Trail name etymology

“mouthful of sausage” was one where I used to live. no idea why.

Trumpetweed, up by the reservoir- root it oot.

Not so much trail names as feature names…

28 Inches. So named because there used to be a gap between 2 trees that was only 28 inches wide, troublesome for widebarists. Boring name, but became a good name when one of the trees was cut down so now it’s measuring a gap that doesn’t exist

The Wedding ****er. Because it ****ed Brian’s wedding after he broke both his wrists on it.

One I used to like , a ciclomontana one ,
“esther ransen” – “‘coz it was a bit toothy!” 😀

Biscuit Powered – Member

“mouthful of sausage” was one where I used to live. no idea why.

scaredypants – Member

somebody on here has a local one called teenage blowjob – not sure why

Live anywhere near scaredypants, Biscuit? 😉

I was quite pleased that Evil Root One and Evil Root Two (later ‘Evil Slab’) ended up being commonly used on Cannock Chase. All down to my chronic inability to ride over slight uphill obstacles…

There was a bit on FtD (section 14, now closed) that we called “Ill Phil’s Hill”, because the first time I went up it somebody had made a little sign, saying, “Phil was sick here”.

there’s part of Lee Quarry called Haygarth’s Leap. Due to a certain gent smashing his collar bone there after getting a bit too airborne during the first Brownbacks race we ever held there.

There was a bit on FtD (section 14, now closed) that we called “Ill Phil’s Hill”, because the first time I went up it somebody had made a little sign, saying, “Phil was sick here”.

Yeah we have a hill called “Chucky Hill” as I rode it one time with a lad who had a very severe hangover. For obvious reasons he quickly became known as Chucky, and that’s where he chucked …

Poop chute.

Pancake’s Envy.
Sudden Dog.
Oranges Are the Only Fruit.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Trail.
MBR’s Ruin.

Young Offenders….Goes past a young offenders Institute.

Roots of certain doom, er because they’re not really

Middlewood Cheek (nice footpath in Middlewood)
Cheeky Woods (likewise nice footpath through Collier’s woods)
Cherry Trees (downhill from the Cherry Tree Estate)
Bone Mill (goes past an old Bone Mill)
The Corner Of Certain Doom, and on the other side of the tree, the Slightly Less Acute Corner of almost Certain Peril – a very nice trail down a steep footpath through woods and brambles with several very tight turns where the trail more or less doubles back on itself, finishing with what feels like a vertical drop alongside a tree after which the path takes a 90 degree turn to the left – although I’ve got as far as the tree on many occasions, I’ve bottled the actual corner more times than I care to remember, cleaned it once, then the next time I tried it went over the bars and cracked my ribs. We rearranged (bent not broke) some branches on the other side of the tree at the bottom to make a very slightly less difficult end to the path, still needs some bottle and skill to ride it though

All the other trails are named on the OS map or named after places they pass – Shielan, The Banks, Linnet’s Clough, Fox Inn and so on

the sacred v – short twisty bit of trail that ends in a v shaped gully that look like a lady garden 😀
then joins on to grassy hill of doom 🙁
Donny woods – donyland is a small village near by
drop off trail – has the worlds smallest drop off on it
rhoddies revenge new bit of trail cut this year through big plantation of rhoddengrium bushes

the Slightly Less Acute Corner of almost Certain Peril

We may have a winner.

The Boner (at Inners) does exactly what it says on the tin; puts Pfizer Pharmaceuticals out of a job!

The Wibbly Wobbly Trail of Almost Certain Doom. on Dartmoor.
other than that most stuff on the local hill gets named after stuff that was found during construction. one notable exception is The Kim Jong Il Memorial Trail. I have no idea. ask Texas of this parish.

My personal favourite is a trail near me called “Prince Albert” because is cuts down through the end of a trail that starts just behind the (long shut) John Thomas pub.

Swaledale has….

The Moon. Cos it looks like, er, the moon

Broken Thumb Ford, cos my mate slid off & broke his, er, thumb.

Angry Man, cos it goes past a house who’s occupant is, er, angry about MTB’s going past.

But the best one wev’e named is Wobblycock Gate. A cockerall was sat on a gate onto a bridleway, & my mate (of broken thumb fame) tried shaking the gate to move it but it kept it’s balance & just wobbled around.

I named Double Shocker in Thetford after riding down it on an £89 full sus bike for a joke. The previous day I’d been asked if the shop I worked in sold those “double shockers” to which I replied “yes, we’ve got some shockers right over here…”. Sale – tick.

That bike was awarded as a prize at D2D – the face on the lady who’d just won a “state of the art full suspension bike” when she saw her prize was priceless.

The (less that) secret cheeky one in the Peak that you used to enter though and old front door set in a deer fence – “Narnia”.

