Wild trails versus trail centre?

Can someone please explain the difference?, the risks of the one versus the other? how to get the latter recognised by FC? and how much work is involved in bringing a wild trail up to FC standard…. (for racing and riding on)

Trail Centre or purpose built mountain bike trail, no actual standards but lots of guidance from IMBA etc.
Other trails out there – biggest issue for racing is that there are bylaws which stop you racing on Brideways in England, not sure about Scotland.

Many rights of way are very well suited to riding on, those that are not probably leave alone.

The risks? Riding – the purpose built trail should be more ridable, the other trail may have bits that just don’t work.
That said the purpose built trail lifts people out of their comfort/ability zone of they get carried away so crashes can be worse.
Out there stuff the risks can be lower/greater but the consequence of being remote in less well traveled areas changes things.
What do you want FC to recognise? Is it in their forest? If so you will need to get on to their development people and local managers. Who looks after the other trails? Chances are it will get closed.

Sounds like you need to be a bit more specific about what you have and what you want to do with it.

FWIW we don’t have ‘designated’ ROW in Scotland, consequently can ride pretty much anywhere.

Also due to wide expanses of FC land, many ‘unauthorised’ trails.

2 posters one question?

‘Wild trails’ is a phrase used by the FC in their mountain bike management plans for trails that are built unofficially, they can involve anything from just deer tracks that people are riding through to DH tracks that riders have built – the key factor is that as they are not designed, built and maintained by FC they fall outside the remit of OGB37 (forestry commission handbook on cycle trail management) – however as the landowner, Forestry commission still have landowner liability and a duty of care regards trails that they are aware of, even if they are unauthorised. The FC could have taken the approach of destroying everything or just blanket banning riders, however very reasonably saw this would be unlikely to work so developed a guideline for ‘wild trails management’ that used a risk matrix approach to trails.

essentially the thing for you to understand is that the more risky it is, the higher chance of it being torn down, and the more organised your group is, the more you can get away with – So, if you have, for example, a club, with a group of regular builders, write down your plans on paper, draw diagrams of planned obstacles (eg see saws or jumps) with materials spec and fall zones, then you can get permission to build some pretty ace trails, whereas if you and your mates go into the wood in the school holidays and build a load of six foot North shore out of old pallets, then when the FC find it, they’re pretty much duty bound to tear it down.

Have a read of this: http://vscg.co.uk/documents/uploads/Managing_and_controlling_wild_cycling_trails_FC.pdf

For racing, it depends – if you are planning to clock out a single Enduro race on it, then you should only need minimal works, but you’ll need insurance and written plans, risk assessments, and likely pay a nominal fee per rider to the FC, they may also expect you to take steps to repair/decommission afterwards. If you are looking to build a gravity based trail then there will likely be a lot of work ahead, the more you can get planned out on paper the better.

Thank you Ninfan and Mike, very useful info. I’ve been running races on Wild trails (existing and built for the event) for the last 4 years and have managed to get a lot of “Wild Trails” recognised for “event only use” (roughly 50 hours prep per stage btw), very interesting to see how perceptions have changed within FC. Some embrace the trails and work with local riders to control “Legacy” riding and others require us to shut the trails and make them inoperable after the events. Most trails are gravity based and as such FC/NRW are far happier with riders wearing full faces on “Wild trails” and more recently, riders having their own PA insurance has somewhat made it easier to get the use of certain trails.
Keeps the locals happy 🙂

Some embrace the trails and work with local riders to control “Legacy” riding and others require us to shut the trails and make them inoperable after the events

Yeah, often its very dependent on the site, there may be issues like SSSI designation whereby a clearance for a single event outside bird breeding season will be given due to minimal impact, whereas if the trail were to remain open afterwards it would be a much greater impact and therefore not authorised. Equally other trails, would be an ongoing inspection and maintenance burden, particularly gravity orientated trails that may be less likely to be sustainable, and crucially might need to prevent lower ability riders discovering on their travels and and then following unknowingly into a drop off or similar.

You mean bring them down to fc levels…not standards…

What part of the world is this in, out of interest?

@glasgowdan most of England at the moment.

Why on earth does everything need to be ‘sanctioned’, listed, mapped, categorised , these days ?
Many of us who ride non trail centre FC stuff, do so, with a great deal of “understanding” on the part of the landowner.
The very last thing I ( and to, a man, everyone who I ride with) would want, would be any more trails designated for bike use.
This , in many cases, could lead to other groups of users expecting, and to a degree the FC likely to agree that only designated trails could be ridden.
The spirit of mountain biking is in its freedom, surely ?
We should be grateful for those freedoms we have. Pleased too, by the reasonable co existence we have with the FC in many places. Not just the FC either. Riding is tolerated, even encouraged in many areas, but let’s not pigeon hole everything eh ?

That would be a perfectly fair point if

i) a small minority of our community didn’t insist on doing bloody stupid things, like digging a great big hole in the middle of an existing trail to build a jump.

ii) another small minority didn’t sue the landowner after breaking their arm while riding over shonky North shore that they and their mates built.

ii) another small minority didn’t sue the landowner after breaking their arm while riding over shonky North shore that they and their mates built.

i don’t believe this has ever happened, but do understand that it is a fear.

although the FC do have guidelines in place for ‘wild trail’ management, these are open to interpretation. much like a lot of this sort of thing, if you can show you have a reasonable, thought out, and logical approach to an issue, so long as you can demonstrate that, and show that you have stuck to your plan ( frequency of inspections etc. ), then it should never really be a problem.

the FC do have a duty of care as mentioned above, so if they know a trail exists, they could be considered negligent if there is no paper trail to show they are keeping an eye on it to a certain extent.