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

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

you, fella, are a bargain. You want to see how much Mrs Bullheart charges at her firm. 😯

I decided not to renew my membership of the Hurtwood, after seeing the top section of T trails mashed up a few years ago and along with the reservoir dogs receiving the same treatment I thought what a waste of money.
You do all realise that there is logging work scheduled for the BKB side of the forest. Expect that trail to disappear under the logging machines wheels.
I did do some summer evening trail work on Yoghurt pots, but at the end of last summer the emails dried up.

Your contribution to be a Friend of the Hurtwood isn’t for the maintenance of mountain bike trails, the money is used for the maintenance of the whole area for every reason – conservation, safety, ecology, car parks, access etc etc.

The scheduled felling on the BKB slope is a bone of contention, admittedly. Surrey Hills AONB are not desperately impressed that funding was applied for and given, only for the felling plan to surface some months later.

Your contribution to be a Friend of the Hurtwood isn’t for the maintenance of mountain bike trails, the money is used for the maintenance of the whole area for every reason – conservation, safety, ecology, car parks, access etc etc.

Yes I appreciate that but some of the the earlier posting are implying that they might have some influence regarding the trails.

The current “legacy trails” have been trashed to death over the last few winters as you will be well aware, and its no wonder new stuff has sprung up.

Yes, that’s true for sure. I think it is pretty well impossible to get the legacy trails to stand up to everything winter brings. Some minimising of damage can be done – esp sorting out drainage. When you get down to it the Surrey Hills is just a massive pile of sand, so making that hard-wearing is a challenge. To date we are actually only allowed to do stuff on Yog and BKB anyway, although other trails fall into the category of established “legacy” trials.

It’s never going to be possible to have very neat and absolute rules – organising mountain bikers is like herding cats; difficult and ultimately pointless. But some sort of sensible status quo that is acceptable to a high percentage of riders ought to be the aim.

I’ve said it before, but most of the illegal trail builders I’ve come across dont bother with forums and therefore won’t see all this ranting

Aye. Irritatingly, other people seem convinced that cyclists are all one group – all alike and all talking to each other!

Out of interest, of all those on here who are bemoaning the building of unsanctioned trails, have any of you ever ridden trails that you know are not official? If so, what is your justification for doing so; because they are already there and other people do so?

Surrey Hills AONB are not desperately impressed that funding was applied for and given, only for the felling plan to surface some months later.

That’s interesting, could you provide some more details about the fact pattern there, e.g.,

Why applied for funding, and when?;

Who gave the funding, and when?;

Who introduced the felling plan, and when?;

Where does Surrey Hills AONB fit into this; and

Where does the mtbing community fit into this?

I’m speaking there on the basis of second-hand information, so for me to speculate further would only be guessing. So I’ll do a little guessing! Forestry is contracted-out, usually to Tilhill, who (already I’m running on a kinda basic understanding of how things work here) will probably have an on-going contract to do thinning of trees and their end of it is linked to the the value of the timber.

Thinning, by the way, is necessary just from a conservation point of view. I guess what is needed in this instance is either an undertaking to work around BKB and not damage it (unlikely, in my opinion) or for an agreement that maybe they drop the trees they need to drop and just leave them where they are (it is the massive trailers that haul the trees away that do all the damage).

If anyone is familiar with Abinger Common (the woods, not the village) then you might have seen just how massive the ruts created by the machinery are… Abinger Common woods is a SSSI…

Stopadoodledo

As a relative newcomer to the area I have no idea if some of the trails I’ve ridden are sanctioned or not – you just can’t tell. Now I’ve read this thread I suspect one I have been riding which is sort of parallel to BKB is unofficial – so will stop riding it -I’m not sure how you would know that though unless you logged in here and read every thread about Surrey hills

I am hugely respectful of the trailbuilders and the owners and the trust and rangers because the trails are massive fun yet it has a much better vibe than a trail centre

But it is **** hard for people new to the area to know which trails are sanctioned and which aren’t – and I have joined everything, bought the maps, spoken to riders and the ranger, googles and interwebbed it all etc etc

I guess this applies more to pitch (no signs) than Holmbury (some signs) and Leith (signs) but even then it can be difficult to tell what is sanctioned or not eg I am pretty sure where I start waggledance from is not the official start – but clearly I am not the only one as the section gets hammered

Thanks GP

I don’t know anything about SSSIs/environmental law but it sounds like they’re liable to remediate Abinger, as in, criminally liable? I’m probably stating the obvious there. I love Hurtwood and don’t want to see the place get covered in more tracks. I wonder whether threatening litigation for what they did in Abinger would concentrate their minds as to whether they should do the same nr BKB.

