My mate looking for where the trail starts again after crossing the road. Sunday.
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And now looking for the trail at the other side of the road. The rut he is about to cross was about 18" deep and full of water. I unblocked a small dam of sticks, bark and other debris and the water slowly drained away.
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Here is another one, blocking the entrance to a lovely bit of riding. That was last year.
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During clearance, each tree is gripped by some very clever jaws and then sawn through at the base, the machine then rotates the tree through 90 degree and propels the trunk through the jaws by eight feet at a time (it might be 2.5m). As the trunk goes through the jaws they strip off all the side branches and any other bits sticking out. Then it cuts through the trunk leaving a log of the correct length to be loaded on a truck, widthways on. All the side branches and other stuff stripped off is known as "brash" and is left in place for nature to do its work. The brash is trampled into the ground by various large and heavy machines, some tracked, some with tyres that look like they came off the back of a tractor.
Here is brash. I KNOW there is a trail under there, but I could not find any of it. Another off-piste trail gone. This stuff was on a very wide area, hundreds of yards in all directions. This was not on Forest England land, but adjacent to it.
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Let me be clear, Forest England has no responsibility at all to maintain, or even avoid,
any of the off-piste trails. They do not have any legal requirement at all, nor the funds to do so even if they wanted to (and the guy in charge is a keen mtb rider). I accept that; I just don't like the consequences.
My mate and I like to do a few guided rides per year at our local trail. We focus on the off-piste and the surroundings of the Forest England area. After all, mtb riders could come any time they like and do the regular maintained and waymarked trails. This year, with the motor bike damage and the impact of the clearance we are not sure that we can create a decent length trail of sufficient interest. There have been major clearances before that seemed irrecoverable, but other trails opened up and also the damage died down with time. But the motor bike damage looks the worst. No sooner do we open up a new trail than they find it and within a week or so it's gone. They leave pedal trapping deep ruts, and straighten out curves. Nice little features are hammered into oblivion. They destroy descents by climbing up them with engines revving, leaving deep ruts and holes. They strip off the leaf mould, the pine needles and the sand down to whatever bare rock was below, or until the bike bottoms out on the soil. What looks like tons of soil is ripped out and deposited at the bottom of the climb. Climbing those steep and tall descents looks terrifying to me, so I can admire the skill involved in what they do, I just don't like the results.
Edit: By the way, the motorbikers are all riding without permission and that is why the Police are forever chasing them. They are not looking for people on mtbs or e-bikes. I know because I have spoken to quite a few of them.