Phase 1 Cycle Trail Development:
update report
Ollie Graham, Project Manager,
Hamsterley Trailblazers
Right then, I have promised to do this
for a long time and as we are nearly finished the first phase
of cycle trail development in Hamsterley I thought it about time
to provide an update on progress to date and lessons we have learnt
along the way.
In the beginning...
For those of you new to Trailblazers, I will start at the beginning.
We started fund raising for the cycle trails in January 2004 and
were lucky enough to be given a large amount of help and advice
from Teesdale Council, Teesdale Marketing
and Groundwork West Durham on grant applications.
This meant we were eventually successful in raising in excess
of £200,000 towards the trails for Phase I.
We decided we wanted the first phase of the development to get
people, particularly children and families, interested in cycling
by providing an attractive, flattish cycle trail from the Information
Centre to the Grove (instead of the steep hill that started the
old Green route.) We also wanted to build on that interest by
creating a state of the art Skills Area (the Loop) that could
be used by all cyclists to develop mountain biking skills. Plans
for future phases include totally new black, red and blue routes
utilising underused forest and moorland areas beyond the Grove.
Very early on, after various recce visits by members to the 7
Stanes, we decided we wanted Pete Laing
to carry out the design work at Hamsterley. Pete is responsible
for most of the cycle trail design at Glentress
and Innerleithen, and we were delighted when
he agreed to help us. After visiting the forest and studying harvesting
plans for Hamsterley Forest, Pete produced the map below showing
the huge potential that Hamsterley has. Not bad for a first draft!
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Click
on map for a larger image (150Kb) |
Money, Money, Money
Our first funding break came in July 2004 when the County
Durham Environmental Trust (CDENT) offered £22,000
towards the project. This was great news and it wasn’t long
before other funders were committing to the project including
One North East, Living Spaces,
North Pennines Leader Plus Programme, Barclays
Spaces For Sport, the Forestry Commission,
Weardale and Teesdale District Councils. The
eventual funding of £200,000 for Phase I sounds like a lot
of cash but when you use 7,355 tons of material and trail costs
average out at around £35 per metre, it doesn’t actually
go very far!
A local company, Wards, who specialise in construction
and quarrying, won the construction tender for the Grove
Link Trail and the Skills Area. They
planned to start work on the 2 January but unfortunately the weather
had other plans. The severe gales and rainstorms that hit the
UK during this time caused wide spread disruption throughout the
region and at Hamsterley over 10,000 tons of timber was brought
down. This delayed the start by over 2 weeks whilst specialist
crews were hired to clear all the fallen trees blocking the routes
for the new trails.
Continued >>> |
