Hadleigh Olympic guided rides

Great day today, had a few of the guys from the forum on the ride. Well done guys!

I’m booked for the 20th Jan.

Pretty excited and looking forward to the tips to get me down the A lines in one piece.

Cheers for the great day today Tom.

I heartily recommend it to anyone, not just racing whippets. I went along with the lowest levels of fitness I’ve had in years and 140 mm of full squidge bike (being the only one I own) and had a great time.

Conditions are good at the moment! Hard pack and frozen ground. The rocks aren’t slippery at all.

Just got back from the meeting with the council and legacy as well as architrail which will be revamping the course.

This is the the truthful trustworthy plan of hadleigh and no rumour. Everything will be staying apart from monument as this is built over a protected heritage site. All of the hard lines will be made so there is an obstacle for you to tackle before you get to it, so if you can’t do the obstacle you can’t get onto the line, say an awkward step of rocks at slow speed as an example. The rocks are are awkwardly placed, and are there to take you out which actually make no difference in riding the course will either be replaced or changed so they don’t cause huge accidents.

The track will flow into the easy c lines at all times and those riders that wish to ride the harder lines will be forced to tackle the awkward line or obstacle into the more series of lines, A or B.
The easier lines which are in place now will be more bermed and smoother and generally a lot more fun to ride as it as built as a race track now and less of a trail centre.

So everyone can chill out with the fact that all of the awkward technical sections are staying. They might be a bit more challenging to get to but this should hopefully make it a bit safer for the riders that aren’t up to those sections. It also means a lot more of an enjoyable ride if you just want to bomb round some flowy berms and stuff. All in all I’m very very excited for this, I’ll hopefully be building with architrail too in my days off so expect some updates when building starts. It should hopefully be starting May time with all the paperwork that needs sorting.

There is also going to be black (current A lines), red, blue and even some green trails and extra sections added on to the loop. Also a pump track with tarmac berms, skills area etc as well as the cafe, toilets, showers, bike shop etc.

Finally a trail centre close to london and over the east side of the country!

Here are some pictures from this mornings walk on the trust iphone. And they haven’t been edited through instagram before you ask haha

Lets just hope it stays frozen for Saturday!

I’m glad the trail isn’t being too sanitised

That’s fantastic news Tom, well done for all your hard work and lobbying on behalf of us wannabe olympians!.

PS : Are you 100% sure there’s no instagram trickery on those pics?, which are bloody good btw, the camera on my iphone 4 is pretty piss-poor so i guess you must be using an iphone 5?.

somafunk – Member
That’s fantastic news Tom, well done for all your hard work and lobbying on behalf of us wannabe olympians!.

PS : Are you 100% sure there’s no instagram trickery on those pics?, which are bloody good btw, the camera on my iphone 4 is pretty piss-poor so i guess you must be using an iphone 5?.

Haha no worries bud. It could be something amazing! And in Essex so we’ve gotta push as much as possible :).

I am 100% sure, I was shocked myself. I find the iphone pics on look good when the sun is low or bright etc otherwise they look shocking. Yer its an iphone 5 too, my 4 one was crap haha

Febs dates are up and are booking up quick. Get booked in now through essex legacy

Me and seven of my mates signed up on the 17th of Feb Sunday, i’m really excited 😉

kix12 – Member
Me and seven of my mates signed up on the 17th of Feb Sunday, i’m really excited

Awesome, see you then 😀

Had a great time today, thanks to Tom and John. Really enjoyed the sections and the support during the day to get through each one.

Great day today. Stacked group of 17.

New dates are up for march

Just back from a day there today. Weather apart, good fun, and like so many others – if you think its easy based on what you saw on the telly, get on a guided ride and then come back and tell us.

Bottled a-line on triple trouble, did it on the others, often more by luck than judgement. I think I enjoyed it although bits scared me more than I’d like on an average ride, even a trail centre one – and with the penalty for screw ups to end badly pretty I found they messed with my head more than I was comfortable with. I found myself considering the ‘this could end badly’ scenario a few times.

Hats off again to the Olympians / pros that can knock out 15 minute laps, and to the weekend warriors that have been and still think it’s easy – you’re better riders than me!

Hi everyone.

I’m running my own weekends guiding/coaching at the end of the month hopefully we’ll have some awesome weather too. If you fancy trying to put an olympic lap together or just come to session and learn come along. Book through essex legacy website 🙂

Can you expand on what you mean by “running your own”?

