[Closed] who are the nutters who put sticks across woodland trails?

On the bridleways near me I think it's the horsey riders as an obstacle for the horses, get them used to picking their feet up. It's annoying.
Almost as annoying as trees being felled and placed so you struggle to get by.

Redsock, wool jumper, bobble hat wearing miserable people

happens often where i ride, they make good bunny hop practice! if big i just move them off the trail and carry on, not worth getting worked up about imo

The ellusive Stickman on Cannock Chase.

confused beavers.

Horse riders near me, one tried to shout at me when I threw it off to the edge, I took a photo of him with my phone and said I'd be reporting him for deliberately blocking a bridleway,
He called me a ****er and rode off sharpish 😆
I met him again a few weeks later and asked him if he wanted to get off his horse and repeat what he said
He didn't.........

Take a shovel and put a loads of soil behind the bigger ones, make nice little kickers.

confused beavers.

Thank you for the mental image that created for me.

Secret skills coaches offering stealth bunnyhop practice

To be honest I'm sure alot of them are just a natural occurrence.

It's true the Stickman has a lot to answer for but more than once I have seen dogs dragging branches/logs/sticks and then they drop them.

The ones that have been deliberately placed need to be treated with the contempt they deserve - ride over the small ones and carelessly hop the bigger ones. It is quite satisfying to see the number of other riders who think the same way and in a few days the sticks are broken in two with a tyre track through the middle.

Wind + dead wood = sticks on the trail. Occam's razor FTW

Cannock Chase Stikman gets extra points for ones at head height rammed between 2 trees, found whilst on a night ride. Further accreditation is awarded for hammering nails into exposed tree roots and clipping the heads off to leave lots of nice metal points sticking up. A nice touch.

Wind + dead wood = sticks on the trail. Occam's razor FTW

:shakes fist: That bloody Occam!!!

I get it quite a lot from the horsey brigade (who I get on with well apart from woman with large pointer that chased after me at full tilt barking - I had words with her, a few of them limited to 4 letters)

Mind you
"while out yesterday (X) i was amazed at the amout of illegal tracks across the trails. Some were large but many were very small.

Who does this and why?

have you ever come across anyone doing it and if so what you said to them?

i am guessing it's the red lycra brigade but can't understand it really "

Happened to me last week in Marden Park near Woldingham, they were strategically place on steep tight bends, some were definitely a two person lift, or I'm a wimp. Anyway, I assumed it was walkers that may have been given a scare from riders not slowing down or being inconsiderate, no excuse though. Let's all try and behave, slow down, say hello and just respect each other and the environment. Peace

down here in plymski we have an ex FC volunteer who takes great delight in dragging all manner of debris across any tracks he finds..this is pretty annoying and dangerous, we know its him as he told us he does it.
he even aggresively shouted at my mrs and julian wilson's mrs for riding on a trail that was close to deer and they would be scaring them, which considering he always has a collie dog and a alaskan mamalut off the leads and roaming pretty much where they want to go is a bit of a pith take. (dogs are to be kept on leads in our forest due to the dreaded fungal spores).
dog walkers and wind fall all resonsible too

in Wharncliffe its the forester and in Melbourne it was kids.

Thank you for the mental image that created for me.

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And what is it about mud, horrible stuff means i have to wash everything when i get home and it's slippery so a fall off - who ever puts that on trails should be strung up 🙄

mm i think you may be missing the point..the type and volume of stuff our logman puts down means that, that trail is destroyed and end of yet another trail on our already limited riding.
its not just a few twigs you can hop over!

woody2000 - Member

Wind + dead wood = sticks on the trail. Occam's razor FTW

what does: "sticks all perpendicular to trail" equal?

Perpendicular (ie walker-'induced') logs, like perpendicular roots, are far easier to ride over when its wet, whereas random windfall is not so.

I've seen our log man a few times in Cann Wood lately, *waves* but no new loggage. The other day mrs julian rode past him straight into some proper cheeky trail and in contrast to dog/shout nonsense last time she met him, he didn't say a word this time.

There's a Stickman near us, placing sticks and large branches across footpaths. Without getting back into that whole can of worms (there aren't many bridleways near us) this clown is putting obstacles that actually stop people [u]walking[/u] on the flipping paths.
There's an offshoot of Stickman over Rivington way. Its .... Dry Stone Wall Man. This delightful creature must spend hours pulling down bits of the farmers walls to build mini walls across the track thus achieving the effect of pissing off bikers, walkers, the farmer and, er, God (possibly).
Going back to the orginal point though haow many have actually seen anyone doing it? I know I haven't.

piedi di formaggio - Member
Redsock, wool jumper, bobble hat wearing miserable people

You forgot ' with silly ski poles', today's human being can't walk without them. 😉
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Not sure anyone has caught Cannock Stickman. Been more sightings of the werewolf.

Up my way it's bike riders who've been laying sticks down on the trail! They've built chuffing great jumps over the original track and laid logs across it to prevent anyone getting in their way. Grrr! Young whipper snappers. Baggy trousered, Stormtrooper armoured louts the lot of em'.

Might have to slip a saw into my pack and start doing my own 'trail improvements'. 😈

B. 😉

Top tip, carry a small saw, to deal with windfall or sabotage. If you can't cut something itself you can often cut a lever from some other bits of wood to move things. I've moved some pretty hefty logs on my own this way.

