Trail sabotage on a whole new level

convert – Member
Looking beyond the stakes has anyone ever actually ridden down there? It looks untouched by tyre.
Agreed – if that was ever a trail, it looks like it’s been months/years since it was ridden. Does not excuse the stakes mind.

Who really cares if it looks like it’s been ridden? The intent is to injury someone, surely that’s the case. Not the finer points of how ofter a trail is ridden.

TBH, a lot of the trails round here look like that at the moment, all the stuff dropping off the trees tends to flatten out everything so it looks unused.

Who really cares if it looks like it’s been ridden? The intent is to injury someone, surely that’s the case. Not the finer points of how ofter a trail is ridden.

It just makes it a very odd action. Unless the stakes have been there for years and effectively closed the route and no one else could be arsed to report it or do anything about it.

I can assure you they’re a new feature

There’s no trail there and never has been; the forest floor is littered with old debris and there isn’t even a hint of a dip or any berm created by repeated use.

Emailed you Steve_b77

🙂

It amazes me that a life or serious injury is threatened and all some people can do in here is piss about, and quote politics.

Maybe have a think about how you’d feel if a victim was one of your friends & family.

I think you should be ashamed of yourselves.

That’s horrific 😯 Near-certainty of death if you rode it blind!

There are regularly used trails in the FOD on the ‘other’ side of the road that have been there for years that look like that after a few days, no tyre marks etc. The wind and rain cover them up as they only get the odd bike or two a day so it’s perfectly possible it’s a regular, but hidden and unknown trail.

I think some don’t want to believe that this stuff is actually real. I too completely doubted it when I saw it, but that doesn’t make it less horrific. If anything it’s too horrific to believe someone would do it.

there isn’t even a hint of a dip or any berm created by repeated use.

It’s a straight line so why on earth would there be any ‘berms’? Tracks get covered pretty quickly this time of year if they’re not being used regularly.

It just baffles me that some idiot would think it a good idea to do something like that 😯

There are 3 unofficial trails up there, the rider who took the photo regularly sessions them as part of his training, and he wouldn’t be just randomly riding off one of the 3, so it will be on, or right next to, one of the 3 trails.
I’ll have a walk up later and see where it was.

Silly thing is, the forest that the trail in the picture is located in, is quite clearly, from the picture a commercial Forrest, ie, machine planted, evergreen (spruce/pine etc) trees that are grown for there wood, and every few years (~20 typically) are machine felled and then replanted. This makes any trail between them an irrelevance in terms of causing any of the usual things the anti-s like to go on about (erosion, damage etc). The presence of a few jumps, some tyre tracks or a berm or two is going to be null and void once 35 tonnes of mechanised logger has been through the area!

If it were an illegal trail through a beautiful natural, deciduous wood in an area of outstanding natural beauty, or SSI or whatever then yes, non authorised MTB trails are not great, but here, it’s like making an illegal footpath across a supermarket car park, irrelevant!!

^ Well put MaxTorque.

The 1st of the tracks was fully planned, approved & built over a 2 year period with the FC around 2005.
Political infighting within the FC shortly after led to the bottom half being demolished and the trail fell into disuse.
I still have the original plans and docs from when we did it.
The FC still encourage people to ride up Old Pale and explore the tracks in the forest in general as shown here
Over the last 10 years, 2 more trails evolved, mainly just singletrack loamy lines through the trees, it looks like the trap was on one of those.

The best course of action would be to fully legitimise the trails and signpost them as bike routes, this would undermine the actions of the saboteur. It would also reduce potential trail conflict as at the moment, people still ride down the fire roads on the hill which are pretty steep and problems have occurred.

So if this is FC land in the middle of a “commercial Forrest, ie, machine planted, evergreen (spruce/pine etc) “, why would walkers be anywhere near this trail? We have plenty of this type of forest where I live and the trees are packed incredibly tightly making it pretty much impossible to walk through comfortably. Any trails there are require the cutting of the lower branches of the trees to even make it passable. So I just don’t understand why walkers would even be on it, and why they would be on so often so as to cause the amount of friction/disgruntlement that would drive someone to attempted manslaughter?

Cos it might no be a militant redsock but some kids being arseholes?

It would make me feel better about the world (not the situation) if it was kids.

Kids were my immediate thought when I saw the picture. Has someone maybe been trail building and left the materials for a ramp there? Kids come along, find the stuff and do what kids do…..something stupid without thinking of the consequences.

Quick update to this thread. We’ve been up to the forest this morning and had a walk up the track in question with a Forestry Commission Ranger.
This particular section of trail is not heavily used but was just off from one of the main tracks down the Old Pale. If it looks a bit underused in the picture it’s because it’s a Larch forest (deciduous) and there is a covering of needles everywhere – even tracks which were ridden this morning have a fine dusting of them so things get covered pretty quickly. There’s a slightly bermed corner about 20ft after the jump which you can’t even make out in the photo as it’s so gloomy in there.
The offending posts have been removed. They were originally taken from a jump which is now unsafe. This jump will be removed totally today to make it safe for everybody. Not because the forestry don’t want people to have fun but because ultimately, if somebody hurts themselves on it, it’s on their head.
Hopefully this is an isolated incident but if anyone does see anything dodgy going on then please report it.
Thanks, Rick

The trouble for us as mountain bike riders is that our comparative newness to the outdoor scene has resulted in whipping boy status for every issue that this increasingly NIMBY country has with access etc.

