We’re always interested in hearing from people who want to help run the club. All the core members got involved via a gradual process of increasing involvement. The structure is a collective with a bit of benign dictatorship to speed up the decision making process. The motto is “get on with it”. There’s loads of discussion about ideas and future plans.
If you’re curious about the history of the club:
It all started in late 2008 when Phil approached the builders of the original trail and got involved in work days. He then asked me (Tom) if I was interested in helping. I was curious and happy to do a few build days, but didn’t really have any great long term interest. Within a short while though I’d been sucked into the trail building project.
We formed the Facebook group and started looking out for more people to help on build days. Phil was contacted by a mountain biker with a Land Rover which was soon put to use moving material; this is how we met Rafe who built this website. Other people who quickly became key players were Pete Ratcliffe and Al and Jodie West. Pete gradually convinced his girlfriend that we weren’t as socially unacceptable as we might have looked like, so Kat Beeston has been doing a lot of art and web based things for us recently.
In mid 2009 the project was handed over to Phil. He’s the council contact and he makes final decisions on what is acceptable on the trail.
In the winter of 2009 when we ran out of material and funds, we set about formalising things into a club. The club was intended to be an constituted “umbrella” organisation to manage funds in a organised and accountable manner, which is important when applying for grants for the trail. That was set up and launched on 1st February 2010.
2010 also brought ambitious building targets so we dedicated three out of four weekends to trail work for the first few months. From this we met Chris Hopkinson and our wood master Mr Anon (he does have a name, but we can’t reveal it).
Our regular Friday night rides of the trail became a permanent fixture and other club rides were organised. When spring came round then numbers built up quickly. We’ve currently got 54 signed up club members and 362 facebook group members.
We’ve now got a lot of really supportive members who’ve worked on build days or who’ve turned up on rides with loads of enthusiasm. We spend a lot of time listening to what people have to say. For example, we want everyone on a build day to have contributed to the decision making process. Some really good ideas have developed this way.
We’re really proud of the club mentality: positive, enthusiastic, welcoming to new members. So, thankyou to everyone, sorry if I haven’t mentioned your name. We do appreciate the support.
Some of the events were the result of one member having an idea and being keen to implement it. We want to encourage more of this.
At the moment it would be great to have a few more people writing even reports or articles for the website. Do you have any ideas? Don’t worry about details, we can help sort that. Contact us here or on facebook or in person at an event.