Llandegla selling snow to make ends meet

llandegla

£100K of lost turnover in 3 weeks? £30k/week? They must be havin a larf 😯

15ft of snow – I bet they have 12" penises too.

Seriously can't believe they've closed the trails during some of the most fun riding – health and safety risk mis-assessment IMO.

if they have 200000 visitors a year, call it roughly 3500 a week, then £10000 divided by 3500 is about a £3 spend per person,which I guess is realistic.

if they have 200000 visitors a year,

I bet most of them are loaded towards the summer though

How do the monitor the visitor numbers, is it based on carpark revenue or some other method!

-20 and 15feet of snow.
that part of north wales must have its own micro climate. 🙄

i been there on a rainy tuesday in november. rammed it was!!

coffeeking – they only close because the car park cannot be reached in snow and ice.

Certainly hope they get a break soon – good luck guys.

God damn global warming.

Seriously though, hope they can re-open soon.

I reckon the 15ft must be drifts or little avalanches on the hill side as it's not really that deep now is it!

Some photos I saw from a friends farm near Brechfa today though show it as half a farm gate in depth at that end of the country.

coffeeking – they only close because the car park cannot be reached in snow and ice

If that's the case & they really are £100k down, the hire of a bulldozer etc. would be small change & make good business sense

Its tricky though because the gradient to the car park is quite steep, so even when cleared of slow it is not usable for general public if icy. It is a hardpack surface, not tarmac, so very difficult to get it clear and keep it clear.

Indeed, if it's the carpark and road to it (not the main road) then surely the answer is to find their own plough/grit/gravel/sand and get on with it. You could hire a small one for a few hundred for a weekend and clear that lot up.

I don't think I can remember anywhere on the course that would have any possibility of avalanches, drifts sure but they're easily cleared using a mini digger or just elbow grease. Damn sure if it was my business I'd be doing so. There must be something we're not aware of. The carpark is gravelly hardpack -it doesnt need careful scraping, just skim off the surface and take away the odd inch or two of hardpack too, it can be scooped back later. They only need to do the bottom park which is on sod-all of a gradient, if they bought in a few tons of extra gravel/chippings they could have a usable surface AND the gravel would just filter back into the ground after the thaw.

Obviously there is, or maybe what has been said already is the thing and it just ain't as simple as some people reckon! If, for example, their third party insurance does not hold if they have a steep somewhat icy approach road then what can they do?

It isn't as if they haven't already thought of all this!

hainey, was that 'global' warming you said, or 'local' weather??

Oh yeah, forgot, they're the same thing 😉

If, for example, their third party insurance does not hold if they have a steep somewhat icy approach road then what can they do?

Get rid of the ice with grit and a plough, as above. Decent 5mm-sih grit even on ice is fairly grippy under tyre, the local council are using it here instead of grit and it actually seems better, it just blocks the drains.

Christmas and New Year is their busiest time period. To be fair, the centre's been closed due to the car park being closed. As been said, the carpark's on a slope and has about 4inches of ice underneth about 2ft of snow. They need some way of melting the ice, before the carpark can open. They also suffer because the access road is very narrow and few passing places. The snow's been so heavy it's brought down at least 15 trees across the trail. I've been xc skiing around LLandegla for the last 12 days and I've never seen snow like it.

I've been outbid 🙁

Coffeeking, have you been to the centre and seen the carpark?

I bet the guys at Llandegla are kicking themselves for not thinking of these things coffeeking. Since their livelihoods depend on it do you not think that they might, just might, perhaps have thought of all this? 🙄

Haha! Excellent!

They've had a pretty large digger clearing the car park:

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They opened the shop/cafe on the 10th, then had even more snow…

Seem to remember that it's not upto One Planet Adventure. Rather it's upto the folk who actually manage the forest, Tilhill I believe?

Sorry to be harsh – don't get me wrong, I like llandegla, but this is the unfortunate reality of making a business out of a trail centre. Penmachno won't be having these problems.

It sounds more like a coded drug deal to me!!!

I went for a walk in the dark up the trails on monday night – i simply couldn't believe the number of trees that have come down over the trails, there's loads of them – I think thats one of the major reasons they have had to shut up shop incase somebody gets hit with a falling tree!! It looks absolutely amazing though.

bonj – Member

Sorry to be harsh – don't get me wrong, I like llandegla, but this is the unfortunate reality of making a business out of a trail centre. Penmachno won't be having these problems.

You're right – Penmachno isn't having these problems. However, Penmachno isn't a private forest, with a visitor centre employing staff. Also Penmachno is very likely to close (or at least stop maintaining the trail) as there aren't enough people putting money in the honesty parking to keep the place going.

I bet the guys at Llandegla are kicking themselves for not thinking of these things coffeeking. Since their livelihoods depend on it do you not think that they might, just might, perhaps have thought of all this?

Hence I said there must be something else causing the problem, because they haven't taken the obvious simple answer (or it seems they may have but decided not to open for other reasons, back to H&S in the forest one would assume). At what point did I claim to be presenting a groundbreaking solution that they wouldn't have thought of? That's right, I didn't. In fact, to the contrary, I said

There must be something we're not aware of.

