It does have to be said that Forestry Enterprise made no  mention of this harvesting being carried out when we last spoke to them.

Like the Daily Mash Motto: “It’s news to us.”

Continue to read here…

The most high profile and obvious advantage of this is that funding was obtained to rebuild the bottom section of the trail known as BarryKnowsBest.

Back in the autumn approx 500 metres of fresh trail was built by a trailbuilding contractor. This has been mainly greeted as a very good thing, and is ridden by A LOT of riders, and even the local residents are in favour of the ‘management’ of a few MTB trails.

This weekend someone decided to build two large jumps on this new section of trail. Whoever it was has dug a VERY large pit, and buried quite a few logs on the fastest part of the trail after a bermed corner. A local resident witnessed the jump/s being built and is absolutely fuming about MTB riders wielding spades and pick axes in the forest in an unsanctioned way.

The jumps have been removed and a build day will have to arranged to ‘tidy-up’ the aftermath.

This is an incredibly selfish act from certain individuals showing no consideration for other trail users on the busiest trail in the Surrey hills. It has also damaged the new section of  trail that as mentioned before has been funded with the help of the Surrey hills AONB.

If you know who did this please ask them to not do it again.

Some of the existing trails on Holmbury will be affected including BKB(see map below). This work is necessary(as it a working forest) and we would ask you to please heed any warning notices of forestry operations.

More information can be found on the Hurtwood Rangers site.

Unfortunately work and various other important things get in the way more often than not these days…

Cheerio.

The tramway before fencing and rain

Originally uploaded by bent udder

Here’s a pic of the tramway before Forestry Commission contractors fenced off the area to the right of the trail, and before the last six weeks’ worth of torrential rain. This pic was taken back in early November, and you can see how dry the ground still is back then. Currently, it’s ankle-deep in mud.

We will be doing more clearance work on the Tramway in the New Year, so get in touch with us via redlands.trailsATgmail.com if you’d like to help out. The more build days we can get in, the sooner we can get back to nice dry singletrack on this particular bit of Leith Hill.

Hurtwood foresting

Originally uploaded by bent udder

We mentioned a while back that Hurtwood Control was going to be doing a bit of tree felling on Holmbury Hill, and I got a look last weekend. There’s an ever-so-nice bit of singletrack going through the area that the foresters are working in, and at the moment it’s blocked with branches and foliage from the felling. This looks to be entirely temporary, and it’s likely the trail will be cleared again after felling – usually, the blockage helps give everyone time to see that there are people with chainsaws and large forestry vehicles on the loose. More as we hear about it.

Sadly, one of the original Summer Lightning signposts was a victim of the fencing work the other week. The contractors agreed to remove it for us so we could put it back in to show the new trail, but it was too rotten to come out in one go.

I was quite surprised that after only a few years the posts – which are made of pressure treated timber – had got that rotten all the way through to the core. This means that any future signposting might have to be rethought; there are plenty of landowners and organisations that are looking to use similar wooden finger posts around here, and it may be that this version simply isn’t going to last long enough. From memory, the posts for Summer Lightning cost an awful lot of money – enough for several years’ BTCV insurance, for example.

On the positive side of things, this post was in by far the wettest position, and thankfully the others all seem to be holding up well.

Thanks to Mark Beaumont’s handy chainsaw skills, the new section at the end of BKB was opened and the old section closed in a couple of hours flat last Thursday. There’s been no big announcement, partly because thousands (OK, well, hundreds) of riders going and playing on the trail at the same time might not be ideal. Suffice to say, you’ll find that the new section’s now wide open. This has been a big effort from Hurtwood Control, the Volunteers, Surrey Hills AONB, Mei Black at Extreme Tracks, Ian Warby at CTC and various other helpers, trail builders and general keen people over several years. It’s not just a case of digging a trail, although Mei and Ian have done a fantastic job of that; this new section is a new one for us and the Surrey Hills – a professionally built trail paid for with development money.
Anyway, let us (or more importantly, Hurtwood Control) know what you think. If you really like it, and haven’t done so before, don’t forget to become a Friend of the Hurtwood – it’s a five minute job to sign up, and you’ll be supporting a great charity that cares about access for all.

Many thanks to Russel Alford for the pic.

Originally uploaded by bent udder

As Mark put it, a bit like the Somme.

Luckily, we had a good turnout of enthusiastic volunteers yesterday, despite the horrible conditions before and during the building. I had to leave at 12.30 to go and tend to the sick at home, but from the pics, a lot of headway was made after I left – on top of buckets of work during the rest of the day.

The new fencing meant that part of the Tramway at the bottom of Summer Lightning disappeared, as well as the last two sections of SL itself.

As we walked down Summer Lightning from the top (we also started the day with a quick cleanup of the section into Waggledance / Crooked Furrow from the Loading Bay) we noticed a lot of berming – and not the good stuff, either.

The recent rains and wind meant a lot of pine needles on the ground, and these clogged up a load of drains off the first section, and also the fifth section. Elaine volunteered to clear the first bit, and the rest of us worked our way down the trail.

On getting to the Tramway, it immediately became clear that we were in for a drawn – out slog to get any semblance of a trail cut in time. A fortnight’s worth of rain coming off the hillside meant the bottom of the hill was a soggy morass, and cutting trail was more akin to cutting wet peat.

We’ll need to come back to this section soon to continue clearing, and try and get a better offslope for drainage sorted out, too. In the mean time, thanks to all who came out, and fingers crossed the new section will bear up to some heavy traffic this winter.

If you like pics of mud, there are more photos in this set.