I think I jusr found a trail best called ’The Jacobite‘…

Trail naming is one of my favourite aspects of MTB culture, but Strava has ruined it a bit with a) millions of pointless segments b) lots are just named for where they are rather than the proper names.

I went away from the Surrey Hills for a few years – when I went, that famous trail on Holmbury was Golden Birdies, now it’s Barry’s (except to the old guard). How did that happen? (And Park Life morphed to ‘Yoghurt Pots’ yawn).

Del – you forget “Lady’s Night”….

Starts promisingly but if anyone was to get to the end of it they’d be disappointed.

Thinking about it, you all need to get some inspiration from the climbing world…
Take ‘The Tower of Babel’ at Stoney Middleton, with the climbs of Glory Road, Sin, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Lust….and right next to it Lucy Simmons… 😆

For inspiration:
http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?t=4822

Brown Love. Ever mucky and root filled. There are pockets of the trail where you can find used man-on-mandoms strewn about.

Trail i’m working on at the minute has been named Death by Berm. Get the corner wrong and…

My old local club had two trails one called Barbie cos it had nice curvy bits and another called Sindy cos it’s like Barbie, but a bit different…

Naming is extremely important to communicate findings, routes, maintenance activity etc.

To avoid unnecessary colour, we first lift names off the OS map, but some of them are fairly colourful:

Rhino’s Rift
Dolbury Bottom
Crook’s Peak
East Twin Swallet

Then the merely prosaic:

The Old DH
Axbridge Swoopy
Ham Goat track (actually made by goats)

Only then do we get imaginative:

Magic (no idea)
Christmas Trees (lots of them)
Badger’s Run (they run and run)
Pye (found a rusty old radio)
Heart Bypass (avoids a horrid climb)
Slot Cars (you’re in the groove until the end)
Rocky Horror (it’s not a drag)
Asstwitcher (was nearly called Heath-cliff or Three Mins of Terror)

Got one in my old hunting ground that was named ‘New Mech Req.”.

The middle section was very fast until we had a massive thunderstorm one evening. The wash-off had made it into a gully with roots sticking out at just below axle height. You entered it flat out after a blind bermed right-hander (private land before you call us reckless!!)so had no chance of avoiding it. A large group of us hit it the morning after the storm and all but one of us totalled the rear mech. The one that didn’t clipped a pedal and bent his crank arm!!

It’s been made into an access road for a barn now, so is very boring but the name has stuck. My mate went nuclear on his dad when he found out what he’d done to it 😀

Ah NickC – the roots of doom eh? And I believe we had the ‘trail of bitey logs’. I also remember our superb acronym which was something like the Campaign for Unification of Named Trails. I believe I was chairman and you president 🙂

Strava names round here include ‘Hitchcock’ (from film Vertigo, it’s a bit on the edge) and ‘balls on back wheel’ which I hope is self explanatory.

For us a good ride is Rolling Rambler, Full Antler, Missed Apex, Jason’s Folly, Martin’s Finger, Nemesis, the Woo-Woos, death valley and sniper. It just feels a bit more windswept and interesting that ‘went for a ride in the Malverns’.

FoD is even worse. No idea what the Dirt boys are smoking but yet to get even a clue to why one trail is called ‘Two Headed Sex Breast’ 😉

Bee line- A play on A-line because we also had a problem with ground nesting bees

Spooky wood-its a bit err spooky, tight pine wood, dark at the best of times, doesn’t take much to get lost on a night ride

Got introduced to dueling banjos the other night- singletrack that splits in two allowing riders to race each other to the point where it merges again.

All the others are a bit descriptive and dull 🙁

LBS named a route Heartbreak Ridge, locals ‘re-named it Brokeback Mountain 8)
Another bit of trail is called Charlie’s back passage as it runs round the back of the Duke of Rothesay’s holiday home.

I sometimes get confused between Secret Squirrel and Secret Santa, which is silly because they’re very different.

as well as Windy Willows and Wild Wood.

‘Gravity Cavity’

I heard of a trail called The Kiddy Fiddler, coz it takes you gently into the woods and then f***s you

The Faux Chi Minh.

Bastard hill… mastiles lane from kilnsey, say no more !

Not really great, but mildly interesting: “Local Shop” cos its where the local shop in League Of Gentlemen was built, no really. I had the KoM up there for a bit…

The Mangler, due to the amount of times the air ambulance has been out on it. The Mangler II starts/finishes in the same places as the Mangler but is half the distance so is a lot lot steeper, it’s one reserved for the weeded out.

Some pretty unimaginative trail names where I am – “Slippery When Wet”, “Rabbit Run”. The best trail in the area is Monkey Breath, but I haven’t a clue why it’s called that.

Chronicles of Gnarnia

Was impressed on XR3i on Winterfold to actually find a car down there rotting at the bottom. Although with my geek head on its actually a XR3 rather than XR3i !