After living in that area of wales for nearly 20 years, the Llandegla moors is notorious for snow and bad weather conditions.

I think the centre has underestimated how much snow and bad weatehr can occur tere, I heard the allowed 2 weeks of closure due to bad weather, I would have said 2 months!

I could believe the -20 no problem, I was camping in -10 last weekend as the temps started to rise, and that was in a valley bottom. But the 15ft is a flight of fancy.

I've not been to Glentress yet, but the last few times I went to llandegla the car park and overflow car parks were RAMMED and people circling waiting for a space, so I can believe it isn't far off. Most cars had multiple bikes in them, and I was only there for 2 hours of the day. 200K a year averages at ~550 a day.

they get close to it. trust me

Don't forget many vistors don't come to go biking, but walking/bird watching etc. Hence the large number of vistors. You've got to feel for Ian and Jim afer all their hard work. Finger's crossed they get open soon.

coffeking where in the country are you anyway?
and if you say the south I will laugh cause southerners cant cope with a frigging grey cloud in the sky let alone a snowflake. Weather is only news if it happens in London or the south. Areas of the UK where suffering heavy snowfall weeks before it brought Reading and the M4 to a standstill you know?!
just go on the OPA website and look at the pictures – they have had some serious snowfall over the last month and taken some serious measures to try and open again

Im surrounded by idiots – I could well believe its busier than GT – remember Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham are three of the UK's largest cities and are all within 90 mins from 'degla
Its also very popular with families, walkers, anglers etc not just bikers

Have either of you actually ever been to 'degla, if not and you don't know the situation then please keep the critisism to yourselves

Anyway is this not an MTB community forum?
Should we not be supporting the people that work f*ckin' hard to give us somewhere to ride rather than dissing and putting down their efforts without knowing the full facts
Im not a huge trail centre fan personally but I do understand that these places vastly increase our legal riding opportunities and do a great job of marketing the sport and bringing it to a wider audience so please lets have some respect

Im surrounded by idiots – I could well believe its busier than GT – remember Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham are three of the UK's largest cities and are all within 90 mins from 'degla
Its also very popular with families, walkers, anglers etc not just bikers

Have either of you actually ever been to 'degla, if not and you don't know the situation then please keep the critisism to yourselves

He doesn't need to go to Llandegla to know how many visitors they have, what teh weather's like, and whether the owners have brushed their teeth or not. He's special, you know, he knows these things…. 🙄

(He is also a prize moron)

Just been up there, the lower car park is a bit snowy but they have cleared the upper car park – they have moved ALOT of snow. The access road isn't too bad either, no sign of these mythical 15ft drifts either. Its thawing a bit in the forest too, so hopefully shouldn't be too long before things are back up and running.

If they're getting that many visitors they'll be coining it in of they're doing it wrong. I'm not going to feel sorry for people that are raking it in.

I do feel sorry for the guys employed there and for the people who want to ride but have they really lost £100k in 3 weeks? In winter I just find it hard to imagine 10000 visitors per week in December even in a mild winter. But maybe people spend more like £10pp/visit on average so that gives us 3300 people per week. Which I still feel is a lot. Surely the majority of visitors are fairly local so their spend per visit will be less surely?

Maybe they have just looked at a years income and pro rata'd the lot.

ISBI, Now I am definatly presuming you havent been to Llandegla, they have ploughed a hell of a lot of money back into the facilities recently – built an excellent pump track, a jumps course and a skills loop etc, re-laid miles of trail, built a few km of new trail, completely refurbished the visitors centre, shop and cafe. Im guessing this didnt come cheap and to end up completely closed for over a month right in holiday season is probably a bit of a financial blow right now
Okay maybe they might 'rake in a bit' I don't know but they also put a hell of a lot back
Regardless of weather you are ever likely to visit or not, there are people out there running these kind of places that are passionate about the sport (and going back to the original reason for this thread, obviously can maintain a sense of humour in difficult times) and put in alot of hard work for not alot (if any) money so maybe think before you start typing your cr@p?

1961
when I go for example I typically could spend £10-£12 easy, that is only a days car parking, a bacon sarnie (or two – they are quite good!), a cup of coffee, a cake and 5 minutes at the bike wash (Part of the reason Im not a big trail centre fan – they can be damned expensive!)
Factor in that the entire cafe, bike rental business and bike shop is closed as well and its not hard to imagine those sort of losses – say they usually sell a couple of high end bikes a week plus all the rest of the takings, the spend per person quickly ramps up.
Like I said its not just bikers but lots of walkers etc, some people I imagine actually go just for the cafe
Plus presumably they still have to pay at least the majority of their staff.
I imagine they have also had to cancel a fair few skills courses that where scheduled and probably refund people for them

Anyone that actually wants to try and ride the trails still can – there is a bridleway through the middle so they can't actually physically close off the entire forest but good luck to them I say cause from what Ive seen it doesnt look like it would be that much fun anyway