The new Gawton DH track will open on 7th May
Rad South West DH spot Gawton gets a new track and a posh hut!
Gawton Club Secretary Brett Nicolle sent over some details of the new track and hut (which may or may not contain a mini-bar, jacuzzi and cafe) at Gawton.
The new, as yet un-named track, will be open to ride from Monday the 7th of May. There will be an ‘official’ opening some time in the summer, hopefully to coincide with the start of the uplift service and the hut opening (which are now finally going ahead having agreed terms for the lease with the local authority).
But they’re going to have a ‘soft’ opening to get it ridden in and give us the chance to tweak it a bit over the next couple of months.
Brett says about Jabba The Hut: “The plan is to have an employee, at weekends at first. The hut has a separate toilet. We will contract a cleaning company to come and open and close it during daylight hours 7 days a week. Inside the main part of the hut there is a small kitchen, an ‘admin’ area, a small display section for bike spares and accessories supplied to us by Koo bikes and a seating area around the wood burning stove.
We will be serving pre-packed snacks, drinks & tea and coffee, we will not be serving food prepared on site at first, but hopefully that will come (because that’s a whole other level of red tape!). Having an employee means that you will be able to buy memberships or day tickets on site (although they will still be available online and from Dartmoor Cycles). It also means that the site will be more secure (although we have never had a theft of bikes from the site, only fly tipping after hours).
There will also be a ‘pound in the slot’ bike wash and hopefully some ‘keysafe’ lockers, so you don’t have to carry your keys with you on the tracks. The uplift service will also run from there.”
that is the way it should be done! well done Gawton!
Sounds awesome – is there anywhere to hire DH bikes near there? Would love to visit for a day this summer
sweet, looking forward to getting down there
We have some funding bids in to try and get some bikes for training and/or hire, but none as yet…but pop down to Dartmoor Cycles and convince Andy that you might want to buy one of his lovely Intense, Kona, GT, Transition or Orange bikes and he’ll let you take it for a demo, you get a free day’s pass to ride at Gawton too! Keep an eye on our facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/gawtongravityhub for announcements of when things are opening…we’re working hard!
…and I forgot…you’ve still got six days to enter our competition to name our new track and win a pair of Spy Klutch goggles from Koobikes.com and a year’s free membership on us! Plus you can tell all your mates that you named the track!! Details on how to enter on our facebook page…
Having had a post dig day test ride of track 4 i’ve got to safe it’s going to be freaking awesome!!!
everyones saying how good its going to be, but really its going to be way better than what everyone says…!
Sounds fantastic! It’s great to hear all the hard work that seems to go into this place =)
Its been a long time in coming. Lots of hours, blood, sweat and dougnuts but it will be worth it. HUGE thanks to everyone that has helped.
wooooooo
We weren’t expecting this announcement to appear in public until after the dig day this weekend (29th April 2102) – why not come along and help. So this date is not fully cast in stone. There are still things that could cause delays, especially this current run of very wet weather. That being said we are doing our very best to get the track open for riding from 7th May 2012. However during this initial period before the formal opening we may have to occasionally close the track for remedial work and ‘tweaks’. There will often be no prior notice given of these closures. If the tape is up across the track it is closed and must not be ridden. The closures could be for a few hours or even the entire day. If a closure will be longer than a day information will be up on our website and facebook page.
TRACK 4 OPENING POSTPONED: After a great deal of thought, we regrettably have to announce that we won’t be able to open the new track at Gawton on Monday the 7th May 2012. Some of the heaviest rain on record in Devon and gale force winds have meant that working conditions have been too hazardous over the last week, especially this weekend, for any significant work to take place and hardly anyone turned up to dig (thanks to those that did). The quantity of rain has meant that newly dug parts of the track, especially berms, have become water logged and unstable. If they were to be ridden in their current state they would be destroyed and would only need to be rebuilt again.
We’re gutted that the track will not be open next week, but after putting in over 18 months hard graft to bring an amazing new track to Gawton, all agreed they would rather wait a few more days for the track conditions to improve than to see all their hard work ruined and to open it when it is not safe. We also wanted to let as many people know in advance, as lots of people have said they were coming down to be among the first to ride it… Rest assured as soon as the weather gives us a few days free of rain, we’ll re-assess the track and let you know that it’s open.