As a member of the group that help build and maintain the Dalby trails, ?I can see we’re getting towards the “storm in a teacup” stage. At the moment, it’s one guy on a news forum who’s had a bad experience with a mountainbiker in Dalby. If you visit Dalby and ride the recognized waymarked routes, you can’t fail to notice the No Access” to walkers, horses and motorized vehicles at both the start and exit of the non fireroad sections. Suffice to say, I’ve met both walkers and horses whilst I’ve been riding round, but there’s never been conflict as such. A friendly word with them and they usually get the idea that there’s safer areas to walk/ride in the forest.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t help when you get rogue riders hooning down waymarked walking routes, of which there are plenty, and then coming to grief when they meet a group of walkers. Unfortunately, as the forest is so big, and there’s numerous unmarked trails too, the whole idea of policing routes is just too difficult to manage.
Interestingly, there is Cropton Forest, which no one has brought up – where there is waymarked horse trails, an unofficial allowance for quads and trail bikes and lots of secret mtb trails hidden in there – a veritable playground for everyone, and there seems to be very little conflict between users.
On a lighter note, we’re not far off finishing a new section of red trail in Dalby – further details can be found on the forums at http://www.singletraction.org.uk/
And some teaser photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtbcol/sets/72157612668656759/
