Trail build report: Sat 14th Jan 2012, Triangle surfacing

The temperature gauge in my car was showing minus 4.5 degrees C as I drove round Cirencester at 8:15am on Saturday morning. It was cold and it was dry. Cold and dry doesn’t feel as cold without dry. There was a frost but the ground wasn’t frozen. Streaming sunlight had fixed that.

Brandon Hire dropped the power barrow and compactor off and not long later Phil and Jason Rodger arrived. We immediately set to on the task for the day – moving limestone chippings to the furthest point of the triangle. We had about 150 metres to fill in to complete the main loop. As a bonus we’d already moved 10 tonnes down there on a previous build day.

Reinforcements turned up as the morning went on: Nigel Gregson, Gary Smart, another Gary, John Speed and Andy Matthews.

By 2:30pm I was posting on Facebook and Twitter: “Excellent progress down here. All of the berms shaped, about 3/4 of the section filled in with limestone. Only about 40m left to do. With the big turnout tomorrow we can get even closer to finishing this.”

By the end of the day around 150m of trail has been filled in plus we had also made a start on fixing up a few bits that hadn’t been finished properly previously.

The rate of progress was so high that we achieved the target for the weekend in the first day. This shows what can be done with a reasonably small group of keen people and the right equipment.

New section taking shape at the Croft Trail in Swindon.
Trail building in Swindon.
Trail building at the Croft Trail in Swindon.
Digging up limestone chippings at the Croft Trail in Swindon. Muck Truck at mountain bike trail.
Mountain bike trail map Wiltshire.

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