Seriously though I really don’t know anything about the local situation, probably I’m completely misjudging it, and I suspect I’m focussing too much on formal stuff/legalities

Didn’t someone say they were going to start some kind of thread encouraging everyone to join Hurtwood Friends, I’d be up for that, where do I sign up.

Friends Of Hurtwood[/url]

well, I’ve joined up…

Well said winterfold. as an occasional visitors to surrey hills, say 6 times a year it is really difficult to know whats sanctioned and whats not. as you poodle around the hills most people will try out any likely looking trails inbetween the undergrowth. How are we to know if this has been there 20 years or 2 weeks.

I’m guessing the creators of these trails are not liekly to hold there hands up or take much notice of an official line hence i think much of this ‘policing’ is pointless. If hurtwood were to mark which trails were sanctioned ie by marker posts or maps, would we as communty stick to these trails. If one of your favourites was not marked as such would you never ride it again even though we may have been doing so for years and not apparantely causing a problem to anyone.

What i’m trying to say is that although the middle ground of the MTB community may claim to be respectful and law abiding in fact we are probaly all breaking the spirit of the rules if not the actual rules every time we ride up there. but all the while saying its not me gov.

I think this one will run and run for years yet. The hardcore of anoymous trail biulders will continue biuld the rest of us will ride whatever we find on the ground not knowing whats sanctioned or not.

I tried with Abinger Common to get Natural England to come and inspect the work – they won’t. So, although the rules for working in a SSSI are very strict, the mechanism for checking is very weak – possibly additionally so, given the status of the landowner.

BKB is not on a SSSI, so the prospet of any kind of official action with regard to damage caused by forestry work is slim to nil. Besides, some conservation, such as thinning, appears messy but is actually necessary in the long-game.

I’m local and can see both sides of this. I certainly don’t know what the answer is.

That said, it feels to me that there are too many new trails appearing recently in obvious well-used areas on Pitch and it’s starting to spoil the place. If I think that as an mtber then I can understand why local walkers are hacked off.

Problem is, the sanctioned trails inevitably end up riding like a trail centre and some trailbuilders will always want something different or more techy (not that a lot of the new trais are especially interesting).

It does make me laugh that we all agonise about these little ribbons of path running through the trees and then the loggers come along and completely mutilate whole hillsides. Puts it in perspective.

Likewise, there is a new (to me) exit onto the fireroad in the Proper Bo area which comes out very obviously at the fork in the fireroad to the North of the other exits, its clearly tricky and has quite a big drop-off.

I wouldn’t attempt it having seen the exit, but you can see how people might start from the top of the hill, not really know which exit is which then end up on something that is really quite difficult and more than they bargained for. Lots of skids and a big mess. There was a rider on it who decided discretion was the better part of valour, who would have taken an earlier easier exit, or the one that goes back up the hill once I’d explained to him what the options were. But he hadn’t clocked them, and how was he to know?

On the other hand I found another new one (to me), er somewhere else, possibly in another county, which was thoughtfully constructed, had made good use of some surplus logs lying around and was very well hidden and I had to give myself a severe ticking off for riding it afterwards.

As you say, no easy answer…

(Some of the trails in the Reservoir Dogs area, particularly the faster ones heading East down the hill have had a lot of small logs put across them, I couldnt tell if this was people trying to make the trail more ‘fun’ or someone trying to put the trail out of use? None of them were big enough that even an old fart like me couldnt manual over them. I’d have thought if the ranger was doing it he would have made them properly unrideable… If we arent suppossed to be riding those, someone let me know and I will reprimand myself again. Ta to whoever’s been sorting out the drainage on the section in the rhodadendrons)

I have been away skiing for a few weeks,
which trails are these?

3 pages of talk and not an actual mention of which trails…

probably not a coincidence nick…

your probably right!

I suspect I know which ones though…
does one involve a windmill

I can think of at least one landowner in the Midlands that historicaly hasn’t encouraged bikes. Now their attitude is changeing slowly but surely, even talk of something similar in scope and scale to FTD and the Monkey at Cannock. But based on the numbers of riders who are local to Cannock (or even big trail centers like GT) talking about how all the unknown cheeky stuff is better I can’t see them going for it.

A trail is a trail.
Someoens land is their land.
If a horse rider built a showjump in your back yard you wouldn’t be happy?
If ramblers decided your lawn would make a nice picknic stop* you wouldn’t be happy?
So why should MTB’ers be any different?

Why not just charge? How the logistics would work i don’t know but don’t swinley do something similar? I’d imagine the landowners would be more accommodating to official trail building if they’re getting a chunk of cash every year. Sure there’ll be people that skip paying and build unofficial trails but £10k a year would probably help.

