Glentress Wallride...

The Northern Monkey

Why is it cloosssseeddd

Pete-C

health and safety :evil: it was built at the wrong angle or something like that and now UCI/forestry commission say it needs to be fixed so that nobody shoots over the top

BurtonM

i was looking at it yesterday and it does look a bit iffy. There are other ones though that people mess about on. All the log balance beams were shut yesterday aswell for some reason :S

cat_with_no_tail

It has all been classified as too dangerous by someone who cant ride a bike and sits in an office all day. As members of the public, we are not capable of deciding if something is safe or not, and as such, the govenment needs to make these decisions on our behalf.

The Wallride and balance beams are being torn down and replaced with some nice level tarmac. The tarmac will shortly have white lines drawn down the middle so that people can travel in each direction without colliding.

Bikes will be banned from these trails as they are not a safe way of travelling. Instead, you will need to use your car, but speed limits will be strictly enforced with speed cameras installed every 200ft.

As the trees may block motorists visibility, they will all be removed. As the space where the trees were is no longer being used, it will be turned into a car-park, complete with Tescos and Starbucks.

none of this matters though because we are all going to die of swine flu this winter anyway.

BurtonM

ROFLLL.

Da Mighty Chicken

Cat With No Tail wrote:

It has all been classified as too dangerous by someone who cant ride a bike and sits in an office all day. As members of the public, we are not capable of deciding if something is safe or not, and as such, the govenment needs to make these decisions on our behalf.

The Wallride and balance beams are being torn down and replaced with some nice level tarmac. The tarmac will shortly have white lines drawn down the middle so that people can travel in each direction without colliding.

Bikes will be banned from these trails as they are not a safe way of travelling. Instead, you will need to use your car, but speed limits will be strictly enforced with speed cameras installed every 200ft.

As the trees may block motorists visibility, they will all be removed. As the space where the trees were is no longer being used, it will be turned into a car-park, complete with Tescos and Starbucks.

none of this matters though because we are all going to die of swine flu this winter anyway.

ROFL, having a good day!

llamafarmer

Cat With No Tail wrote:

It has all been classified as too dangerous by someone who cant ride a bike and sits in an office all day. As members of the public, we are not capable of deciding if something is safe or not, and as such, the govenment needs to make these decisions on our behalf.

Where there's blame....

cat_with_no_tail

llamafarmer wrote:

Cat With No Tail wrote:

It has all been classified as too dangerous by someone who cant ride a bike and sits in an office all day. As members of the public, we are not capable of deciding if something is safe or not, and as such, the govenment needs to make these decisions on our behalf.

Where there's blame....

Ohhhhh, you don't want to get me started on that today :evil: must............resist...........urge.............to rant....ah fk it!

We had to take down a see-saw on our local trails because it was a H&S risk and if someone fell off and got hurt they may sue. WTF!!!!!??!??! How in the name of all that is holy can someone sue because they choose to ride up a plank of wood and then fall off? IT WAS YOUR CHOICE TO RIDE UP THERE NUMBNUTS!!!!!!

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: Think I need to go for a nice long ride tonight.

cgarossi

Thats the thing, its a trade off between having the ability to decide what you are capable of doing without hurting yourself and the trail owners capacity to provide a safe environment. They made the trail so they want to make sure there are as few injuries as possible. A see-saw is too much of a risk I guess.

Perhaps we should take another approach and fit upturned spikes and broken glass to the areas around the obsticles and let Darwin do his work.

Lapierre t 400

but a trail has to be interresting with danger in it
surely if someone is a half way competant rider they know if they can master an obstacle or not.
If I was to ride over a see saw and fall off, I would think "ouch",check my bike,then get back on and try again.
I would never dream of sueing someone because I hurt myself.

Soon enough,Elf and safety will make us put airbags on bikesand ban all sharp objects (casettes,chainrings and discs because you could burn yourself dear)

Tom Barton

ek.. eek.. urgh - infectious rant coming on....


...Aaaaand of course riding a gauntlet on a bike through traffic (big old 1 to 7 tonne objects travelling at 30mph and generally ignoring ones existance) isn't at all dangerous - otherwise we'd have cyclelanes everywhere in our cities to make sure we get to tescos and starbucks safe...

Bloody governments... I'm all for giving anarchy a try...

cgarossi

Unfortunately you can't decide who is or who isn't a competent rider from the trail owners perspective. Unless there was some kind of testing scheme in place. So inevitably you're going to have people who think they're 'it' and end up with a face full of gravel or worse and suing the owners.

Blame the ambulance chasers, they tell everyone you can get cash for any form of accident. The owners will have insurance and to keep their costs down, will have to do everything in their power to reasonably create a safe environment and free from accidents where people can sue. Its a sad situation but its true.

Personally I wouldn't sue if it was my fault, but would if the obstacles were not placed correctly (as in this case!) or had flaws that would cause a problem. Anyone visiting has reasonable cause to beleive that what they are riding on has been constructed to the best standards possible.

Northwind

Hang on, what's this "not placed correctly?" There's nothing wrong with the structure itself or its location, all of which was checked out before it was built, and it's built well enough to survive being bombed. Ironically it's a much safer wallride than the flat ones already in the freeride area. Unless you fly over the top of course, when you'll land somewhere in the skills area at a thousand miles an hour and leave a crater the size of the innerleithen bombhole.

Speak to Andy the bike ranger about this if you want the truth rather than internet gossip, he's an approachable guy. To summarise though, it's politics and red tape, no more no less. And nobody's more annoyed about it than Andy.

The Northern Monkey

thats well annoying!

The one thing I was reaaaallllyyyy looking forward to was killing myself on the wallride

I also heard that some of the other boardwalks have been closed too? that isn't true is it?!

