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I haven't been over at Swinley for a while but thought I'd ride over today from Camberley via the Maultway. Pretty messy and then ran into fireroad closures leading to the Red 1 and Lower Star Post. Power lines down and lots of activity..
Lots of trail closures, many fire roads are just muddy, rutty quagmires, The folks in the Bike Hub reckon that 10% is down to the storms, the rest down to forestry work and logging. It's not a petty sight in many areas.
Red 1 has totally disappeared and I gather sevreal of the early Reds no longer exist.
Reason for this post is just to warn.... IMO it's not worth going over there at the moment if you're making a special trip. As I was just riding over it was just a bit disappointing but no big deal.
A bit of video with the start of it showing what remains of Red1
That's a shame, a few years ago I used to visit quite a bit in winter as it drains better than my local trails. I haven't been for a while and don't think I will after seeing that video!
I was there on Tues and the whole Lower Star Post area was closed as one of the posts for the power cables had been broken in the storm. That means the first part of the red loop is harder to access, and Red 2 (the one with the boardwalk) and 8 (the one that comes back to the star post) had been closed for a while anyway, as had red 1.
The second part of the red loop was generally fine - from Red 15 to 25(?) there were just a couple of fallen trees to carry over. There's been a lot of clearance this year and the logging trucks have chewed up some of the fire roads as well as wiping out some of the less official trails - there's still a diversion for Red 30(?) as well. The crown estate seem to be clamping down a bit on off piste stuff too, there was a warden parked up by Red 15 a while back telling people not to venture off the one true path...
Oh I was going to pop down tomorrow as my local gravel routes were a bog fest on wed. Might have to get the road bike off the trainer at this rate!
Oh I was going to pop down tomorrow as my local gravel routes were a bog fest on wed. Might have to get the road bike off the trainer at this rate!
Some of the actual trails I rode were fine (the gravelly hard surfaced ones). I did "The Stickler" though and that was quite boggy.. Apart from the actual closures the worst part was linking via some of the fireroads, some of which have been badly chewed up. The ambience around Lower Star Post is really spoilt and looks devastated.
The ambience around Lower Star Post is really spoilt and looks devastated.
Logging is periodic in the forest, though ugly it is part of the forests lifecycle. It'll look better by the summer.
Yup it's a bit pony at the moment. Doing more riding round Aldershot/Ash/Hankley currently.
The ambience around Lower Star Post is really spoilt and looks devastated.
Seems its a sad coinciding of planned logging, power line down, and wet weather. Last thursday, before Eunice, the fireroads were already chewed up due to (I presume) the logging plant.
January Swinley was as good as I've seen it in winter in 6 years of MTBing. It will return.
I took the dogs for a run over there on Monday to see what it was like. I didn't run any of the bike trails but saw a lot of trees down and loads of debris on the fireroads so no doubt similar on the trails themselves. Bumped into a guy on his bike who said he'd had to push round about 5 fallen trees on the trails, although I didn't ask him where. And yes, lower star post was completely closed, I had to nip across into the MOD land to skirt round it all so couldn't see the extent of the logging that is in the video, that's pretty full on. I'd assumed it was just clearing up around the powerlines, didn't realise they were clearing that whole section.
Went back Wednesday wondering if they'd finished around star post but nope, still going. Makes sense now if they are clearing the whole area rather than just tidying up after the storm.