Help trailbuilding in Perthshire

ahug

We’re raising money for trail building in Alyth, Perthshire. Tickets from www.justgiving.com/bradleywigginsraffle . 1st Prize framed and signed British Championship jersey. 2nd prize 2 nights premier B+B at local 4* hotel plus two days guiding with an MBLA tutor.

Trails are planned for a section of community woodland on Alyth Hill, these include a pump track, 200m of berms and table tops plus 600m of blue grade trail. So far the pump track is funded, but by raising money we improve are chances of finding funding for the rest.

The whole thing is being organised and run by the Alyth Hill Users Group who are a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) charity number SC043382. Please buy tickets and pass this info onto anyone else you think may be interested.

ilovedirt

Raising money for trail building? I don't understand. Surely it's easier to just recruit people to dig for free? Either way, i'm not donating money to trails I won't ride.

ahug

Fair enough although it is a raffle so strictly speaking not a donation and with only 5000 tickets a reasonable chance of winning.

We need to get trails built professionaly as its FC land and any ilicit building will not go down well with the FC or the wider community resulting in trails being removed and wasted time.

Thanks for asking

cooldad

Volunteer does not = illicit.

EH_Rob

No, but I think what is probably required from the FCs point of view is project management, risk assessment, sustainability assessment etc, which is not free.

bompington

Oh for goodness' sake you grumpy lot.
Personally I am all in favour of anything done to improve local bike facilities of any type, so I'm happy to put a couple of coppers in.
EH_Rob is about right about the FC, I have discussed this kind of thing with a friend who works for them and they have to take all that nonsense very seriously.

ahug

Sorry cooldad your quite right volunteer doesn't equally illicit. On this occasion given multi use nature of the sight a design and build by contractors was the only option the fc would consider. Maintenance is going to be by volunteers. We're hoping to have a pump track in place this coming spring after 2 and a half years hard work.
Go on you know you want a ticket or two

ahug

Cheers bompington

EH_Rob

bompington wrote:

all that nonsense

As an environmental consultant that is effectively my career you're talking about.

Nonsense is a good word for it.

ahug

There has been a fair bit of nonsense to wade through and I'm sure there'll be more before the end.

steve_muzzy

Good luck ,bought some tickets!

Northwind

<donates>

Re volunteers: Quite surprised FC have said no volunteer construction at all, since there's still some strong volunteer building groups in other FC forests.

But for this much trail, if it's to be built to weatherproof "trail centre spec", then you either need a massive army of volunteers, or an incredibly long time. Machine-building is the only realistic way to do that, and that means money. I think most people would be amazed how much work goes into an armoured trail.

ahug

Cheers
Gents,

Northwind - your spot on its 'trail centre spec' who knows sometime in the future we might build some with volunteers. You can see abit more detail on the Facebook page AHUG - Making Tracks

ahug

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=354583964600348&set=pb.185006218224791.-2207520000.1352579716&type=3&theater

Map of the trails as done by Paul Masson, get those tickets http://www.justgiving.com/bradleywigginsraffle

stumpyjon

Takes us over a year to build 1km trail centre spec trail at Gisburn by hand (materials all supplied free by FC as is the equipment). Can be done but it's hard. Family graded trail usually means wider and deeper gravel to last longer with a smooth surface, as Northwind says you need machinery to move the materials as much as do the digging.

We're lucky as we line the trail with walling stone which is available across the forest and we sometimes get materials moved close to where we're working. When I spent a few weeks working for Clixbys I was gobsmacked at the amount of time and effort they expended on moving materials.

FC support varies massively, we've just got a superb Beat Forester who makes it as easy as posible for the volunteers to have a major impact.