Your letters and photos, including a plea not to cut corners, a good reason to wear a full-face helmet and more of your best riding snaps
YOUR MAIL, PHOTOS, IDEAS AND RANTS
CUT SHORTCUTS, NOT CORNERS
I regularly ride in the South Wales valleys and it’s come to my attention over the past 12 months that there’s an increasing tendency for riders to cut corners, particularly on ‘o piste’ or ‘uno cial’ tracks. There are a number of dedicated individuals spending hundreds of hours of their own time creating tracks to ride that have been carefully planned and painstakingly built to be ridden in a certain way. Having built tracks myself, I know first-hand how infuriating it can be when you’ve put hours of work into choosing the route for a trail, clearing the line and shifting dirt, only to come back the following weekend and find tyre tracks going straight over the back of a berm, or cutting o a corner.
Whether people do this because they don’t have the necessary skills to ride the track, are desperate to improve their Strava times, are heading away from the machinebuilt, surfaced lines of the trail centre for the first time or are just lazy, I don’t know. But either way it damages the trail and compromises the way it rides for everyone else. The point I’m trying to make to these riders is that it’s important to be conscious of, and respect, other people’s hard work. Don’t ruin the trail just because you might find it hard, or for Strava bragging rights. Ride it the way the builders intended it to be ridden. And if you think it could be better, then why not o er to lend a hand manning the shovels yourself?
Ashley Mauler, Bradley Stoke, Bristol
We totally agree, Ashley. Having built our fair share of trails too, it’s annoying when fellow mountain bikers don’t follow the unwritten laws of homegrown tracks – respect the trail, don’t trash it, don’t skid down it in the wet and don’t tell all and sundry about it. Without passionate local diggers and trail builders all over the country, we wouldn’t have half the amazing tracks we get to ride week in, week out, so it’s important to respect their handiwork and o er to lend a hand every now and again.