Cycling The Ridgeway - Then and Now?

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

I have a few more pictures of that 1984 FW Evans on the Ridgeway I can post here. Maybe I should start a separate thread about the story of that bike?

Feel free to post them on the not French thread

 

[enigma]

I agree wholeheartedly that people who use the countryside should be considerate of the needs of others and where they are not, remedies need to be found. Ultimately, restrictions should be put in place in order to stop trails from becoming so damaged that people are put off using them.

Having said that, I doubt that the horse riding fraternity have ever been excluded from using bridlepaths because they are causing too much damage.

I personally, never get annoyed when I come across trail damage, as I see this as just part of the experience of riding off-road. Also, some of the worst damage I have ever seen was caused by Forestry Commission vehicles going about their legitimate business. My most annoying experience was cycling for several miles down an Oxfordshire bridleway only to find it totally overgrown, just short of its far end. With no roads or rights of way crossing the bridleway, I had no option but to backtrack and eventually arrived back at the start of the bridleway about an hour later.

BITD there was only one section of the Ridgeway that was unrideable. It was short, narrow dog-leg section between Barbury Castle and Hackpen Hill. Here is a photo from the internet, that looks like this section used to:

View attachment 792037
(Photo from adventurebikerider.com)

The last time I rode this section about two years ago, it had been levelled, gravelled and looked like a section of a Sustrans route.

I walked that section a few months ago then the old reclassified lane, now a footpath that goes down to near Ogbourne st george. From Barbury itself.
Hadn't been up there for twenty years or more and this looks like the only wet bit slippy bit on closer to Barbury than Hackpen, the rest I could of driven a car along, pretty well.
This photo depicts abuse by everyone not just the odd land rover. A lot of wiltshire was like this, but has now evolved in a good way, the county team which ridicvulously small for the rights of way we have, and farmers etc sometimes overdo it, and its a motorway of road planing's, but it comes back to something a little more leafy and worn in time, people stop driving cars down them and the happy medium stage is reached.

 

[Mark Manley]

I rode the first few miles of The Ridgeway from Avebury heading east on a motorcycle when it was legal and thought at the time it was so churned up that they would soon ban motor vehicles which they did a few months later. I have since walked where it was a footpath then cycled when it turned to bridleway from the Grand Union canal to Wallingford a few years later and rode the last part from Avebury last year as part of the King Alfred Way, a great route if you want to get away from it.

My highly modified and totally unsuitable Falcon I did the part from the Grand Union canal on, this taken of The South Downs Way.



Last year on my Roughstuff.

 

[swannymere]

Is it a case of not meant to camp but who's going to care?

 

[The History Man]

Hitchcock was looking over us that day. Can you see him?

 

[widowmaker]

Hitchcock was looking over us that day. Can you see him?View attachment 792117

What bike is that

 

[The History Man]

What bike is that

Yes it is.

Chiseldon to uffington to Avebury for lunch at the red lion inside the circle then back to Chiseldon. Muddy past the farm and on the descent to the circle.

 

[widowmaker]

Scary bike, whoever build it

 

[The History Man]

 

[JCS]

What bike is that

91 or 92 Explosif ?