What’s Open At Glentress? A Redevelopment Update

It’s all to do with funding.
It’s easier to get funding/grants for shiny new exciting things, than it is to get funds for boring old maintenance.

Makes sense. Was there today. By and large it looks fairly abandoned with many of what’s not already been removed man made features looking like they are not long for this world.

Wooden features significantly increase the inspection requirements on the trails they’re on in order to meet FLS’s duty of care. Therefore they fell out of favour a few years ago, when hard choices had to be made based on how much time rangers had to carry out trail inspections and maintenance. Some vital and/or iconic bits survived but alternative solutions were sought where they’d been used to go over bits of ground that were marginally tricky to build trails into.

I like the black too! It’s barely black but it’s still a lovely ride. Same as Afan, it’s been left behind and a bit forgotten but that’s made it into something different rather than something worse. IMO.

TBH, overall Glentress is a better place to ride than it was 10 years ago. People talk about it being in decline and in some ways, that’s definitely true but the offpistes and #enduro stuff have massively enhanced it. Instead of giving a bags of cash to On Track, they should just have given a load of crates of beer to those guys and we’d have brilliant new stuff everywhere.

mtnboarder
Full Member

Interesting! I wonder what they found? Plenty of Red Squirrels around that area, would they still be hibernating?

Maybe the same local builders have diversified into spreading out rare newts or slow worms or puffins or something in the freeride.

ChrisL
Full Member

Wooden features significantly increase the inspection requirements on the trails they’re on in order to meet FLS’s duty of care.

Yep, as nicely demonstrated by the big wallride immediately falling apart when it mysteriously got reopened the other day. And the speed at which the wood features in the skills area went from open as usual to completely collapsed. I know people get cynical about wood features being removed but that really shows how quickly they can go off, and how they can seem fine til they’re absolutely not. Now it looks like a hundred year old pier.

tartanscarf
Full Member

The loss of the Buzzards Nest is a massive shame in my opinion.

For sure… It’d just naturally formed a centre, a “hub” you might say, over the years that I don’t think was ever planned but became such an asset, you can build endless loops from there. Even for a totally trailcentre rider, doing the red and then realising you have some leg left and doing laps of the nearby trails was superb, I always started new riders or visits to the centre there. With the best of intent I don’t think the new developments replace that at all; if they deliver, then it should be much more coherent and sensible with the skills area etc being actually at the start/end, and near the cafe, and near the ambulances and all that good stuff- but it’s a long way from spooky or the mast or the bottom of deliverance.

Still feels like the chalets could have gone damn nearly anywhere in the forest, but the middle of the trails can only go in the middle.

BoardinBob
Full Member

Zero. It was absolutely destroyed by the storm. I doubt they could ever safely remove the fallen trees

Not manually, anyway- they’ll probably send a harvester in some time to the really flattened areas, when the moons align and there’s enough work to do to justify sending in a quarter of a million quid’s worth of machinery to do it, but the yields from windblow are poor and there’s no shortage of ripe timber to fell. So that could be years- and for the green at least it’ll likely have one eye on the cabin project too.

For machine built trail of that nature it’s definitely going to be easier to smash in some new stuff. And move it to teh bottom of the hill, while they’re at it. But it’s a shame.