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It’s just over a year since the first gang of volunteers set to work carving out the first legit, purpose built mountain bike trail in the North Downs. Summer Lightning, the first section of trail to be completed, has become an established favourite for the scores of riders that flock to the area from all over the south of England and is now linked to the village of Coldharbour by two more sections of hand crafted singletrack.
To cap it all Redlands Trails, the organisation that has grown out of the building days, has recently been awarded lottery money to help further its trail blazing work. As well as building top quality singletrack, Redlands Trails exists to as a channel of communication between local land owners and managers and the mountain bikers who use their land. A survey conducted by Redlands Trails of countryside users at nearby Leith Hill Tower revealed overwhelming support for the idea of dedicated mountain bike trails in the Surrey hills. Currently building is limited to Forest Enterprise land but it’s hoped as the benefits become clear neighbouring landowners will also want to get involved.
“We’re achieving what we set out to do,” says Rebecca Milbourn of Redlands Trails. “We now have a committee and will be announcing details of a membership offer with local bikeshops soon. Best of all people seem to love the trail and it’s getting used a lot.”
The recent award of just over £3,000 from lottery organisation Awards For All will be used to buy tools, improve signage and help publicise the activities of Redlands Trails through leaflets and a dedicated website. There will even be a budget for refreshments to fuel the hungry volunteers who do the hard work of shifting the soil to build the trails.
“The volunteers are the most important part of the project,” says Rebecca. “Keeping people coming back to the building days is one of the biggest challenges and in an ideal world everyone who has ridden the trail will be able to lend a hand at some point.”
Logging work on Summer Lightning has forced a temporary closure of this section of trail but this will hopefully be finished and cleared before Christmas. In the meantime two building days have been scheduled, the first on the 14th December and the second on the 11th of January. The latter will be a chance to repair any damage to Summer Lightning and make any upgrades deemed necessary.
In the meantime look out for details of the new membership offer in the very near future and put the building days in your diary – the more the merrier!
Contact: Rebecca Milbourn on 01306 887923/[email protected] or see www.justridingalong.com
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