the way.

There seems to constantly be complaints about riders ruining trails during the winter, riders building illegal trails or just general access issues.

In conjunction with this there is also the article/thread about MOD land yesterday.

In the end I think this comes down to the number of mtbers in the SE versus the amount of trails.

The main issue is obviously MTBiking is increasing massively in popularity and the numbers of riders are increasing. The second issue is the type of trails these rides want to build. Personally I think the numbers of riders who want to build super hardcore trails is alot smaller than the over all number of riders. It will also remain a limited number because most of us are a bit rubbish.

I think solving this second issue surely must be simpler and would just require a few hardcore riding spots round london. Theres aston hill in the NW. PORC in the very SE now all that is really needed is something in the SW round guildford/dorking area.

Im sure if there was a “proper” (as proper as you can get with 150-200mm altitude gain) downhill spot in this area it would solve alot of these problems.

The second problem is the number of trails for general riders.

First we need to work out is the increase in MTB popularity going to come to an end at some point ? Will the numbers of MTBers start to level off ?

Once we know this it would be possible start planning until this is known everything is really speculation.

But I think its fairly obvious the SE needs some Wales type trail centres built, but with the land prices/lack of space will this ever be likely ?

These trail centres would obviously draw alot of “newbie’s” (for want a better word) and allow some of the more natural trails a rest.

Would it be an idea for MTB advocacy groups to start some kind of mega-long-term to plan to buy and build these sorts of trail centres.

It isn’t true to say that Ian Warby and CTC do not have excellent links with local community! For a start, Richard and I are part of the CTC network and are both Surrey Hills born and live here still! There are many other people who are very well engaged with community and opinion and conversant with all the ins and outs. I won’t comment on any other people’s suitability.

True. Above comment retracted. I’m not in a position to make.

I just never ride there at weekends. Weekdays are bliss 🙂 And night rides are even better. :p

PORC is fine for just session-ing DH, but not really ideal for XC or trail riding. Ashdown Forest really would be ideal. Anyway not sure all this internet debating and ranting helps, those who ride Surrey Hills need to listen to Sonor and just get on with it.

Try other locations if you get bored locally: North/South Downs, Friston Forest is pretty good and Tilgate.

Happy riding 😀

JHW – i think you’re overcomplicating this. It’s not a formal agreement – i’m sure most of those questions could be clarified by someone asking the ranger/Hurtwood. Anyone can become a member for £25 p.a. (which is a pittance compared to the cost of supporting a mountain biking habit) – the more members, the more say we get.

On a separate note, there was some land for sale on the Holmebury side of Leith Hill last time i was there (with huntin, shootin, fishin rights IIRC). Did anyone have an idea of the price? Set up company, issue a few hundred shares to mountain bikers at, say, £1000 each, build trails to our hearts content. As Howies are fond of saying “buy land, they aren’t making nay more of it” – it’s cash tied up but unlikely to go down significantly in value.

Buying the land sounds like a good idea.

Also a mass joining of the Hurtwood by mtn bikers would be good…

Also a mass joining of the Hurtwood by mtn bikers would be good

Good call

Who’s in?

On a separate note, there was some land for sale on the Holmebury side of Leith Hill last time i was there (with huntin, shootin, fishin rights IIRC). Did anyone have an idea of the price? Set up company, issue a few hundred shares to mountain bikers at, say, £1000 each, build trails to our hearts content. As Howies are fond of saying “buy land, they aren’t making nay more of it” – it’s cash tied up but unlikely to go down significantly in value.

£350k iirc – that’s the 120 acres?

barry knows best and yoghurt pots are getting a bit rough again and i would be up for spending time working on them. does anyone know who is meant to do it? who put the new fence in at the bottom of bkb?

bigyinn – Member
bigyinn – Member
scott_mcavennie2 – Member

By “put beyond use” do you mean dangerously trashed?

hopefully…..

for the sake of clarity (which scott_m cant seem to work out for himself, being a grown up 13 year old etc), I interpreted “dangerously trashed as

If you misinterpreted my original post I don’t know why you didn’t just come out and say it at the time.

Apology accepted – no hard feelings. 😀

I’m in for joining – start another thread to encourage it and then we all join within an hour to make it noticable.

£350k, so we need 350 stw members with £1000 burn. Who’s up for that, there are obviously a few judging by the watch thread that’s going on now…

I agree, a mass joining of the Hurtwood trust would certainly help maintain the status quo.

I am going to start a thread.

