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After five years Rushup Edge (often called Chapel Gate) has finally reopened
http://peakdistrictmtb.org/rushup-is-open-for-2020/
Hurrah
What an extraordinarily pointless waste of money. Rode up it the other day and it's much better than it was when the rubble was down, but the main effect seems to have been to:
1. Make it an easier climb by removing any step higher than about six inches.
2. Made it a less enjoyable descent by removing any step higher than about six inches.
At least they've (apparently) fixed the boggy section at the top, but the rest of it just doesn't make any obvious sense unless there's someone at DCC who just hates rock-steps. Bizarre.
Hats off to Peak District MTB for plugging away at this for so long. The whole thing was straight out of the Big Brother handbook. The 'we had to maintain a 'road' which is closed to traffic by a TRO' nonsense just underlines what a mess the current rights of way system is.
Five years? Blimey, where did that go?
Well done to Peak District MTB for sticking with it.
All we want is for councils to sort out obvious problems, not rip up and grade everything. As an example, rode the Fox Descent at Grizedale yesterday. Highways/Forestry Commission have quietly sorted out a boggy lake at the top, and drained a couple of bigger splashes on the way down. It's now in great nick for the bikers, walkers and 4x4s which use it.
When you say Boggy section do you mean that big peaty puddle on the top the flat section before you go on some sand then down Chapel gate towards Edale??
Yep, that's supposed to have been fixed. They've also flattened out the small step on the section above the top gate of the sunken lane section and spread some rubbly stuff on the initial portion of the bridleway beyond that heading along the edge towards Mam Tor.
Cheers that puddle was deep at times.
Yep, in a parallel universe where they'd just fixed that and left everything else alone, we'd all be saying how brilliant DCC roads department is. I still have, sat on a bookshelf with a PG Tips monkey sat on top of it, a chunk of the original fill that I took home to remind me of just how bad it was when they first rubble-ised the track.
It's a curious world though. I can still remember when the Hayfield campsite descent was first flattened and we wept bitter tears of disbelief. Then it got tweaked with new, sustainable steps and some singletrack to stop people crashing into the wall on that off-camber left-hander, which made ut much better. And now it's all getting torn apart by global storming and turning into an interesting, steppy, rubbly mess. If only we'd known that would happen 15 odd years ago, eh.