THE DATA DAVE GATHERED WILL HELP NRW BUILD A BETTER PICTURE OF THE TRAILS AND RIDERS’ NEEDS
plenty of quiet forests, it’s not surprising that Welsh riders have been building almost as much as they have been riding.
Some of the wild trails in the Dyfi Valley go back a generation, with sons and daughters now riding trails their parents built.
These are the trails that have given the valley its reputation and legacy, providing the foundation for what followed – the Climachx trails, Dyfi Enduro and eventually Dyfi Bike Park.
The constant fear has been that, while they may be well-established trails, being built on Natural Resources Wales (NRW) land, they exist on borrowed time – at some point machines will move in to harvest the tree crop with little regard for the trails that weave between them. Back in the day you might have been able to buy the head forester a pint at the rugby club and ask if he could mind the trails. Now, contractors from around the country are brought in to handle felling and everything is run by GPS. If it’s not on the official GPS map, then as far as the contractor is concerned it doesn’t exist. Dave explains: “The only way to protect the trails is to get them enshrined in the sweltering process of bureaucracy.” Luckily Dave has plenty of experience dealing with that, the only issue is it requires riders revealing the location of the trails to NRW.
Trail builders and land owners typically play a game of cat and mouse, but as Dave points out, if you think the local forest ranger doesn’t already know about your trail you’re deluded – and try putting ‘secret’ into Strava. When it comes to keeping trails low-key, mountain bikers are their own worst enemy.
Pre-covid, Dyfi gained a new NRW area manager. With a background in leisure, she saw the forests as not just a crop, but as assets to the communities who live and work alongside them, and was eager to engage with the riding community. Plans were drawn up to add three of the established trails in the area to the NRW official map, giving them a similar status to footpaths and safeguarding them come harvest time. These trails would then be rider-managed and officially sanctioned. This was a big deal.
NRW then decided it didn’t want to do things piecemeal from area to area; if this was going to happen it wanted it to be done across Wales. At first Dave felt dejected. Knowing how ponderous large organisations can be, he thought its plan was effectively dead in the water. The upside to this decision, of course, was the potential for wild trails across Wales to become permanent features.
TRAIL SURVEY
In truth, the number of wild trails appearing on the ground, and then on Youtube and Strava, hadn’t gone unnoticed at NRW and it simply couldn’t ignore what was happening on its land. There was also wider politics at play. The Well-being of Future Generations Act and State of Natural Resources Report (SONARR) both make recommendations that encourage the use of the outdoors for Wales’ physical, mental and economic well-being.
The stars seemed to be aligning.
Thanks to his work in Dyfi, in 2019 NRW commissioned Dave to map and assign grades to all the off-piste trails on its property in north and mid-wales. The data Dave gathered would help it build a better picture, not just of the number of trails, but also the needs of mountain bikers.
After handing over his findings to NRW, Dave felt compelled to write about some of his observations, which he published on his website: bikecorris.co.uk/journal/2021/5/7/ wild-trails-in-wales
The white paper, written for the benefit of landowners, aims to explain who is building on their land, what they are doing and why. The paper makes for interesting reading from a rider’s perspective too, and lays out ideas for how land owners and mountain bikers can work together. One point that stands out from the paper is that, while Dave had been sent to look for trails, what he’d found were communities.
During his travels collecting trail data,
Dave found each trail network had its own
community who were proud of their work. Rather than shying away, they were keen to engage and eager to explain the importance of their trails. Reasons included not having to rely on a car to go riding, having a variety of places to ride, mental health, personal investment, scope to push their riding and more.
COMMUNITY ACTION
Wales is of course synonymous with trail centres, but there’s a shift from a situation where resources are provided to the mountain bike community by NRW, to one where the community wants to feel some kind of ownership. People will still want to visit the trail centres and bike parks, but that will be a weekend trip – the desire is for the weekday, post-work ride to be possible from the door on trails managed and maintained by local riders.
It’s not just riders who want to have a stake in the trails. Surrounding the trails are very engaged local communities who are keen to be involved. Dave says that dig days attract