Micheldever Wood / Black Wood near Winchester – worth exploring?

Latest planning application
http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/PlanningWeb/Results.aspx?ID=10/03109/FUL&tab=0

That’s bad news about the planning app. I think we can assume the planning department will recommend approval, as they did before; and that the parish council will request the decision to go to committee again. So it will probably come down to why the councillors rejected it before. According to the new (third) application:

The first reason given for the refusal of the second application was the scale and concentration of development and its impact on the landscape setting and tranquillity of the wood.

This development will still dramatically change the nature of the wood. It will also still dissect the MX route into pieces, and render the enduro unfeasible. We’ve see lately how quickly the trails vanish, so it would be hard to keep anything at all going in Black Wood if this goes ahead.

Send your objections! If you objected before, be sure to write again incase they think you now approve.

There are a lot of objections already raised (more than last time I think!) and let’s hope the councillors are desperate for votes to get re-elected.

I decided to ride at Black Wood this morning and the 12 mile trail loop is now clearly visible thanks to the motorbikes that were there last weekend. The trail is easy to follow, as you just have to follow the motorbike tracks and it is mostly singletrack with a couple of fireroad sections. The ground is a bit draggy in places, as the soil is loose from the where the motorbikes have turned it over but overall the trail is nice to ride.

nice pics, i found it hard to follow the trails last time i went and was hard work..
is there an updated gps for this or is it the same route?
also does anyone have a route for Micheldever Wood? i was thinking of going for a run in there as well as a ride. are the bluebells out yet?

Black woods this morning – fantastic. the motor bikes have sut a route that i think is more fun than last year, and well worth a look

regarding micheldever, the route that we did a while ago is at this link. the little there and back bit at the north is a waste of time. the route is best done anticlockwise. as you go down the eastern side, there are 3 decent sized pits – one is at the little v off the side of the track. all three pits have pretty poor in and out, but i have made a track, but they are hard to find. i am sorry i dont have a gps, but as before happy to email from ianrodd@aol.com.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/60170467

I rode the new motorbike trail yesterday afternoon. It was much wetter than I was expecting from the photos – I think maybe some rain came thru Saturday evening. I thought the ground was really heavy going: loose damp soil. 13 miles of pain!

The trail follows the same general route as last year, but there are several changes along the way, and some bombholes switched around. Managed to miss out a small section to the NNW of the meadow, after the looped back bombhole, should have crossed over the fire road somewhere instead of heading for the meadow. GPS is here Black Wood 2011

Good fun, but it’ll be nicer when it dries out…

Re. Micheldever woods, the gps posted on page 5 for BW 2010 also includes a bit of Micheldever woods. There’s plenty more in there but I seem to remember some was closed off for forestry operations.

… BTW, the links don’t seem to work properly with older browsers such as IE6. Firefox 3.16 is ok.

Might check Black Wood out this morning.. was hoping it would be sunny but not looking too promising!

Is this the entry that people use on the A33? It seems to match up with some of the GPS tracks people have posted, but seems a bit short on parking.. wouldn’t want to block the track / gate – any other options?

Must get back there, should have done it last week!

frogstomp – either here or at the start of the bridleway is a little layby.

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=453167&y=142210&z=120&sv=453167,142210&st=4&ar=y&mapp=map.srf&searchp=ids.srf&dn=777&ax=453167&ay=142210&lm=0

Thanks CG.. think we’re due rain tomorrow so it could get sticky again..

Well, a mix of dry, quick stuff and cloggy, damp, rutted stuff, but a good ride – will be great dried out!

12.5 miles in a quite a small area.. the track just keeps on and on! Was sure I’d double-backed on a couple of occasions as it all looks quite similar..

So was it all easy to follow then? I can’t decide whether those woods need a little rain to damp the loamy stuff down, I did find it quite hard going when it was dry!

It was relatively easy to follow.. there were a few bits with options / merges / splits but if you just follow the general direction of where you were going it seems to link up ok..

Not sure about whether rain would help.. the mud is quite clay’y in places and clogged the tyre treads up, although not as bad as over the downs..

Went back for another ride today and parked in the short road with the couple of industrial units. Came back and had a polite note saying it was ‘a private road so please don’t park here again’ – presumably from the house at the end as the businesses looked close.

Not sure if it actually is all a private road (there are no signs at the end, only when you get down to near the businesses) but just to give people a heads-up and suggest it’s probably best to park in the lay-by just up the road..

Oh, well at least the note was polite! Thanks for posting up. 🙂

How were the trails?

It was about the same as last week.. sticky in places, dry in others with some deepish ruts to catch out the unwary!

Last week I parked by the industrial units. To start with I pulled in outside the house, but then the owner came out and told me a less than credible story about the police investigating lorry thefts, and suggested I parked further up the road. I got the private road story too. I guessed he didn’t want me parking outside his house. I think that road is OK to park if you go to the far end and don’t cause an obstruction. How far up did you park, frogstomp? The layby (by the Black Wood sign board) is quite often full at weekends.