And I thought the Olympics was billed as sport for all……£25 for 2 hours and £45 for 4 hours. So with a group of 14 riders £630? I’m sure you’re a very good coach, but that seems a little steep to ride what is essentially a groomed trail.
Priced for rich MAMILs to boast they’ve done the Olympic course maybe?

wassup with buzz killington there^

on a parallel, my cousin competed in some southern softie version of tough mudder at the weekend. £130 to run ten miles through mud and nettles. Priced for rich blokes to boast….. yup, its a huge market.

wassup with buzz killington there^

on a parallel, my cousin competed in some southern softie version of tough mudder at the weekend. £130 to run ten miles through mud and nettles. Priced for rich blokes to boast….. yup, its a huge market.

Not trying to stop anyone having fun 😉 just saying I’d never pay £45 to be guided round an XC course for 4 hours.
In the same way I’d not pay a similar amount to ride my local trails as an Enduro course.
I just like riding where I want to, and for free 😀

Any concessions for Hadleigh Farm games makers

ajantom, what would you pay for a coaching session with any of the recognised names that are often suggested on this forum? It’s usually Tom and one other person, and I’m sure they’re not taking all of that money home themselves. The session I attended was really good, and yes, I benefitted from their hints and tips and thought it was worth the price paid. On top of which, I can also enjoy the fact that I’ve ridden the Olympic course, which not everyone will experience.

And clearly you’ve not been anywhere near the site, given your reference to a ‘groomed trail’. If you think people should be let out to just ride it, then I think you may need to take a closer look. My guess is it would be carnage and closed within a few weeks due to the number of accidents.

Not trying to stop anyone having fun just saying I’d never pay £45 to be guided round an XC course for 4 hours.
In the same way I’d not pay a similar amount to ride my local trails as an Enduro course.
I just like riding where I want to, and for free

And what do you do for a living, ‘cos then I’ll put a post up saying how stupid it is for folk to spend money paying anyone to do that. 🙄

I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay – just that I wouldn’t. People can pay what they want for a coaching session, though I’m not sure i would count a group size of 14+ as falling within that remit, more of a guided tour.
And yes, from watching the race on tv and looking at the videos posted by Tom, I count it as a groomed trail. Anything manmade is – not exactly ‘wild’ is it.
You may feel the need to pay to be guided round what is essentially a fire road with rockery sections. Means the countryside is clearer for the rest of us. 😉

Do you ^^^ live in the real world ??

I assume your mum provides free transport, you don’t bother with anything like insurance, and have no out-going costs like a mortgage, or pay any tax etc?

I’m going to hazard a guess that even at £45pp, poor old Tom isn’t going to be able to quite yet retire to the Bahamas with a small fortune of other peoples money………… 😉

ajantom – you are either a ridiculous troll, or still waiting to have a responsible adult remove your stabilisers.

Either way I’d suggest no one else bothers responding to such drivel.

My, my got some people’s backs up!

Let me make a couple of points clear…..
– Not trolling, but perhaps playing devils’s advocate to a certain extent.
– I personally wouldn’t pay £45 for it, but anyone else is free to do what they like with their money.
– I don’t expect Tom is making millions off it, and I expect he has to hand over the lions’s share to the Landowner. That being the Sally Army, I hope it’s at least going to a good cause.
– It is a groomed trail. It’s designed for fast lap speeds with some technical features thrown in for good measure. Look at the pictures and film – it’s a 5/6ft wide, undulating gravel path with man made rock gardens. Not sure how else you could describe it?

Now go out for a ride (well, tomorrow now) and stop getting annoyed by what some eejit on the Internet is saying.

Wow!

Thought this all calmed down a little while ago.

Just to fill people in.

We’ve had over 600 riders come for the sessions over the hard winter months, alot have also returned on more sessions.
The £45pp doesn’t go straight into my pocket, I have quite high over heads with running these sessions so it doesn’t really earn anymore than a normal day of my private coaching (e.g, landowner, extra coaches fuel, hotel and insurance etc). We’re also providing a service, which in this day and age costs. I have to commit a lot of time to administration booking 28 people in a weekend which take a couple of hours a day to liaise with everyone. We supply the first aid to the riders, coaching, insurance etc to make the venue safe for our riders.

The reason I’m running ‘MY” own one is John the other coach is away on holiday.

I can also assure you its very far from being a groomed trail. Yes it isn’t natural but the surface has broken up and its severely weathered giving it now a more natural feel with very inconsistent grip. Its a great day out to push your riding skills. Try against some olympic times and get some coaching along the way. It isn’t an out an out coaching session but numbers fluctuate and sometimes we have more time to coach.

Also as mentioned a 4 hour session. We also run over and quite often don’t finish until 3.30ish giving you around 5 hours on your bike.

For those of you that feel that its too expensive or not worth it thats fine. Wait until its open to the public which will be early 2014 to try it out. But out of all those people that have came along for the rides everyone has had a great day out. It may not be a ‘natural trail’ or something ‘knarly in Wales’ but its somewhere else to ride in the east of the country where there isn’t much else to quite a high standard.