New man made trails off of Glentress Black route?

Had a little ride around the black route last week.
Noticed some new trails being built – one right near the start (after the skills park) and another up near the radio mast.

Anyone know anything about them? Wasn’t sure if they were finished so didn’t want to just ride down them.

The one from the radio mast is a bit dull at the top but gets a bit better lower down.
Edit.
The surfaced one from the mast is a bit dull.
The one that’s unfinished is great fun. The two guys building it just wanted to know if we liked it or not. 😀

The one at the mast’s not finished yet, it’s going to be cool when it’s done though but for now it doesn’t actually go anywhere.

Don’t know about the other one! Lots of stuff going on.

Surfaced ones are links to take bikes of the fire road, but they also give more options for linking stuff up while avoiding fireroads.

And yes, they are open, just not signed yet. From the mast, you can branch of into the Boundary Trail, Spooky Wood, or all the way down to Ho Chi Min. Then pick up the new link into Zoom Or Boost, although I don’t think that one has been opened yet.

the orange mesh has been removed from the last bit to zoom or bust, but I think ‘informally’ as it isn’t neatly rolled up, just torn to the side. Looking forward to Northwind’s one being finished.

It’s about 1% mine I reckon

Northwind’s trail?

I’ve yet to see the slacker turn up, let alone do any work on it!

I was a human bulldozer on saturday. Five inches of tool propelled by 10 stone of gristle.

For the last couple of sessions, I’ve just been a human dozer

Ha I was meaning the one he was referring to.

Five inches of tool propelled by 10 stone of gristle.

😯

That’s width! It is a mighty chopper.

It just doesn’t get that much use.

I am just about to move to peebles and am no stranger to graft.

Assuming my tool is big enough can anyone join in?

It needs to be long enough that you can lean on it while criticising other people’s work, that’s important.

But yep, absolutely- there’s often other stuff happening, the tweed valley has a ridiculous amount of homemade trails but for the GT trailfairies in particular it’s currently every second saturday morning, meeting at 9am at the old ranger’s building and working through til about 1pm with cake stops. And quite often riding after, it’s a good scene

Probably the best thing to do these days is sign up to the facebook page, there’s also a mailing list which ChrisL of this parish runs if you’re oldschool.

Sounds good. My riding will only embarrass myself though 😀

The mailing list is available at https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/glentress-trailfairies/info. The Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/trailfairies

The next official session that I know of is on Saturday the 16th. There might be something going on tomorrow afternoon/evening too, but you’d need to get in touch with the rangers to find out about that.

There are so many jokes that could be made about Northwind’s tool and its spinning head, but I’ll leave them to someone else I think.

Joined on faceyb

Not moved in yet got to sort that out first.

You know dump all my belongings then fit out the workshop…

10 stone???
Did you have a couple stone stuck in your back pack?

And what’s this about spinning tool heads?
Sounds like I missed a good mickey taking opportunity on Saturday…

The shaft’s too small you see, it’s a really loose fit. I tried wedging a chisel down the end but that didn’t help much

So your shaft’s too small for the hole… 🙂

There are tons of people riding down that new climb to the mast 🙂 enjoying the flat berms and motorway surfacing. We were questioning it before we really checked it out and realised this (having seen the proper descent).

Not sure some of the hardcore new bits down hochimin area are banked quite enough to be honest, but I accept these are to be durable trail centre additions for future and not just tracks for the race.

The new line cut through down the fort descent is ace, and waaay more slippery than I expected!

Is that supposed to be a climb? I thought it was flat corner practice. Or going by the tyre marks, going straight on at the first flat corner practice

Ha! They must be the descent to be part of the black and link in with the rest of the network, as per mc’s post above. I’m sure glasgowdan will cope riding flat corners, eeh I remember when all we had was flat corners unless you were at a bmx track.

It’s a descent, and has been mentioned for a while, it’s just an excuse to build it was finally found. It’s certainly not the worlds most exciting trail due to various reasons, but it’ll get people of the fireroad.

