whitestone wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2023 6:08 pm
I don't see a problem apart perhaps from one...
How much "notice" are businesses and the like given that there's a new route going to be promoted that passes by their door? On a different scale but the promotion of the NC500 seems to have been done without consideration to the local infrastructure - cue all the problems with the sudden influx of campervans, etc. and associated disposal of waste; extra camping/RV facilities and so on.
When we did the KAW a couple of years ago it was very busy with cyclists doing it - that might have had something to do with it being close to London and other large population centres in the SE. I think that was about 18-24 months after it "went live".
KAW was perhaps slightly different, because we launched after the covid lockdowns (though there was a couple of years of discussion and work up beforehand) in the realisation, and hope, of giving a real boost to a rural tourism economy that had been absolutely hammered - so at the time ,everything was still in flux, lots of places that had gone to the wall and others that were still only just reopening. Where possible we took it into some locations with a good level of facilities including travel-inn’s and train stations (Winchester, Reading, Farnham) or close by other facilities with a bit of a diversion (Pewsey Vale, Marlborough, Wantage, Petersfield), there’s a bit of a hole around Market Lavington but the local businesses near that section seem to have done very well from it and have improved their secure bike parking etc)
WKW, Rebellion & Caanti weren’t, originally, planned for circular routes, but as a promotion of hub locations as part of an EU rural tourism support grant, lots of issues that I won’t discuss there, but the routes came out as a bit of a salvage plan - but notable that we had funding to support businesses on the route and promote them. One thing at, regretfully, didn’t happen was grants for secure cycle lockers for B&B etc. businesses and I’m still rather frustrated over that failure.
Traws Eryri - planned in from the start we viewed one of the goals as linking together the existing trail centres and ‘adventure tourism’ locations like BYC and (short diversion) Dolgellau as we knew they had already grown a decent level of cycle friendly accommodation, bike shops etc. around the MTB market, so this route diversifies the existing cycle tourism offer in the area from just trail centres into something bigger, but ties in with that existing infrastructure of businesses that already cater to MTB’ers.
So, I hope that explains that there is some sort of ‘plan’ here.
Regards some other points above, to some extent it’s a bit like ‘why have trail centres been successful’ - a large part of this is that a lot of people simply don’t have the time and inclination to plant their own routes/itineraries confidently - the small number of enthusiast bikepackers aren’t necessarily thr target market, it’s more the people who do need some handholding and probably wouldn’t do this at all without that inspiration & handholding - also that they very likely wouldn’t even have considered these areas - it would never have occurred to me just how nice Norfolk or Kent might actually be to cycle around.
The bigger picture in all this is, of course, access - seven years ago (as a volunteer at that point) I set out on a plan to try and soften the image of mountain biking (&/or off-road cycling) that came across to politicians & other groups when access was discussed - because what I was hearing then was still extremely negative - and I paint this in a light of over twenty years of advocacy. Prior to Foot & Mouth we were hated, after that things improved a lot, but the growth of unauthorised trailbuilding and red-bull/monster, hardcore rad to the X-treme image of MTB was really causing increasing problems and resistance, particularly from equestrians and from land managers like natural england - work like ‘be nice say hi’ (not all us, but we dragged British horse society into it), plus the routes work has created an image that’s far more ‘ramblers on wheels’ and ‘adventure not adrenaline’ and the economic arguments of, for example, politicians seeing routes like this as supporting local businesses and contributing to the rural economy makes improved access for MTB look a bit more like an opportunity than a threat (and I assure you it really was seen as that for a long time) and demonstrates that routes can be used as a way to promote and manage users rather than trying to just ban them.
Much more work to do - keeping our eye on Dartmoor for the next stage of the Byelaw review. Recent sicessful threat of a legal challenge for Coast to
Coast has resulted in National Parks and Natural England talking to us more, and we should see much better inclusion of bikes and horses, hopefully on a braided route there (with potential knock on Impacts on other national trails, and we know that Pennine Bridleway northern extension is on the radar… plus of course the big upcoming issue is the election, with Labour Party still being somewhat equivocal on whether bikes and horses will be included in their right to roam plans - hence, of course, why all the above work to demonstrate a positive image of MTB as responsible users as discussed above is so important.
Hope that explains a bit of the thought behind this and how it fits in.
Guy covers a bit of that context in his recent article on TE.
https://www.bikeperfect.com/features/be ... boundaries