Shoulders in the dirt

I am obsessed about riding bikes. I don't mind admitting that but sometimes, I feel like the obsession with building at my local spot is taking over! I love building jumps, so much so that I feel the need to write about it!

Everyone, bikers and non-bikers alike, knows what it's like to fall in love with a place. Whether it’s a favourite holiday resort or a favourite dog walk, there’s something incredibly satisfying about visiting these special places. For most mountain bikers involved in any kind of trail building, or even just riding, this place is undoubtedly their local spot.

Story and pics inside,

I’ve been riding and building dirt jumps with my friends since I was about fourteen. These were mostly utter rubbish - usually a take off with no landing or a tiny rhythm section that never got finished – but they were an important part of our development as trail builders. After a couple of years when a few of our favourite places got flattened, we eventually found a little gem where there was a strong group of local builders working on a dual track to practise on and a great selection of dirt jumps of varying sizes. This place became my local ride for most weekends until I had a nasty crash on a tiny jump and came close to disfiguring my face, requiring the cartilage in my nose to be rebuilt. I was about 19, prime age for being distracted away from riding by booze and the rest of it. I am now 28 and, after a five year break from mountain biking, still ride and build at the very same spot.


I love building dirt jumps. Sometimes I feel like I love digging even more than riding and then I ride the jumps I’ve built and realize how ridiculous that sounds! I like the creative element to building, dreaming up an insane line, getting everyone on board with your idea and then seeing the finished product being enjoyed by people that you have never even met!


Building trails is an art form. Watching a master trail builder at work is a bit like watching a master sculptor. They work so quickly and make what they’re doing look so effortless that you just stand there in awe of their skill! Mountain biking is, in most cases, a solo sport but digging is definitely a team effort. It takes everyone to pull together to create a new line, especially when the jumps are huge. There will be arguments about the angles, the direction, the size of the gap, anything that needs to be decided but this all goes towards a finished product that will be appreciated by everyone.


We are lucky enough that our trails have never been flattened. They are on private land where you can see the remains of a quad bike track and, until recently, the land owner’s daughter used to ride her moto-x bike around the woods so he has a sympathy towards extreme sports! We have never had any trouble and always make an effort to be pleasant to the local dog walkers and to pick up our litter. It’s these things that will make the trails last for ever. We find from talking to the local residents that it’s not the people building and riding that annoys them. It’s the litter, the noise, the cars parked too close to houses, the young chavs lighting fires, the same things that annoy the core of regular riders there! We are, after all, simply enjoying the woods like anyone else. We don’t take up loads of space, we’re not damaging the land beyond repair, we just want somewhere to ride our bikes. We often have unsettling conversations about how horrible it would be to turn up one day and see all our hard work reduced to foot-high piles of soft soil because the land has been sold or something. I don’t like thinking about that for too long.


There are so many addictive aspects to building and riding your own trails. The actual riding of them sometimes seems like such a small part of it, especially in the winter when the real hard work gets done. This winter has been particularly difficult with all this snow. Sometimes you spend the first hour just hacking your way through the frozen ground! The reward is greater, though. In the darker months you have to get up at crazy o’clock just to make the most of the daylight and the new trails never really dry out enough to ride. It can be months before a set is ready to ride and the feeling of riding that first transition or railing that first berm is like no other.


Digging is now a major part of the sport for me and it gives me so much pleasure. I live in Nottingham where the terrain is a little more subtle than Vancouver or Wales but it doesn’t mean I enjoy the sport any less. We can build anything that we have in our imagination as long as we put the hours in. We might not be able to get same length of the descents but at least we can push to the top of the hill in less than 10 minutes!

I’m really excited about the spring, the longer days, the evening sessions, trails actually drying out and getting faster, the leaves on the trees instead of on the ground and the dust in my eyes! Our local spot is currently in better shape than it's ever been and getting busier all the time. More riders means more diggers and that means more trails! Roll on summer!

Besington Forest of Dreams

by russclark

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