Saturday
It was possibly the hottest day of the year so far and we were all knackered from the night ride and pub session of the previous evening. Nevertheless we still had things to do.
I started out by rounding up all the bits of wood, rocks and rubble that had accumulated in the new Red section. A bit later Chris Hopkinson and Tony arrived and we staked down the board walk section that we’d moved a few days ago. We widened a few bits of the recently surfaced sections. Finally we dug out the start section and picked up the signs from their hiding place.
Sunday
The probation service were there with 10 willing non-volunteers. This meant that we’d definitely finish the new Red section. We spent the morning surfacing the return loop and start of the section. Various people arrived during the morning, so by lunch time we had Jack Bentley, Mr Anonymous and Pete Ratcliffe as well as Phil and myself getting on with it
This was the day that we’d been working towards. We sorted the signs out and the section was open by 11am. Rafe turned up for a while as ice cream rep.
Gary Lee arrived in the afternoon and replaced Jack and Mr Anon. We got the two new berms near the pond surfaced and also the other berm down that way. We were also helped by a random passing rider. We used wheel barrows to transfer water from the pond onto the Limestone chippings. This helped with the compaction since it was such a dry day.
Pete spent the afternoon making his uphill section more difficult. He was most annoyed that several people had managed it on their first attempt.
We finished off the day by damping down the berms on the newly opened Red section. We were helped by three young riders who declared the new section “good”.
We made a video too:
A big thanks to everyone involved in this section. We’ll probably have a rest now until boredom sets in. That’ll be a few days and then we’ll start on the next project on Thursday night.
The official opening (cutting of the old inner tube) will happen on Friday night.
Jack doing some compacteractering.
A rare photo of Tom.
Gary
Berm near pond.
Phil with water.
Fantastic effort guys, as it happens I rode some of this on Monday evening and it’s great fun. I’ll be along to help out in the future! Simon
Some serious hard work gone in there chaps, looks good. Hopefully will get to try it at some point, once my suspected herniated disc has settled
I am allowed to ride on the flat now at least – horrayy!
Anyway pats on the back all round, I think we are lucky to have a trail in this area, and have such dedicated people to maintain and improve it.
Hi Simon & Simon,
Thanks for the kind words. Am sure all the volunteers involved in building the new section (and old sections and future sections!) will be very grateful to hear your comments. It is hard work and it does take a lot of time; time and effort people could put into being out riding themselves! Unfortunately though it’s extremely unlikely we’ll ever get the funding to have a team of dedicated professional trail builders do it for us, so it’s up to the likes of the people in the photos above to do it for free.
Hope you get well soon Simon#2 and are able to ride the trail soon.
Remember anyone can come and give a hand on a building day, doesn’t require any special skills or special tools, just a willingness to put something back into the trail.
Thanks again.