Although our most recent trail maintenance project was very successful, there have been some notable teething problems. A couple of the corners on the section of trail behind the miniature railway have suffered from a cocktail of minor building errors, crashes and in one area repeated skidding. You may know the bits I’m talking about. It needs sorting quickly, as it’ll only get worse if we don’t.

In the pictures above you can see the berm has collapsed. It appears a rider has crashed, taking out the top of the berm with them. That shouldn’t happen and has done so because the berm wasn’t backed out and reinforced with enough stone and soil to hold it solid. This is a fairly simple fix but will require a fair amount of stone which will need to be barrowed from the reserve piles at the miniature railway.

Above is the penultimate roller and corner, before the trail ends at the gate house. Here you can see that through riders skidding, the dust and type one stone underneath, has been taken out, leaving the bedrock exposed again. Although built in such a way that it’s possible to link all the turns in this section without braking, let alone skidding, it’s obvious that it’s not working and something needs to change. In the first instance, we’re going to look at reshaping the roller slightly and building the berm higher.

Tomorrow a small group of volunteers will look to repair these two areas. It’ll mean the section will be closed for the day and a diversion will  be in place. Right now, there are only 3 people doing this work – all are voluntary members of the Ashton Court Consultation Group. They would really appreciate some help for a couple hours. If you have some time from 10am tomorrow (Friday 18th Jan), please contact chris@rocfish.co.uk and he’ll let you know how you can help.

Have a great weekend all!