Seems a large waste of money if that’s a descent then! Another reason to refuse to pay for parking at that place!

Seems a large waste of money if that’s a descent then! Another reason to refuse to pay for parking at that place!

Seems a bit harsh. New trails cost money of which there is not much to spend. Even less if people don’t pay parking. I think its a good addition which will no doubt become more interesting with time. It may not be rad enough for some but its much better than riding down a fireroad. Its all too easy to criticise the efforts of others.

If you don’t want to pay for parking then get yourself along to some trail building sessions and earn yourself a free parking permit. You’ll also get a free sense of satisfaction and some say into what happens with future trail building.

glasgowdan – Member

Seems a large waste of money if that’s a descent then! Another reason to refuse to pay for parking at that place!

Assuming that wasn’t a joke… Other places to ride are available.

To put it into a bit of perspective, it replaces a fireroad as you know, and it’s a quick digger-built trail so will have taken little time and money. It’s always been weird to climb up the mast then just go straight back down on a road- made really obviously more weird when you ride it the other way round.

Here you go[/url] glasgowdan, you’ll be able to live life without berms after this

glasgowdan – Member
Seems a large waste of money if that’s a descent then! Another reason to refuse to pay for parking at that place!

Assuming that wasn’t a joke… Other places to ride are available.

“To put it into a bit of perspective”. Over here in D&G there is an “unofficial” team of ‘fairies but trying to get a proper GT style group going seems dead in the water. I’ve certainly no motivation or energy left 🙄
“Stuff” has been done recently but a bit ” under the radar” for SXC and the various Enduro races but as for upgrades or repairs to trails that’s all done by contractor however the trail has to be in some state before anything gets done!!

I think even Glentress struggled for a while. I haven’t been as much as I would have liked in the last three or four years but the last two sessions I did attend in the last couple of years attendence was well down. On both occasions there were only about 4 or 5 of us, when I was managing to get along to most sessions there was often 12-20 of us. It seems like numbers have gone back up since they went back to fortnightly sessions but ChrisL etc would know better than me. But when you think of the numbers that use Glentress, the number of trailfairies isn’t quite small. There used to be a high percentage of regulars who did more than their fair share and I’m guessing it’s much the same.

It’s an incredible shame though in D&G- the volunteer work done down there is fantastic and there just seems to be no desire from the FC to work with you guys, it’s bizarre. Especially since the trails and traffic you guys get probably suits sympathetic maintenance and tweaking better than machines and contractors. (meanwhile quite a lot of the fairies work is probably better suited to machines in all honesty)

(OTOH, I see Dalbeattie got a bunch of woodwork repaired/renovated, absolutely zero chance of something like log on log off at GT now)

So far I’d say that Trailfairy attendance has improved a bit this year but it’s still not close to its peak numbers from a few years ago. The shift a few years ago to full-day monthly sessions (instead of half-day fortnightly sessions) also coincided with an increase of trail maintenance rather than new build sessions and both things I think reduced interest and motivation a bit.

This year and last however we’ve had plenty of sessions working on new trails (The Glorious Five Year Plan last year and the as-yet unnamed EWS trail this year), plus this year we’ve also moved back to fortnightly half-day sessions, restoring the opportunity to have a combined build/ride days. In addition to all that there’s also progress in training up non-FC session leaders which should make it possible to run even more sessions (or lose fewer sessions due to FC scheduling conflicts) so I’m hopeful that we’re embarking on a period of growth for the Trailfairies. 🙂

Always been curious as to why Glentress is reliant on a group of volunteers for maintenance and building in the way it is with you fairies. From what I assume it’s a commercial venture for the FC, yet they get volunteers to help them make their cash. Or are the fairies a relic (no offence) from the time before FC used Glentress as a money spinner?

You guys do some great work, but I can’t help but think you should be getting paid for it since the FC certainly makes more money off of me as a result of your work. I wouldn’t ride Glentress at all if it wasn’t for the stuff you guys dream up.

