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Tidworth Freeride


haydon_peter

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I have not really been riding trials for the last few years and instead have been heavily involved in getting a local bike park built and ready for official opening this weekend! If any of you would like to come down to check it out let me know and I will be happy to show you around. If many of you are interested I will keep updating this thread with links and videos?

Like our facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/tidworthfreeride

We will be linked into the CTC Bike Park membership scheme, here is what CTC have put on their page today:

http://www.ctc.org.uk/press-release/2013-06-11/tidworth-freeride-takes-off-weekend

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  • 1 month later...

The opening weekend was a success and since opening we have been pretty busy with riders visiting and paying to ride.

Chris Smith and Olly Wilkins attended the opening and have since visited a number of times and we also had Sam Reynolds and Bernard Kerr come along to do some filming for MTV. MBUK visited and will be doing a full feature on the park in the future.

Anyway some photos and a video...

Local newspaper article:

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Sam Reynolds:

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Bernard Kerr getting sideways:

http://instagram.com/p/bYTp2tJ5U_/#

MBUK August 2013:

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Lots of clips of Chris Smith and friends riding the park in his latest video:

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  • 3 weeks later...

When I was younger I religiously purchased MBUK and dreamt that one day I would appear in the magazine. I was away riding in France when the MBUK guys visited so I still haven't appeared in the magazine but the next best thing happened in the issue that hit the shelves today...

A great 6 page article about MBUK's visit to the park and the main feature on one of our most popular trails was used for the cover photo!

So happy! :)

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Sounds good, it has changed so much since you did the army race there a couple of years ago!

We also feature in the latest issue of Wideopen Magazine, a bit of history behind the club.

http://wideopenmag.co.uk/magazine/issue-21/

Specific pages - http://issuu.com/wideopenmag/docs/wo_issue_21_/51?e=1156718/4986164

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  • 2 weeks later...

We are organising our first race!

The track we will be using is called Hooper Struve. Hooper Struve were a soft drinks company that took over a small bottling factory in a nearby village and ran it between 1948 and 1965. While we were digging the track we unearthed a Hooper Struve glass bottle so it made sense to name the track after it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Went here about 2 weeks ago with two others, awesome guys that run the site and the runs are fantastic!!

Shame it was so wet and some of the runs were closed.. next year this place is going to be insane so if you have a long travel / dh bike get down there

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Cheers for the positive words Brett. Next time you visit if you see a bearded short arse digging or collecting day pass money make yourself known.

Do it Rainbird, I noticed you will be based in Portsmouth for a while so you won't be that far away. You don't need full suspension, just bring any bike and have fun :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm still buzzing from the weekend! After countless hours of hard work spent organising everything our first race was a huge success! Perfect weather, riders were loving it and the crowd participation that was right up there with what you would expect at a national race!

The racing was stupidly close but we got in an electronic timing company to make sure it was all accurate. A team had even travelled over from France for the weekend and their top rider Ludovic Oget got fastest time of day with Laurie Arthur in 2nd and Ben Deakin in 3rd, top 3 were less than half a second apart! We also had local legends Chris Smith and Steve Geall both setting awesome times with just 0.01 seconds between them haha!

I managed to place 25th out of 101 riders overall and 14th out of 45 in my category. Pretty happy with that considering I'm in Senior which is always going to be the toughest category, even more so when you are racing against a previous French National Champion and World Cup racer :P

Full Results: http://www.mikrotime.com/mtb/tid2013/tid131.html

A couple of photos of me:

https://www.rootsandrain.com/photos/563306

https://www.rootsandrain.com/photos/563213

And finally an amusing GoPro edit from Ben Deakin, watch out for me at 3mins:

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  • 11 months later...

Wow nearly a year since I updated this thread! I have not had much involvement with the club since moving to Whistler in May.

The second annual Hooper Hooner race is happening very soon, see poster below.

Last years race video was eventually released as a promo for this years race:

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/380448/

Also while I have been away the guys made a pretty cool video which was posted to the Pinkbike homepage today:
http://www.pinkbike.com/news/tidworth-planet-of-the-shapes-video-2014.html

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  • 3 weeks later...

Looks good! Is there much to do there on a sorta 130mm hardtail? Or is it drop / jump orientated?

A full on DH bike isn't necessary and eventually I found myself rarely using my DH rig. Most of the time I would use my 140mm trail bike and I hit all the features in the park on it. People ride there on all sorts of bikes and have fun. There are DH style tracks and a jump area, the easier trails are all rollable but the harder trails start to incorporate mandatory jumps and drops.

Hi, you planing on building a trials area? My mate rides you guys alot on his down hill bike, it would be nice to have a local natural riding spot as I am only 20 mins away?!

We have enough to maintain and manage without adding a trials area but I'm sure if someone wanted to get involved with the club and become responsible for building, maintaining and running a trials area it would be a possibility.

Update:

The second annual Hooper Hooner race was a success, I helped out organizing entries from over here in Canada but was unable to make it for obvious reasons.

Race report:

http://ride.io/news/tidworth-freeride-dh-hooper-hooner-2014/

Video:

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It really wouldn't be as simple as chucking some rocks in to make 'natural' features, or building shite with pallets, cable reals, planks of wood and nailing it all together.

Everything would have to be designed and approved, risk assessments carried out, features have to be built to a high standard following building regulations, regularly inspected (Inspections have to be documented) and repaired when required. For insurance purposes riders on site have to be a CTC member or pay for a day pass so memberships would need to be checked and day pass money taken where required. You would also have to attend meetings locally and in Guildford, spend hours on the phone with other senior committee members discussing stuff and also be at the park regularly helping run the show. Right now all of this is done on a voluntary basis and when I was back at home it was basically a full time job alongside my 'real' full time job.

Obviously this would all have to be funded from somewhere and as I'm sure you can appreciate, materials aren't cheap and club funds are limited.

I'm sorry to say it but I don't think a trials area would work. The land doesn't really have any suitable natural features, there isn't masses of spare space to build one and I doubt there would be a high enough volume of riders using it. If there was enough demand in the area (And someone with as much passion as Terry Graves) I'm sure Hampshire Bike Trials Club would still be running.

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