I intentionally parked further up the road away from the house – almost up to the “No Entry” signs for the industrial units.

The note also said about reporting the car to the police if I persisted.. a bit of a moot point anyway if it’s a private road as it will be a civil matter (so the police won’t be interested).

It’s tempting to stick a note on my window encouraging them to report me if they want to.. but there’s no point in stirring up bad feelings..

Was there this afternoon and had the place to myself apart from a couple with their dog. Trail in great condition

I rode Black Wood yesterday which, embarrassingly enough after my plea for people to ride it more often, was the first time since the current drought started. I love Black Wood – much more of a technical ride than most local rides and really gives the full suss a workout at both ends, usually a good travel test – I can’t imagine it on a hardtail in the dry!

Droughts are great for mountain bikers – the ground there is bone dry and rock hard, I could get up and out of almost all the pits on the route and the faster sections were amazing.

The motorbikes have made much less of a path than last year, presumably it was not as wet. The path is slightly different and in most places better and more suited to pedal power than last year. The weird thing is that there are white arrows on the trees that seemed to be with me for the first half of the route then against me for the second! But I like the way around I ride it – I start at the main entrance, in up the main drag, and left over the pile of logs mentioned above. This means I start with the section that goes past the spooky house in the middle and essentially ride it anti-clockwise. Link here:

Link to Endomondo workout

And as plain text for misbehaving browsers:

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/9686912

The place where it is most difficult to work out what to do is when you end up back near the field in the middle – on the NE edge (near “9” on my track).

I was surprised how quickly last year’s track had become near-invisible. In a few places I went to follow what I was used to, but looked for the freshest trail markings and least leaves on the ground to try and follow the new track.

Jehosophat, You might want to ask the mods to delete your link. The other workouts seem to give the exact location of where you live. Might not be the best idea to give that info out on an open forum.

I don’t mind – there is always someone here and my bikes, while not cheap, are mostly made up of old bits bought on Ebay – for example I still use 8 speed XTR on them. If I had brand new expensive bikes, then maybe I’d worry, but it’s a pretty decent area – I left my car keys on my car roof one night and it was still there in the morning!!

Jehosophat can you get a .GPX file for the route you did from the Endomondo website?

Apparently yes – I just track my rides on a phone but I just looked and it lets me export in two formats, one of them .gpx

Black wood is such that you would still seriously need your wits about you and to ride it in daylight to stay on the path most of the time, even with a GPS with the route in it (which is what I assume a .gpx file does)

I work for a satnav company, I ought to know this sort of thing, but we only do things for cars/trucks and I work in commercial vehicle tracking – I’ve never used a bike satnav.

Does anyone know the outcome of the planning committee meeting on 21st April?

Very dry and fast rolling at the moment.. but that may change if we get the forecast rain overnight. Also quite a lot of trees down since I last went there..

Brilliant cycling at the moment, but enjoy it while it lasts. I gather planning was approved, so this will probably be our last summer in there inhindered.

Typical UK planning exercise then – just resubmit until passed! If the riding will be wrecked then it’s a massive shame – especially as I can’t see why anyone would pay to go on holiday in a tiny wood between the M3 and A303! Hopefully in the current financial climate no-one will be silly enough to pay for the holiday village.

Maybe – maybe – the route can be kept going or adapted to suit, most of it goes around the very edge of the wood, but there would be a lot more people bimbling about on the tracks.

Anyway, rode the new route yesterday and managed a good lap with no errors – trace here:

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/11137308

If you go to the hybrid map, zoom in, and hide the graphs it shows up pretty well.

I rode the eastern half of Black Wood yesterday evening, clockwise. The trail is really dry but is now getting buried under leaves and beachmast. It’s extremely hard to find some of the less major sections, even with the GPS to follow. Going in the reverse direction from what I’m used to did not help. It got dark towards the end, which just made matters even worse! There are a few trees down across the trails.

Signs by the Grainfarmers entrance advise of a section of the western half of the woods being closed off weekdays for forestry operations. Supposedly this is for tree thinning to benefit the ecology and nothing to do with the cabin development. I saw no signs that any development work had started. Hopefully the economic gloom has taken its toll on the holiday park idea.

Get out and ride it while it’s dry!

Apparently KDMCC held ‘shorter’ motorbike event in Black Wood yesterday (6 Nov) so there’s a chance there are some new tracks to follow. Better be quick before those leaves blow over.

Just started a new topic should have done a search first.
Anybody been there recently, as in last couple of weeks.
Just wondered if the trails were visible.

faint – I was wondering the same. anyone fancy an afterwork ride there soon?

Apparently most of the trail is really hard to find & follow now. KDMCC have relocated their mx enduro this year, presumably they’ve been given the flick by the Forestry Commision – doesn’t sound like they’ve done much work building the holiday resort yet, hopefully it will be a victim of the recession! Good luck if you’re up there & let us know how it goes!