Surrey Hills Trail Map

ThePriory1978

Unlike Swinley Forest down the road Surrey Hills dosent seem to have an unofficial home-made official trail map anywhere.

I can find loads of sites describing trails and trail names like: Summer Lightning, Crooked Furrow, Regurgitator, Waggle Dance, Wind in the Willows, Will-o'-the-Wisp, Caspers, Barry Know's Best, Reggae Reggae Sauce, Yoghurt Pots, Secret Squirrel, Deer Trail, Reservoir Dogs, Twig's Trail, Surfer Rosa, I Should Coco, Son of Coco, Telegraph Row, Mini Moto, Pitch Hill, Doug's Trail, Champagne Supernova, Rad Lane, 'T' Trails, Winterfold Woods, Chrismas Pud, Three Kings, Deathstar, Deliverance, Personal Hygiene etc.

So I know there is tons to ride but does a trail map exist?

cooldad

Pedal and Spoke (Peaslake) or Nirvana (Westcott) have some I think but pretty useless if you don't know the area - pretty huge and some are hard to spot.
You'll have to meet up for a ride there sometime and get a guided tour.

alan_sherman

Some are on open cycle map maps. Barry Knows Best and telegraph Road are anyway.

Anonymous

Problem is there is much contention over unofficial routes. There are only 3 official routes, BKB, Yoghurt Pots and Summer Lightning. Everything else is unofficial.

Within the areas that are part of Hurtwood control it's almost all free to roam on bikes but can't build trails without permission. There are tonnes of trails established however but they're not official and technically they (the land owners rather than Hurtwood trust) don't want maps all over.

Outside of Hurtwood there are battles with land owners over riding there anyway. The National Trust areas are ones allowing riding with permission but same stuff goes with publishing trails. Redlands, Ranmore and non-Hurtwood parts of Winterfold causes more fuss than others.

Basically it's complicated and publish anything and you'll get requests to remove them. Have suggested doing maps for private use before but even then advised not to as those will be copied about and soon enough published on the web. That said there are loads of GPS traces. Just most don't name trails.


Good pointer to some stuff here http://www.diaryofamountainbiker.co.uk/ ... _downs.php - noting again a whole bunch "removed" due to issues with landowners.

Oh, and the unofficial Swinley map is disliked by BOB. They'd rather only they give guidance to trails. Though they claim there's some arrangement with Crown Estate about not publishing maps.

People just don't like mountain bikes basically. It's okay to have maps all over for ramblers to scramble all over the country side of course (who's mud churning boots cause as much damage).

diy

There is no law that I can think of that would prevent you from publishing a map of a trail.

In a funny way its in their interests from a land law point of view, although probably not from an access point of view.

An unofficial trail could lead to an established right of way, which is bad news for the land owner.

Where as an "official" or "formal" trail is a permissive row which cannot.

Again I am guessing that riders are worried that routes that get published will result in steps being taken to prevent their trespass. It may even be the simple logistics that the trail will get trashed if too many people use it.

Anonymous

When this came up over publishing routes on MOD land I was informed that the agreement between MOD and the riders (which includes some army guys who even built some of the trails) that nothing should be published as they fear it will make too many people turn up and get in the way of operations. If they were then access may be removed.

There have been problems there as the MOD put up signs asking for riders to effectively not be a nuisance and not to create new trails, with a polite threat again that access may be removed if things get worse.

Likewise with Swinley, the supposed agreement (I've only heard third hand) is similar to avoid too many people using the trails, but that's more bizarre as the place is hugely popular anyway and everyone knows the trails. Was told that if things were published, the estate will take away permission to ride on the land.

This is for places where there are established and accepted trails with permission to ride, yet still no maps wanted.

diy

So possibly a bunch of NIMBY riders who don't want to share and ill educated mate of a mate of a bloke down the pub.

I can see their logic, but nobody can prevent you from creating a map, though MOD land would be different if they wished it to be.

benpinnick

deadkenny wrote:

Oh, and the unofficial Swinley map is disliked by BOB. They'd rather only they give guidance to trails. Though they claim there's some arrangement with Crown Estate about not publishing maps.

Which would be a fair view of the world if you didn't have to pay to ride there! I reckon its more likely that someone has the exclusive right to show you round

Anonymous

There's a bit of protectionism over unofficial trails, keeping them secret to just those "in the know". But in part I can understand the concern if the land owner gets wind and the trail is destroyed.

Mixed mind really. Part of me likes sneaky little trails hidden away, part of me wants my mates to know about them as it's more fun riding with friends, and part of me wants to be helpful to others asking where it is and to shout about it. But if that means it gets demolished and we get a bad reputation then that's not so good.

I'm all for sanctioned trail building also, but then they are typically not as "crap yourself scary" as some unofficial ones, and even then you get places like Swinley where they still don't want published maps even of official sanctioned trails! :?

diy

Yes I prefer natural trails too. Holmbury can be a bit tame and if you ride it fast enough to thrill, it can be dangerous for others.