Northwind

The big northshore section Ewok Village got pulled down at the start of the year... Well, some of it did, the rest fell down by itself, it was ****ed, very old. Replacement is budgeted for, which is one of the reasons they're being so tentative about the big wallride- no point making a scene over it now if it hurts future plans.

The other woodwork in the Essentials is sometimes closed as it's unwired, some of it's pretty steep so all in all it's slippery death. I think it's going to get sandcoated at some point but it'll need some of the timbers replaced when they do that too. There's a few other balance beams and the like around the place, some stuff in the skills area, some bits on the red.

The Northern Monkey

Ah kk... as long as the rest of the freeride is open, and I get a good run down Spookywood, super g, matrix and lombard street i'll be happy

Northwind

Lombard street's rubbish, do the bitch! Er, don't blame me if you die.

The Northern Monkey

Northwind wrote:

Lombard street's rubbish, do the *****! Er, don't blame me if you die.

Is the B i t ch the black that you can do instead of lombard street?
tough eh?

Northwind

Nah, it's alright. If I can ride it, it can't be that tough Good fun though/ Approach with caution mind, it's a step up from the red, but it's worth it I reckon.

<edit- Double X is also good, apparently it used to have an evil log feature from hell in it but it was removed because so few people could actually ride it. But it runs parallel to the Matrix, and the Matrix is really damn good, so it's a shame to have to pick one or the other.>

infoxicated

Pardon my ignorance, having not been to Glentress before, but is it just an all-skate, turn up and ride kind of affair?

I assumed you'd have to pay and sign a waiver or something. :?

el loco pollo

bigbenj_08 wrote:

Northwind wrote:

Lombard street's rubbish, do the *****! Er, don't blame me if you die.

Is the B i t ch the black that you can do instead of lombard street?
tough eh?

The B itch made me scream. I mean seriously, a 30 year old bloke actually screaming going down a track. I'm not proud of it.

Northwind

Heh. I yelled "THANKS A ****ING BUNCH, WA**ER" at my mate first time I did it, so loudly that another mate of ours heard me right from the top. The exit surprised me quite badly :oops: .

OK, fair play, I should have said this- it's not easy, it's steep and a little loose and it's fairly high stakes, failing on the main stony fall-line descent could suck quite a lot. But on the other hand, you can see it all coming so you can size up the features in your own time and decide whether or not to take em on, so it's a good place to try to step up past the red. Same for Double X, which personally I find harder as I'm not good at steps but you always see stuff coming in time to bottle it if neccesary.

myopic

infoxicated wrote:

Pardon my ignorance, having not been to Glentress before, but is it just an all-skate, turn up and ride kind of affair?

I assumed you'd have to pay and sign a waiver or something. :?

Turn up and ride, but you do need to pay £3 for parking.

Northwind

Yup, amazing when you think about it. Considering how much riding there is at a good trail centre I wouldn't begrudge paying good money to get in, and imagine how much more they could do if it was £10 for admission, that'd be a couple of million quid a year to build new stuff. But as it is, only something like half the people there even pay for the parking and then moan about how busy the car park is.

(of course, they'd spend it all on pointless visitor's centres)

infoxicated

It is quite surprising when you consider that I used to pay £6 to get into Rampworks Skatepark near Liverpool for a couple of hours on my skateboard, yet a dedicated trail centre needs much more maintenance and covers a much larger area.

I wouldn't begrudge a tenner at all - I pay more than that for 15 minutes karting on the odd occasion, so I think it would be well worth it.

geordiefreerider

"Have you been injured in a mountain biking accident in the last 3 years that wasn't your fault ?"

NO YOU RETARDED DEGENERATE IT'S ALWAYS MY FAULT BECAUSE I RIDE HARD AND FAST AND ENJOY AN ELEMENT OF RISK OTHERWISE MY LIFE IS MEANINGLESS SO FU*CK OFF BACK TO YOUR AIR CONDITIONED OFFICE AND LICK YOUR FRUIT FLAVOURED WINDOWS !!!!!

If you know what I mean.........

The Northern Monkey

geordiefreerider


When I fell at Grizedale, I went to the office thing for some 1st aid (steralised wipes). The woman in there was really really nervous, got a load of forms out etc etc..

I just said "fair enough you've gotta cover yourselves, but i'm really not arsed."

Told her where I fell, signed a accident "it was my own fault" form, said thankyou and left

I can't describe how bad it was... they wanted to get the ranger in, close the trail, get it properly inspected... Its not their fault I fell off!!

Yukon Lad

whats the point in the forms, for every person that comes in for some first aid and ends up filling in some forms, theres another fifty who limp back to their car with a t-shirt round their leg to stem the flow of blood, and attempting to stop thir nose blooding with their hand while ignoring the looks of the posh tourists in their chelsea tractor (i speak from personal experience and its worth doing it for the silence that falls over the tourists and the looks that you get)

At the end of the day getting people to sign a disclaimer is the best thing, if they avoid by taking a shortcut to the trail then the centres not liable because they won't have read the health and safety notices and warnings that came with the disclaimer.
But thats for those that want to sue people, if i am injured doing mountain biking then unless it is due to severe negiligence such as a trail builder forgetting to take his pickaxe away with him then there is no point sueing

Yukon Lad

Northwind

bigbenj_08 wrote:

When I fell at Grizedale, I went to the office thing for some 1st aid (steralised wipes). The woman in there was really really nervous, got a load of forms out etc etc..

I got the same when I crashed at knockhill (motorbike trackday). "Approximately how fast were you travelling when you crashed" "Dunno, about 70?" "Oh ****, that means we've got to fill in the big form" "Oh, in that case about 20" "Cheers!"