Am I right to assume your role does not also cover the Isle of Wight?

You are entirely correct. The Island has its own LAF Their website is here. Alec Lawson is the cycling rep.

I’m a key member of the QECP Trail Collective and we work closely with HCC to maintain and improve the trail network at Queen Elizabeth Country Park. QECP would make a great hub for mountain biking in the south down national park.

SDNP is one of the worst NP’s for promoting and investing in cycling IMO.
Hi Scott,

I’m pretty familiar with the trail collective’s excellent work. I’ve been over and dug with you a couple of times and marshalled the Day/Night enduro this year. It does make an excellent hub for mountain biking.

From the engagement I’ve had with SDNP, they are pretty pro-cycling. They’re certainly better than the New Forest and many of the other NPs are not without issues.

Are you in touch with Colin Carre and Alister Linton-Crook? They are both involved with promoting cycling as a means of transport and leisure in the Park and are always looking for ways to work with people. They, as with everyone, are working with the confines of tiny budgets so there is a limit to what the can do. If you want, I can put you in touch with them.

You also have the joys of Hampshire Council, who took four months to respond to my last cycling related query, promised a resolution and a year on still haven’t and this is top level discrimination against cycling so no small thing. Hence my wish for your success.

I’ve worked in, with and for HCC in various guises over the years so I know (to a certain extent) what I’m getting myself into.

I suspect that, in Hampshire’s case it’s more a case of ignorance than incompetence than discrimination, but I’m willing to be wrong. It was interesting at the last forum meeting that all of the interest groups were claiming that they were the forgotten ones who were last in the queue.

One of the reasons the forum exists is to, with any luck, deal with the lack of understanding that various departments within the council seem to demonstrate on a regular basis.

Feel free to drop me a note about the specific case and I’ll see if there’s a workaround that might work better.

Can I do a cheeky hijack

Hijack away big fella. I’ll have a look this afternoon.

Still trying to work out how much power we have

Me too!

So it’s not just me then.

Aye, I’ve been keeping an eye on it. There’s a lot to read through there.

I’m a member of the LAF (Local Access Forum – similar thing but covers all open spaces as well as the rights of way network) in Brighton.

Nice to know I’m not alone.

Whilst I’m currently not riding (have become the Lyme disease bore on this forum) I try to get out for little walks and do encounter the odd issue. Have always reported issues with trees down, access blocked etc etc.

I could probably fulfil the same post for scarlet fever after this year, so I feel your pain. Good luck.

Thanks Andy, sounds positive – I have reported an issue on their before, sadly the response was not ideal. A bridleway that is made as difficult to use as possibly (farm waste + 6ft high stingers). Apparently a parish council issue and therefore nothing they could do. That is fine, but it formed part of a Hants county cycle route so daft that they could do nothing to resolve.

http://www.hants.gov.uk/rh/cycling/fordingbridge.pdf between section 18 & 17.

Tim,

I appreciate the issues. I discovered yesterday that in some areas (and this may be one of them) statutory authorities have handed over responsibility (and money) to Parish councils. Sadly, this may be the truth on the ground. The problem with this approach is that any work done may need to be done by registered contractors which makes it really expensive.

I do know that they prioritise things and that, below emergency, the chances of it happening any time soon are limited. They may also take an “autumn-based approach” to vegetation (ie waiting for it to dies off). However, they will only do things if they keep getting badgered about them, because they are the trails people are using.

I’m aware that might not be much help.

I’ve been asked for some feedback to feed into Portsmouth’s new Rights of Way Improvement Plan.

There are four short questions that that would like some responses to.

I’ve posted them here:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/portsmouth-rights-of-way-improvement-plan?replies=1#post-8627368

Thanks for your help.

New Rights of Way website

https://row.hants.gov.uk/%5B/url%5D

Ok, the website isn’t that new but the RoW team have got a new asset management system to run behind it. They never have the resources to fix everything the moment it is reported and have to prioritise jobs based on how urgent they are.

Put simply, the new system means they are going to be more effective at fixing some of the more minor things in the course of sorting the urgent ones. What this means for us is that reported obstructions are more likely to get sorted.

While anyone can view reported problems, you will have to create a log in to actually report new ones.

Andy

As some of you will know, I have recently been co-opted as the off-road cycling rep for the Hampshire Countryside Access Forum.

I’ll be putting up anything useful I get from the forum in this thread:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/hampshire-countryside-access-forum?replies=2#post-8627311

I’ve written a little more about what the forum does in that thread so, if you’ve got any questions, requests or queries post in that thread.

Cheers,
Andy

By way of introduction, my name is Andy Whincup. I’ve lived up and down the country over the years and have been able to call Staffordshire, Glasgow and County Durham my riding backyard at one time or another. I’ve been based in Winchester for about ten years. I qualified as a BC level 2 mountain bike leader last year and, amongst other things, run a guiding company based out of Winchester. In terms of riding, at the risk of sounding like a cop out, I’m probably best described as a trail rider: I like getting out on the bike somewhere nice where the riding is interesting.

Do you want word on the survey spread via FB etc?