Had a great day at Brechfa today. But over the last 5 years ive been going there, the condition of the trails is getting worse and worse. There are puddles everywhere, especially in the braking bumps. i have no idea how deep they are, so you have to check your speed to avoid going over the bars in a deep one. The recent weather hasn’t helped either and some sections are very muddy and very rutted. Is there a programme of maintenance? Are they patched up where there is a need or do they blitz the entire trail on something like an annual basis?

All sorts! Sometimes wholesale rebuilds but they’re destructive, you tend to get a new trail the same shape rather than a rebuilt old trail. An approach that works best for pumpy-jumpy where intensive machine building doesn’t have many downsides, but badly for more interesting surfaces and trials.

Others, it’s as-and-when, preventative medicine and when that fails intervention, can be a localised full rebuild or a patch or fix, delete as appropriate.

Often, it’s nothing at all! Money becomes available for builds, harder to find for maintenance, there’s a lack of enthusiasm for keeping things in good shape. Especially as so many people bitch about it when you maintain. So many centres will get very little more than pruning and emergency interventions for outright dangerous sections, blockages etc. That sometimes works very well.

I tend to enjoy the more natural or worn centers – yes some lovely smooth bermy bits can be fun – but I find the braking bumps and related much more interesting to ride!

as for your question – there is a thread currently running, with the links to join in building – here

Stainburn is maintained by Singletractions dedicated band of hardworking volunteers & judging by all the photos in the mags their hardwork hasn’t gone unnoticed. In fact Guy Kestevan drops by regularly to lend a hand. They also maintain Dalby, which is a massive undertaking at 24 miles for the red alone…Along with Guisborough & one or two more local projects.

Puddles? FFS I’m putting my bike on ebay if there’s going to be puddles.

cheers Northwind for the response. I suppose my question is whether trails are allowed to degrade/evolve over time or maintained to keep a ‘new’ feel.

rorschach – not really sure what that means. Not sure where the flaming comes from as like i said, i had a great day.

Thank god most are not maintained, getting fed up of 20km pump tracks.
And going over the bars in a braking bump? not even morzine/les gets is that bad?

Faeries, innit.

dirtbiker100 – Member

Thank god most are not maintained, getting fed up of 20km pump tracks.

Thing is, if a 20km pump track as you say wears out, you don’t get a nice interesting naturalish track, you just get a pump track that doesn’t work. Some trails thrive when left alone, some just die. The trick is appropriate maintenance.

Also, you have to remember the trail lifecycle. A new trail will generally be smooth and wide and often grey. Roots and rocks are buried, etc. It looks like a BMX track. But! That’s just because it’s not finished. Building it basically lays the foundations, then tyre pressure turns it into a trail over time. The dominant, narrower line gets ridden in, vegetation encroaches, and the surface evolves allowing the buried features to emerge. But the strong foundation remains- the wider stance for the trail, the solid material around the roots and rocks etc to stop holes forming.

It’s hard to build a durable trail with a naturalish surface but there are many trails that started out looking like a hardpack path that now feel great. Ironically I have heard people say, while we build a new bit, that we shouldn’t do it this way, we should do it like section X- when section X was actually built in exactly the same way, a year ago.

Put it a simpler way- armoured trails tend to be boring when new, lovely when worn in, annoying when worn out. The exception is berms-n-jumps because they’re fun straight away, but they go off faster. The trick is to make the worn-in phase last as long as possible, with good building and design and thoughtful maintenance. But this is hard!