I am a bit of a thread killer though, so let’s hope it goes well…

Anyone know the legal status of the hurtwood control – did the Bray family give up their rights when they created hurtwood control in 1926 (and stated that cycling was ok by the looks of the websites bit on history)?

Or are they able to go back on the dedication at any point / or amend?

If control of the land has been legally given to the trustees of hurtwood control then if mtbers became those trustees / formed a large portion of the friends of hurtwood, they would be in a position to change policies in regard to cycling / creation of new trails?

The Shere estate(owned by the Bray family) own Holmbury/Pitch hills and parts of Winterfold. They control the commercial aspects of the land such as forestry.

Friends of the Hurtwood (charity) look after the public access issues to the land, they don’t own the land themselves.

If control of the land has been legally given to the trustees of hurtwood control then if mtbers became those trustees / formed a large portion of the friends of hurtwood, they would be in a position to change policies in regard to cycling / creation of new trails?

Planning a coup? Good luck with that.

It has been trustees who are mountain bikers that have already made Hurtwood more mountain biker friendly and you wouldn’t believe the work that goes into it just to get it to where it is today. of course this work is being undone by unsanctioned trailbuilding.

I’m in for joining – start another thread to encourage it and then we all join within an hour to make it noticable.

£350k, so we need 350 stw members with £1000 burn. Who’s up for that, there are obviously a few judging by the watch thread that’s going on now…

I think you had better check which plot is for sale as most of that side of Leith hill is covered by SSSI’s, which won’t even allow you to fart on that land.

Something from the Hurtwood ranger blog:

Over the last few weeks we’ve been erecting some post and rail barriers opposite the ending of the new BKB trail. This was done to prevent bike riders using a footpath, rather than the road, back to Peaslake. This footpath is used regularly by pedestrians to walk safely into the village without having to go onto the road. Sadly the first barriers we put up were ripped out, so far their replacements are still in place, however the signs I put up, have been vandalised.

The land in question remains unsold and has been revised in price severaal times. The current signs do give a figure, but I can’t remember what it is. Only the top plot is SSSI, and in any case if you have seen what has been done to Abinger Common woods you’ll get an idea about how liberal owners can be with SSSI.

the land for sale has been sold (if this is it) and is not that good biking as it isn’t very hilly. http://www.perfectplot.co.uk/location.asp?Location=7

Thats pretty pathetic that fences have been ripped up and signs vandalised. I wonder if that was done by the illegal builders there. Way to go, screw it up for everyone else, MORONS!

If the illegal builders have built an illegal trail, that runs underneath BKB and is better, with bigger illegal jumps and drops, why would they go and vandalise the end of BKB?

The vandals are people who ride BKB and want to take the offroad path into Peaslake – there’s plenty of them who do it.

They built a cheeky trail out of the way, but let’s go and blame them for everything eh?

Aren’t there some quite good droppy, jumpy trails around Coldharbour and so on that cater for those who enjoy that kind of thing, lots of stuff on leith with big step down drops and jumps too. Just wonder how sensible it is to put feature laden cheeky trail near the most popular and used trail in the area, seems to be the worst place you could could build it not so much cheeky as blatant.

Oh and the landowners don’t allow it, possibly liable if someone gets hurt and so on..

Thats pretty pathetic that fences have been ripped up and signs vandalised. I wonder if that was done by the illegal builders there. Way to go, screw it up for everyone else, MORONS!

I would say is that it’s just riders who do this sort of thing, whether they build unsanctioned trails or not.

Just the everyday can’t see past themselves type of rider who doesn’t want their personal enjoyment spoilt regardless of the cost to others.

I went building elsewhere and am now very happy – also found some very well hidden (and well built) networks with nowhere near the number of riders that the surrey hills gets.

The only building I do up there now is maintaining my old trails, where people straightline sections or if it needs draining. Haven’t built a new trail on those hills for over 3 years.

Sonor I’m new to riding in the area but have joined Hurtwood and put my name forward as a volunteer to help with maintenance – will people get in touch when stuff needs to be done?

It seems like there is quite a lot of tlc needed on some of the heavier used trails and not really a good long-term idea to ride them when it’s been chucking it down

Having got to know the hills over the last few months if you are up there just exploring it is quite hard to tell which are official and which aren’t (apart from bkb) I can think of a few candidates for what you are describing but not really sure and I guess it can’t be described in too much detail online in case it gets more use.

If people ride the area a lot they really should join the trust, you would think that was obvious…