Elaine glad you enjoyed it I think I gave you some slightly confusing directions I was buzing round in my van trying to rid the site of motor bikes. If you liked the site have you thought of entering the Singletrack weekender? Have a look in the singletrack shop for details. Or how about the Brownbacks race this sunday ?

Worth coming there will be demo bikes etc will be sun shine all weekend and lots of people to watch. Round of the national trails champs on on the sunday as well. Can you not borrow/hire a bike speak to craig at Ride On or someone at Blazing Saddles they might have a demo bike you could hire.

Rowan Sorrel is going to be doing some Dirt School sessions for us up at Lee Quarry hopefully some time in May. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll get details sent out. Also check out Ed O’s skills training available via the singletrack shop.

Ask yourself which one you are going to use for the Singletrack weekender! Sorted!

I wonder if we could get a Polaris style link between the hit the north route and Lee Quarry with an event at each venue?

I have done the MTL a few times now its a good day out almost all off road, we (LCC) do it as a guided ride each year in June so if anyone wants to have a go but not solo let me know. We get a ranger and a 4×4 to shadow the group and run anyone who is finding it too hard or has a mechanical or falls off etc back to the car park. We normally set off from Clowbridge adds a couple of extra miles to bring it up to 50.

Rossendale Mountain rescue did it as a challenge ride to raise funds last september I think they are doing it again this year again another opportunity to do the loop as part of a group with support.

If you do it solo or even as a small group worth considering stashing some water partway round 3l never seems quite enough.

I think I have a few maps under my desk if anyone needs one.

Lee Quarry in its current guise is more of a skills development area rather than a “trail centre”. Loads of stuff to ride in a fairly compact area, fastest lap recorded so far is about 12min (although we have added a bit since then) Idea behind it is to do a few laps take a bit of time and play rather than head down get round a trail as fast as possible. Long term we are hoping to do similar things to several other quarries in the area (subject to funding and planning permission) We shall link all these quarries with new and existing routes over the moors giving a stacked loop system that lets you tailor your ride to what ever suits you best, 50+ miles on the marytownley loop to an evenings bimble round one of the quarries and hopefully pretty much everthing else in between.

Good write up from a locals point of view on http://www.industrialfellbiking.co.uk/wp/2009/03/16/lee-quarry/

quite a few videos on youtube now as well.

Come along and see for yourself, bring a map and explore the surrounding area as well there are some excellent trails hidden away aroound the quarry.

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There will be motorbike trials in the quarry on Sunday as well so expect it to be busy. And not too much flowing blood please!

By all means come and have a look but please don’t ride the new sections for a couple of weeks as they need time to bed in. If you ride them now it means loads of extra work for us regrading them. Also if you see any motorbikes up there please tell them to f@*K off!

There are now some new sections in the quarry I had a couple of laps this afternoon to test them out, lots of fun big berms and some tabletops. Also a short but killer climb. There is also a new section been added to the existing red near the end runs parallel to offer a opportunity for overtaking in a race table top and double in it for added fun.

We know they are there and are making plans.

Soon very soon! In fact Chipps and Benji were shooting some video for it this week with the idea of giving people a taste of what it will involve.

New sections of trail up in the quarry are coming on really well, big berms and some good size drop offs!

I would recomend going round in daylight first, I did spec reflective way markers to help with night riding but there are not that many of them so I’m not sure how much this helps. Also for the next few weeks new trails are being built up there (by Rowan Sorrell) and some of the existing ones altered so some sections may take you by suprise even if you have been before.

I’m considering trying to set up volunteer work days in the quarry a lot of what has been done so far has involved shifting very big blocks of stone and so han’t really suited that sort of involvement. Volunteers are coming out and helping build the mountainbike trails at Gisburn and Healey Nab which are linked projects. In fact Gisburn in particular we need your help as volunteer time acts as match funding for the project.

It depends on land ownership and how keen the land owner is. I have most of the land ownership maped out now but still a few gaps. I’m hoping to get that sorted this week. Then survey work over next month or so then approach and negotiate with land owners, get planning permission, get funding, put job out to tender etc so I reckon a year. Perhaps less if I can demonstrate a lot of local support.

Who’s in charge? well I am sort of, site is owned by LCC and I’m the countryside officer (working for LCC) for the area and I have developing mountain bike routes in my job description. Lee Quarry is the main mountainbiking project I’m working on at the moment. So far we have built about 4.5k of trails designed by Dafydd Davis mostly red with a bit of black. Also worked with local trials riders to put in some cycletrials areas. Next phase of building is due to start second week in Feb, this time we have hired Rowan Sorrell to build some trails for us. He’ll be on site for about six weeks adding a “missing” section of the red route some black graded features and some passing places on the lower section of the red. Oh and an additional trials section. We also have an artist Robin Dobson who is going to build a “ridable” sculpture on the site althought I think it will only be ridable by those with considerable trials skills.

In addition to the imediate construction work we are getting designs put together for a link over the moors to Rooley Moor Road, a link to Facit and a link up to the limers gate bw. These will be multi user links. Tied in to these we are getting designs put together for a network of singletrack trails in Facit quarry, Cragg quarry and Land gate and Moss Quarries. Idea is to have 5 quarries (Lee Quarry being the first)each with mountain bike trails linked by a decent bridleway network. This will provide a huge range of riding options in the area and should cater for a wide range of different abilities. Rowan is putting the designs together for us so they should be pretty exciting. Look his stuff up on the web if you want to get a better idea of what he does. All these plans will be subject to public consultation and getting the funding so will take a bit of time but Lee Quarry has given us a boost as it has proved the idea works and so it helps us to persuade people to invest the funds.

Supporting events like the xc racing being organised in the quarry by big and daft and the event we are doing with Singletrack in July will help as well.

Need any more information just ask me or pop in to Ride On and ask Craig he’s been helping us develop the trails.