No need to tar all walkers with the same brush as above - I enjoy a good ramble, and have a walking pole 😳

[img] [/img]One of these should sort 'em out...

the only person I have seen trip over and fall down a hill was using walking poles...

One of these should sort 'em out...

Can't see how disorganised shelving would help myself.

Happens a lot in certain parts of Woodbury, we think it's dog walkers. It's always in the same small area. Small ones we can hop or build kickers to get over but they then drag huge ones and put them at the bottom of drop offs etc to ruin the flow 🙁
I wouldn't mind so much but they do it on trials that are only there as bikers built them!!!!

you ought to try woburn. It seems to be a full time job for someone up there laying branches and logs over the trails.

One of our riders (showerman) said "that isn't going to stop me" promptly followed by flying OTB

If dog walkers are making your trails less attractive I say take the war to them.

Human jobbies in the middle of the trail may be a good starter for ten.

(This post is not serious).

As an after thought though, if you were really determined you could collect dog poo on a wee spade and arrange it in piles about where they step out of there cars.

Alternately, over here in Aus it's all windfall stuff. Some pretty big stuff mind, and trails end up going round them unless a ranger gets in there. But not had any malicious trail damage that I can recall.

One is always cautious of overly regular sized sticks mind, lest they have a mouth and poisonous fangs at one end - always better to be the first person in the group when riding...

never seen dry stone wall man - who does it on footpaths- but have seen his work
More worryongly he has also put wooden planks with nails sticking upwards into the mud and hidden in undergrowth or at the side of blockades - utterly dangerous nutter
Lowey found some of these and pooste dn here as well as his blog

in Wharncliffe its the forester

Never experienced any of this there myself (and I'm there quite a bit!)

Although that's as famous last words as it gets I suppose...

was out around south delamere last night and someone (within the last week) had dragged an entire dead tree - only a small one mind (4-5m long) across the trail

noticed plenty of dog walkers around that part of the forest last week, but that tree completely blocked all users from using that track

quick stop and two minutes later and the trail was cleared and biking resumed 😀

why? because some people are cocks

A lot of perpendicular to the trail sticks are the work of those 4 legged trail vandals! Dogs carry branches and logs like that and then just drop them. Of course the big ones are down to the work of potential punchbags.

Most of it here, happily, is more an annoyance than a danger. But some of the stick putters seem to have realised that branches on a diagonal are more irritating than perpendicular ones. Even so, if they're a few inches or less thick you can still just ride over them, r deal with in whatever way you fancy.

Ironically, my main objection is for walking - it just makes the paths much more annoying to walk on, screws up the aesthetic of a meandering woodland track and - most importantly are a bloody hazard when you walk in the dark. I realise that I'm probably the only one that actually walks through the woods in the pitch, but boy does it screw things up when you trip over something that isn't supposed to be there.

I keep hoping I'll catch one of these miserable sods in action one day.

Then murder them and bury them in the woods. No-one knows they're there, do they? So, the perfect crime.

Maybe torture them over a period of time too, for added fun.

We came accross one old chappie several years ago laying logs & branches over the trail whilst riding near Bournemouth Airport.

He was a bit sheepish but stated it wasn't for the cyclists but to stop the motorbikers! (There were no marks that they have been there!).

So we happily hopped/rode over the logs in front of his eyes and said good luck!

Don't often ride there but never seen them since.

To change the subject very slightly, I ran into a bunch of pikeys on a canal towpath once, burning insulation off some probably stolen copper wiring. Their alsatian jumped in front of me... I was going very fast to avoid a mugging. The dog bounced off my front tyre, yelping. I didn't stop!

it's riders removing perfectly hop/jumpable branches to dumb down my local trails that piss me off 😉

Hi Paul 😛

😆

They've been doing it in those woods for a couple of years now Martin. Everytime I'm out for a trail run, I clear them, then the next day they are back!!! I keep thinking I'll catch them at it, but ridden the woods many times each week at all times of day and never seen them. I did wonder if they thought they were targeting the kids on motorbikes, but you couldn't get a motorbike on some of those tracks. We've improved our skills immensely because of them :D., but the principle of it still hacks me off!!!

If you fancy a ride some time, drop me a mail

Simon

Well I took a tumble after some strategicly placed fence wire caught my pedal a couple of days ago. Straight over the bars and into a bed of stinging nettles & brambles. Still itching. Lucky though if I'd landed to the right it would have been a face full of barbed wire.

Not impressed.

I split my knee open on one of the shifters a couple of weeks ago as someone had put a large branch across a downhill woodland descent.

I couldn't avoid it as it was the width of the trail and almost stopped in time but not quite. I couldn't ride over it as a bend in the middle made it too high.

I was a less than happy bunny - there were loads more of them further down the descent too.

Never mind the sticks. What about the dog poo bags that are hung in the trees at head height. Deposited there by ar5eh0le dog walkers.

Gives a new meaning to sh1thead.

Waderider - Member

...No need to tar all walkers with the same brush as above - I enjoy a good ramble, and have a walking pole

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Some cnt keeps putting large logs into a hollow on one of my local trails,always straight up like a tiger trap!

Simon,

a ride would be great but your email addy doesn't seem to be working