Well, not quite, but they do seem to have comprehensively spoilt my best local riding spot.
Over the last few years I’ve done a fair bit of riding at the National Water Sports Centre (immortalised in Mikefule’s write-ups) in Nottingham. Only a few miles from home and has a decent bit of varied riding.
I’ve not been for a couple of months. Went tonight with OH on MTB’s (sorry:o) and found many “improvements”.
Some of decent trails are now overgrown and almost unrideable on a bike.
Many of the more challenging routes have been blocked.
Several of the tricky short little climbs or descents have been resurfaced so now pose no challenge - even to me!
I’m sure it’s not a conspiracy against unicyclists but I wonder if it is to do with the council trying to sell it off.
Apologies for whinging, I suppose some of it is progress and it could be worse, they could have built a car park
My house is actually built on what was my favorite mountain biking trail. About 50% of the trail still exist, you just have to ride through neighborhoods in order to do a loop.
Get involved with your trail clubs and crews. Work with land managers.
Don’t undo their work as a rogue outsider.
I am involved in a trail building group in my area. We’re having trouble with a few guys re-opening closed trails without understanding the bigger picture. While we’re working with the county in a trial program to allow offroad cycling in our county parks, these rogue guys may be inadvertently destroying their future of legal mountain biking in these parks. Thankfully we’ve been communicating and they will likely be working with us and not against us.
I agree it can be frustrating when trails get dumbed-down. But there may be a reason for it. In our case, it’s about trail sustainability and safety. Once we’re past the trial stage we’ll be establishing more aggressive trails in areas that make sense.
Yeah, I’m finding wisdom in some of the trail sanitation that has gone on recently in our area. When it first happened I was disappointed… now there’s now way to improve because that one section I had trouble with is now much easier.
Compare that with other local trails where no sanitation has occurred. With all the rain we got this summer roots and rocks are more exposed, the trail has ruts, etc. Sections that were on the edge of my ability before are now out of my current skill set because the difficulty factor is now significantly higher. I guess in some ways that’s a benefit… you progress with the trail. In other ways it’s not so good because now many sections of that trail are very far gone and they get worse as time goes on.
It’s a cycle. Man vs. nature. Those sections that were sanitized will be challenging again with time.
These aren’t proper maintained MTB tracks, most are just paths or trails. The one’s that are “closed” haven’t been properly closed, they’ve just had piles of dead wood dumped on them. Doesn’t always block the path but makes it tricky. Not obvious if it’s been done to stop cycling or just by incompetence.
Totally agree that if people are maintaining things for proper singletrack then a path closed sign should be obeyed.
I know - it’s progress. I was at the nearest “proper” MTB place (Sherwood Pines) last week. One of the lovely paths through the woods has been “improved”, it’s had a banked hardcored cycle track put through it. Great for fast MTBing but spoilt what was a beautiful track through the trees.