Secondly i don’t see how walkers get annoyed by the unofficial trails, especially those that are on steep sections which are a bit more ‘interesting’. I’d imagine the people who like zipping down the fireroads that most people use to go up are more likely to offend.

Gotama in the case I mentioned above the challenging drop-off involves a) Boba Fett flying 6-8 feet through the air and landing on the fireroad in front of you or b) screeching brakes then a middle-aged hardtail rider crashing in a pile on the fireroad in front of you, shortly followed by the bike or c) some combination of the above whichever way, it’s not a good look to walkers etc. There are 3 trick exits on this fireroad now in a short run about 100m and it looks a bit of a mess even without bikes flying around.

The Ranger would have to be blind and a complete idiot to not know every inch of the land, its not really that big, and I expect is pretty tolerant of some of the discrete cheeky stuff – its just when people take the piss, ruin the look of the place to the other users, owners and Trust members and make trails that could be dangerous.

nick – I am only talking about Pitch and Holbury in this thread and have never ridden anywhere near a windmill – or even seen a windmill.

However if I was going to piss off a landowner I would much rather do it over there, than on Hurtwood land. He is a cock, but Hurtwood are extremely progressive.

I dont know if the trails being discussed have specific names, but two of them are pretty obvious and reasonably well described here.

I’m in no position to get on a high horse about it and am not going to anyway, it would just be nice if people realised how lucky we are, and if determined to go off piste, be a bit more discrete about it.

My 2p is that around the Hurtwood there are plenty of natural trails and sanctioned trails that can be ridden. I’d rather it was kept to the general tourists riding the official trails and the rest of us can continue the sneaky riding on trails that haven’t really been ‘built’ which is generally tolerated, or few complaints arise about them. The natural stuff is fun.

Anything else should be done by working with sanctioned local trail builder groups, and with permission. Not only to make them official but to build sensible trails as a bunch of kids out with a shovel tend to just make a mess and what they build doesn’t cope with wear’n’tear and the weather.

Though I’d rather the place didn’t turn into a trail centre.

Given that the Hurtwood is rather unique in having an open access policy, I’d rather we work with them and not piss them off.

Oh and the impact on the landowners includes affecting their business. This isn’t just inherited woods for some snooty Lord to go hunting in, these are working logging forests.

And yeah, I think it’s worth joining the Friends of the Hurtwood[/url], but no it’s not funding trail building and you have to remember they are not on the side of MTBers, or on the side of walkers and horse riders either. They work to maintain the estates and balance use between everyone. It’s been working pretty well for some time but the problems occur when the local residents (some of whom have a lot of influence) get pissed off. Only thing is you don’t get much feedback as a result of joining, but do get the occasional newsletter though haven’t had one in a while. They can be useful as they can mention issues raised at meetings, including where locals are getting pissed off about the MTBers.

Final thing is the Friends of the Hurtwood are looking funding cuts thanks to general cutbacks. This might affect what things they focus on and if a lot of time and money is involved with ensuring unofficial trails are not being built where they shouldn’t be (or risking them getting sued if anyone breaks their neck), then they might start to restrict access.

Besides Holmbury Hill isn’t where it’s at. There are much better parts of the Surrey Hills 😉

what do you class as ‘natural’ trails?

Trails that haven’t been built as such – no digging, cutting, building jumps or berms. Just paths or routes that can be ridden. They get ‘ridden in’ a bit but basically all natural features.

Surely Hurtwood is a good example of how a privately owned woodland can offer value to everyone. And that selling of the FC land doesn’t necessarily mean destruction and restricted access, if sensible conditions are put on the sale at least…

most of the best ‘natural’ trails up there have been dug and shaped and then ridden in, some have been routed through or over interesting features

Most just involve a little bit of clearance and marking lines with logs. Little impact and the walkers even appreciate it.

BUMP

Well the loggers are on the BKB side of Barry now. In fact one of the huge balloon tyre things was parked so close to top bit of Barry that if I leant over you could touch it. I didn’t but was quietly pleased when the dog peed on it.

As CheezPleez said it does put the odd cheeky trail in perspective.

They haven’t actually done any damage to the trail yet, and may not come further down the hill, but does anyone who has more contact with the powers that be know if they have been asked to take care? I might give the Ranger a call tomorrow to ask. Obviously it’s a working wood, thinning needs to happen, but it would be nice if the expensive bit down the bottom wasn’t trashed.

freeridenick – I know what you’re on about now. That has to be the nicest DH style trail I’ve seen in Surrey Hills; well-built, using natural features, not going to be seen by anyone else on the hills, let alone cause anyone a problem. It is far less of a problem than some of the legacy sanctioned stuff where they pop out onto the fireroad in a rooty mess/drop IMO.