From our point of view, and the NIMBYs know this, any publicity is bad publicity. Even if you get on the right side of an authority, all access will be tagged with words like ‘sustainable’, ‘responsible’ and their ilk. These concepts are great when viewed with a grown up attitude, but what they often mean is ‘restricted’, ‘sanitised’ and ‘dull’.

Even if there was a high level prosecution (that oaf Ron Davies for example) it would be bad for us as raises the ‘issue’ of mountain biking a notch – there is no ‘issue’ if everyone is sensible, but a lot of people are idiots. A prosecution would lead to councils and landowning bodies forming ‘taskforces’ to create a ‘safe and sustainable’ mountain bike area on their land – ie a dull, six foot wide cinder track.

I believe there are the beginnings of a rolling snowball of anti-MTB sentiment out in NIMBY-land. Even if this particular example is kids being idiots, it is all grist to the mill for those who want to ‘provide for’ us, whilst really seeking to contain and quarantine us.

Be sensible, ride considerately and don’t wreck it for everyone else – that has to be the message, whether you are riding cheeky or legit.

Don’t give them the excuse!

Good work Rick

A bit disappointing to read some of the aggressive, anti walker posts on the STW Facebook posts – they won’t win us any allies.

This story has now made it to The Sun website…

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2096148/mystery-over-dangerous-booby-trap-of-wooden-spikes-left-on-popular-mountain-bike-trail/

Worst thing is, at night you’d be a sitting duck for the zombies after your crash.

Slightly off the topic of booby traps set by idiots, but still to do with Delamere, i’ve never ridden there despite living relatively locally.

Sadly due to work i can’t make it to the LBS midweek rides to learn all the good stuff, but was wondering if any locals on here could recommend any routes round there or are there any unofficial maps kicking about? Sadly i don’t have GPS device for GPX files : ( Might try and pop down one sunday…!

I can print you something out, but it’s tricky to find a lot of the single track without a guide, even with a map.
I’ll put something together and leave a few copies in the cafe, just ask at the counter, say Colin sent you.

If you’ve got time, patience and a half decent sense of direction, head into the forest on the fire roads and head off down anything you see that looks like a track. You’ll piece it together eventually.

This story has now made it to The Sun website…

The ball is rolling……..

That nobhead Ron Davies a month or so ago, now another highly publicised incident.

Mark my words, there will be task groups being set up to provide ‘dedicated’, ‘safe’ and ‘sustainable’ mountain bike ‘provision’ to address the ‘issue’.

Translation: “Get the mountain bikes away from everyone else on boring, shit cinder paths in places no one else wants to go, then introduce bans on access away from these places”.

Worrying times.

Thanks Colp, thanks Steve. Normally do just follow my nose but thought some loose directions may save me some serious faff! Do a bit of walking with the Mrs so might go for a hike first to get my barings and come back another time with the bike.

Cheers!

Serious question here, do equestrianists build jumps in woods? (I mean, not on their own land.) I have never seen any.

Translation: “Get the mountain bikes away from everyone else on boring, shit cinder paths in places no one else wants to go, then introduce bans on access away from these places”.

I see your point but can’t see it happening or making a difference, when you consider the current penalties for riding on footpaths are so severe!

greyspoke – Member

Serious question here, do equestrianists build jumps in woods? (I mean, not on their own land.) I have never seen any.

Around here they do but they are thick logs over the trail rather than earth ramps and they also like fallen trees. I used to think it was a stickman but the hoof holes gave it away. The local stickman uses lots of smaller sticks and has cottoned on to putting them at angles instead of straight across. The horsey stuff doesn’t bother me so much as it’s in plain sight, easy to go around, hop or bump over. Except for one log placed at the top of a little step down.

again in south wales sounds really nasty !

All publicity is bad publicity. There will be talk on larger circulation media soon of the ‘growing problem’ of mountain bikes, mark my words. Even if these scumbags are caught, the publicity adds grist to the mill of those who perceive us as an ‘issue’.

There will be talk on larger circulation media soon of the ‘growing problem’ of mountain bikes, mark my words.

Bet you there won’t be.

again in south wales sounds really nasty !

Bloody hell, I was riding with Ben just a few weeks ago. Probably down the same trail. Glad he’s ok. They do have issues with MX bikes down that way, probably pi**nig off a few locals, but no need for that.

Thats my local area.

What that story doesn’t tell is the other traps on the same mountain side we’ve found nails stuck to wood buried in the mud.

Its not to stop MTB I’m guessing but to stop the loads of motox idiots in the area but they fail to realise its on a walkers paths that could injure walkers, dogs and horses.

You might want to think about how your post condones injuring “motox idiots”. Or rather does not explicitly condemn it. How easily the one is conflated for the other is at the heart of the angst we have about mass sentiment settling on an us and them narrative that justifies anti-them vigilantism