Trail Building Update.

Finally some good news on the trail building front. Forestry England have issued us with the permit required to re-start limited maintenance work on the trail after a break of almost 3 years due to covid and other issues. We have been working towards this for a few months now as it involved lots of paperwork and permissions from other organisations along with finding insurance to cover the new higher public liability limit that is now required by FE. The permit will only allow the clearing of the trail back to how it was as we are not allowed to “break ground” with spades. If we find areas that require digging-over and rebuilding like we used to do then this will have to be done under the supervision of a Forestry England employee until such time as we have received the required training to work independently. There’s lots to be getting on with just clearing the debris from the trail and the existing low point drains to improve the drainage which helps prevent further deterioration and erosion. By all accounts from others it seems that the trail took a proper hammering at the weekend when the event used it during the torrential rain with loads of areas where riders went off-trail to avoid the puddles so it looks like we’ll be busy all winter. At present the permit only allows work on Wednesday mornings(at our request) but when we can work independently, the Sunday work will resume.