I wish I had the skill and balls to take it on. I cant actually see any old fart like me coming a cropper on that, as the first corner sends out a pretty clear message, and I got off and just had a walk and a look. Would like to see some people really having a go on it though.

Further BUMP

Just had a quick chat with the Ranger and he is on top of the loggers and has been very clear about keeping off BKB. They will have to cross the trail at a couple of points at the top but he has identified those and is pretty happy the trail will get ridden back in pretty quickly.

There will be no damage to the built bermy section at the bottom. So hurrah for him, he always seems a very reasonable and decent bloke to me.

He, and the riders he is talking to in more detail, also have some plans for the messy rooty rolls/drops on Pitch, particularly the one into Car Park 2 and the ones at the end of the Proper Beau network further up ie those where we are more likely to come into conflict with users of the woods. These plans are of a shallower, more twisty, sustainable, not following the fall-line nature.

(I do think there is scope for a decent sustainable DH run on Pitch that is out of the way so riders on it are ‘out of sight out of mind’ for fusspots, and so people who are going to skid down it dont get on it – but this is a later conversation to be had with the Ranger)

Also the maintenance/volunteer network has been in a state of flux while it is looking for a new organiser so that is why people have not been hearing much about it.

Well done to whoever was doing it, and good luck and thanks to whoever is taking it over. If you are on the forum I am very happy to help out, and am self-employed so can get up there in the week to do some work when it is not so busy.

Glad you found it 8)

Its not that hard really!

I am old and too much of a roady who keeps his wheels on the ground to take on the jumps for now.

Hopefully I’ll reacquire my balls when I’ve been jedi’d – which is coming soon 😛

jedi will hang em back up for you!

He, and the riders he is talking to in more detail, also have some plans for the messy rooty rolls/drops on Pitch, particularly the one into Car Park 2 and the ones at the end of the Proper Beau network further up ie those where we are more likely to come into conflict with users of the woods. These plans are of a shallower, more twisty, sustainable, not following the fall-line nature

Oh dear 🙁

The rooty descent into CP2 is one of the best bits of Pitch. It’s much like the old ending to BKB before it was sanitised. Not sure what conflict there is there other than people pop out into the car park, but never seen any harm there.

I’d prefer if Pitch was largely left alone. Keep the tourist trails to Holmbury which is where most people will go and generally where the magazines and books refer to. The locals can stick to Pitch and further jewels beyond.

The Proper Beau fall lines or the Holey trail stuff as I remember them have just become a mess, an obvious eyesore and user conflict, I think those are the reasons why Hurtwood want to change it.

As for T5, part of the trail uses an established walkers path, which also runs along the edge of the Graveyard and then into a busy(at weekends) car park. I like the final descent into the car park and have spent many happy moments getting acquainted with the holly bush on the corner. 😳

“just require a few hardcore riding spots round london. Theres aston hill in the NW. PORC in the very SE”
I might be wrong, but I don’t think that isn’t (just) want many riders would actually want
While that ‘sort’ of venue is obviously great, it seems to me, partly down to being a publicised ‘centre’ and to deliberately withstand larger volumes of users with perhaps a more spread out range of ability/riding ‘styles’ in terms of braking control, respect for trail conditions, perception of right to ride, expectation to ride at speed/on the ragged edge, bike burlyness etc etc etc .. that wider, harder, smoother, less twisty and generally more generic features appear more often than not
Where what ‘occurs naturally’ is quite different, a greater diversity of tighter, twistier, steeper, more ‘original’ and less ‘familiar’ features with many combinations which are never almost repeated elsewhere/everywhere

“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”
I agree with you, though I think there would still be many exceptions

The descent into Car Park 2 is fun – but it is a fall line and does get moaned about – so is not ultimately sustainable so I can see his point.

I think the Ranger would rather it (Pitch) were left largely alone – but people are building up there, and it is getting hammered, so bits are starting to look a mess, and so something needs to be done.

“just require a few hardcore riding spots round london. Theres aston hill in the NW. PORC in the very SE”
I might be wrong, but I don’t think that isn’t (just) want many riders would actually want

I didnt say its what most riders want. It certainly isnt what I want.
Im assuming it is what the riders who keep building masses of woodwork and huge jumps want though.

I was attempting to suggest a solution to eliminate the issue around these riders who tend to be the ones the landowner/public notice the most. Before moving on to other issues.

Although the population pressure is much less in the midlands at cannock chase there is an official downhill/freeride area. Therefore the more extreme riders tend to keep their building to this area and leave the rest of land/trails alone.

This is the first thing that is needed just SW of london something like aston hill/PORC. The great thing about downhill/free ride areas is they dont actually take up much room but can cater for a large number of riders.

Unlike a XC trail.