Well the fairies have been around for a long time but I wouldn’t call them relics. Not all of them anyway. I didnt mind doing it for nothing as I felt it was important to put something back and as we were working for free there was no pressure on you to slog your guts out. I also managed to find out about the unmarked stuff, that was how you did it in the pre Strava days. As a result I’ve also made a lot of friends over the years, learnt a lot about trail building (the international standard Jaffa Cake box measure) had a lot of laughs and you can’t put a price on any of that.

Another reason to refuse to pay for parking at that place!

Don’t come then, go take you Missus shopping or something.

Always been curious as to why Glentress is reliant on a group of volunteers for maintenance and building in the way it is with you fairies. From what I assume it’s a commercial venture for the FC, yet they get volunteers to help them make their cash

I’m not really sure how the economics of the whole thing works, I don’t think mountain biking brings in a lot of money to the FC, certainly they could do a lot more if they wanted this to be the case; as was apparent at the developing mtbing in scotland conference thingy last year they are missing a lot of opportunities and have little interest in developing mtbing compared to examples such as Whistler.

In terms of Glentress they spent a lot on the Peel developments and trail network, they get rent for the shop, Go Ape and restaurant and some income from the car park but I imagine it is going to take them a long time to recover costs for all that through those outlets. I certainly don’t think they are doing it to make cash, rather to meet their duties under the Countryside Bill.

The Commissioners have a legal duty to seek a reasonable balance between the production and supply of timber and the interests of conservation. In promoting the multiple benefits of forestry, they also seek to take careful account of people’s needs and wishes, including local communities.

There was a great post on here a few years ago about the story of Glentress trails, how things were developed by Pete Laing etc, did anyone ever bookmark it?

The main benefit of the trailfairies, is we can build stuff that would otherwise be uneconomical to build, and maintain stuff that would be a bit of problem for the rangers and machines.

When you consider the hours that went into things like Zoom or Bust, and Pie Run, you just can’t build that style of trail using a machine. Yes, having something like a powerbarrow to get material nearer would of been nice and saved some work, but the majority of the work is in the digging.
In terms of maintenance, things like adding a drain in the middle of a trail would take the rangers a couple days, unless they happen to have a digger on site and nearby. Get a group of fairies on the case, and it’ll be done in a couple of hours, with minimal trail closures. And at the same time, some of us usually wander up/down the trail tweaking drains elsewhere, which frees up the rangers time to do other work.

And as to why I do it, it’s usually a laugh, and I get to contribute back and have a say in the trails (usually “No, you’re not cutting that root out!” and “it’ll add a challenge” 🙂 ).

Still keeping Al away from the roots?

🙂

Strava lines are higher up my annoyance list just now.

For myself, I do it because I like it- it’s good fun in itself, it’s valuable and you get to be smug on the internet, it’s a great crowd of mates and riders, and it’s given me a different appreciation for the trails and the venues… I got into the digging pretty much as soon as I got into riding and it made a huge difference to how I took to things, made good friends, rode things I might have missed, all that. And yep it’s great to see your own input (I’ll always see the pain-in-the-arse roots on 5yp as my roots 😉 ) Chatting to Steve Peat at the EWS and hearing him rave about our trail was pretty cool. **** me, I raced Andrew Shandro on a trail I helped build, teenage me would have shit the bed if you’d told him that.

I definitely get as much out as I put in, anyway. And I can’t even eat the cakes. Not everyone would be the same, nothing wrong with that, it wouldn’t be volunteering if you felt you had to do it.

Mind you I do enjoy stuff like we’re doing now a hell of a lot more than the big industrial grade builds for things like the magic mushroom rebuild, to be honest. I’m a lover not a wheelbarrower.

ChrisL – Member

the as-yet unnamed EWS trail this year

Bigjim named it, it’s Northwind’s Trail. That’s democracy.

‘The bus stop’