SkipRatt mountain bike blog

Wouldn't it be nice for the Lincolnshire area to be on the map for a mountain bike destination! It would if we had some good local trails and not just some old bridal way that gets ripped up to shit by motor crossers and 4x4s.
No that's not completely true because we do have some good trails, it's just that they are not looked after and mostly needs to be joined up by busy roads.

2 main trails that come to mind is Viking way and Jubilee way. What about some thought into redevelopment of these trails and making the whole area mountain bike friendly. Wouldn't it encourage more people to ride push bikes? Hell, have a mountain bike center close to the 'Rutland Arms' to generate some kind of local funding for the trails and maintenance.

The Rutland Arms do quite well financially with walkers in and around the area, they charge £1 for a can of coke! Over the last 2 years I have noticed some sort of improvement in the surface of the trails, but find it boring for mountain bikers and believe that more could be done to the area to make it more interesting.

Lately the viking way has been widened and the surface layered with the hedgerow. Would it be viable to create a purpose built surface for mountain bikers at one side of the trail and do something to minimize the straight up straight down of the route?.

Jubilee Ways forest never dries out from the rain and the whole area looks like a swamp. It's a very interesting place to liven things up, but again it's a straight through route. Why not involve the other parts of the forest too and layer the surface so it's more ridable, interesting, fun, dries out for all year riding, and make it walkable too because parents take their children on walks through the forest.

Too much of the surrounding area is off limits due to it being farm land or, what starts out as a public right of way, ends up blocked off further down the trail. Most of the farm land ends up unused, it has some nice forestry and it's off bloody limits!! If farmers opened up some of these area's, it would limit the amount of road used by cyclists because one trail would lead to another. I can understand that if they did open up land would it encourage motor vehicles too! Whilst in wales I noticed every so often they use gateways to squeeze mountain bikes through. Maybe this approach could be used in the area, it's better than sloppy un-ridable let alone un-walkable trails!

I don't know maybe I could attempt to do more instead of ranting about it, but where the hell would I start?. I know that the viking challenge is held here every year, maybe organizers of that could do something. Would they want to and who would fund it?