I got permission to use this forest about 20 years ago and it’s been used ever since. Nathan was clearing one of the old run to bring it back into use. Police have been to see the two people don’t know if it is being taken any further. They were the ones trespassing as the footpath is not in the forest it’s about 20 yards away on the other side of the wall. It is a strava segment and it’s name has just been changed to .where’s my shovel.

@robido the footpath from the shawl does actualy cross the bottom of the wood and that segment crosses the footpath. Wonder if there have been some near misses in the past. Anyway, Nathan seems pretty handy on the bike judging by his strava times 🙂

The Independent (good on them) are now linking this into other stories about nail traps and calling the perps….wait for it…..

“Lockdown Fundamentalists”

🙂🙂🙂🙂

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-lockdown-nail-traps-woods-cleveland-margrove-guisborough-a9515021.html

It is a strava segment and it’s name has just been changed to .where’s my shovel.

At least some good has come out of all this.

Rusty Spanner
Subscriber
Can we add Nathan as a nominee for one of this year’s Singletrack awards?

His politeness has probably done more for the image of cyclists than a thousand little bells.

I’d like to second this 🙂

If they float.

Apologies for the thread hijack but didn’t want to start another sabotage thread.

Since the lockdown there has been an increase in riding in my local woods, St Leonard’s Forest near Horsham, along with quite a few new trails being built by the kids off school. Unfortunately this has also come with some increase in trail sabotage, some on the new trails but also on the trails that have been there for many years.

The first I came across were just some sticks across an old trail:

Then a couple of days later it progresses to someone using a saw to cut down a healthy young tree and place across an older trail:

And yesterday my friend came across this on a more recent trail:

Apparently fairly easy to spot but would cause some serious injury if someone wasn’t paying attention.

@markoc1984

This boils my piss.

The thing is, though, these arseholes know they are onto a win-win most likely.

Even if they get a talking to by the police they know that the landowners won’t want the publicity and many will just say “sod it, it isn’t worth the hassle” and try to restrict access more vigorously.

Really nasty stuff (the post hammered into the ground on that jump is borderline IMO) needs to be reported to police as it is really dangerous and evil. The lad who is the basis of this thread got a brazen admission of guilt on camera, so he was right to go for it.

Sticks and logs laid across tracks more generally? The only real thing we can do is shift them. And again. And again. Until the sad little pillocks give up and go back to shouting at the sky or whatever it is they do.

That last picture is really nasty. Hope you catch they guy.

Had a stickman on my local trails, it had been going on for about 3 years. Had to move obstacles everytime I used the trails.

During lockdown the trails were getting used more often as they are one of the few choices locally. The obstacles were being cleared everyday but were being replaced with the same frequency.

With it happening so often it was only a matter of time before he got caught in the act though.

Results were pretty similar to the OP. The Police had a friendly chat and Stickman has stopped

I’m on the opposite side now it seems…

I talked to a local ‘trail builder’ who’s activities have already seen the police called, access officer involvement and quiet calming of the waters by other riders elsewhere around Dunblane in the last month.

He’s now moved to another spot, very very public, and along with others is digging up masses to create more ‘routes’ in a patch of woodland 30m X 200m . I suggested he maybe needs to be aware that in such a public place, doubles with 2m gaps and sooo much digging may upset folk, and as he was digging up the roots of trees as we chatted he was doing significant harm to the environment.
Apparently the (housing developer) landowner “would be happy” he was killing trees as the bats needed to be moved on before they can build there, and any local can basically foxtrot Oscar as he’s only digging trails that do no harm to anyone and he doesn’t have anywhere else to dig that isn’t a big walk for him, so he’s going to dig the whole darn lot up as he pleases….

We left with me suggesting he was breaking rule no.1 above all else…

@matt_outandabout

Maybe you are on the ‘other side’ in that particular example, but ‘trail builder’ acting in cahoots with a landowner……?

That’s a one in a hundred occurrence.

FWIW I’m not a massive fan of unofficial trail building as it tends to get NIMBYs backs up and we all get it in the neck as a result.

The dividing lines are fuzzy, but massive **** off doubles constructed by either damaging trees or digging massive holes nearby aren’t my thing. My view is that if you’re going to do stuff like that it would be best to have permission.

Sculpting a small berm or two, probably borderline.

But the vast, vast majority of stickman activity I see is on trails where no digging has occurred. It is just miserable arseholes who don’t like bikes being ridden there.

While I hate to say it MOAA, if a friendly chat and impression of ‘this will cause more problems for all of us’ isn’t enough to make somebody think about their actions and tone it down/go somewhere more segregated/stop completely then perhaps a call to the local bobbies to go have a chat and maybe a (legitimate) threat of prosecution is the only real step that can be taken next.

It’s great seeing so many more people out walking/biking/scooting/rollerblading whatever in the great outdoors than usual and I hope it continues, but sometimes those extra people need to have a think about what they’re actually doing.

but ‘trail builder’ acting in cahoots with a landowner……?

He’s a student home for the summer, bored on lockdown. He’s just constructing a view of the world to support his actions.

He’s a student home for the summer, bored on lockdown. He’s just constructing a view of the world to support his actions.

And his view of the world involves actually pretending to be destroying bat habitat?

Sounds like a c*ck in more than one regard.

Thing is, if a landowner flattens unofficial trails then sure it can feel like a pisser for those that built them, but really it is a bit ‘meh’. So long as they do it safely. Vigilante pillocks setting stuff that is actually likely to result in serious injury is a totally different ballgame and it has varying degrees.

Vigilante pillocks setting stuff that is actually likely to result in serious injury is a totally different ballgame

Agreed.

And his view of the world involves actually pretending to be destroying bat habitat?

Maybe bats shouldn’t be protected anymore…