Plans for bike trails may have been axed too soon

BRADLEY Wood is owned by the town. It was given to us in perpetuity, and the town council was handed the deeds and asked to look after it to the best of their abilities.

When they were approached by a would-be association that wanted to establish safe and carefully-planned trails for the mountain bikers that use it on a regular basis, it’s quite right that they should have reservations.

But they were warned, by Ashbourne-based biking enthusiast Stuart Mcleod, that the problem wouldn’t go away.

He was tabling a solution to the unauthorised construction of trails, and inviting the town council to join him in taking control of their safe and careful creation.

And now it appears he was right.

The bikers that have been building makeshift trails have carried on with the job and we’re now faced with 7ft-high mounds of dirt, along with banks and other obstacles, right where they shouldn’t be.

So what next? Obviously, this unauthorised encroachment needs to be stopped.

But how can the town council prove who is doing it?

They can’t patrol the wood every day, and if they did, they’re more likely to find people enjoying the ramps than building new ones.

Had the town council taken up the offer to work with experts on creating trails away from other users of the wood, and away from sensitive areas, a regular presence of cyclists might be there to do that for them.

But now they’ve got a problem that might be impossible to sort.

Did they dismiss the idea of allowing managed trails too quickly? It appears perhaps so.