UKH

Derbyshire County Council are at it again with their 'maintenance' of Peak District trails & paths.

Latest shocking example on works through the Pindale SSSI:

http://peakdistrictmtb.org/alarming-work-on-pin-dale-by-derbyshire-county-c...

Thankfully, a rapid SM campaign by mountain bikers halted the works; loads of DCC wasted time & money, plus the remedial works will be tricky.

http://peakdistrictmtb.org/pin-dale-derbyshire-county-council-responds-halt...

And DCC want to have a go at Cave Dale! 

I'm generally an optimist, but DCC have certainly brought out a pessimistic streak in me. Their track record on 'upgrading' BOATs and bridleways suggests that their response this time was just "Oops we got rumbled again. Never mind, we can always claim 'good intentions'. Carry on , lads."

LOL, it's not really construction waste, it's recycled material... It's okay though, they're liaising with stakeholders 🙂

FFS, I mean I just dont get this, it's not even like those paths are badly eroded or in need of work. I cant imagine walkers really want this sort of thing either, it's just trashing the Dale!

I've said it on other channels, and I say this as someone who has rather enjoyed visits to Pin Dale and have a climbed a good bunch of the routes there as well as having cycled up and down it a few times - "trashing" is pushing it a bit considering the dale contains 1) and old quarry with all sorts of dumped trash there (a burnt out half car last time I was there for instance). 2) one of the few BOATs left in the area so regular traffic of 4WD "lets off road!" types (again back in May I watched the 4WD drivers dragging the burnt out half car round and round in circles in the quarry for no apparent reasons while we climbed). 3) Regular motorcross bike traffic, who not being limited to track in at the bottom of dale, raz up and down the hillsides to each side, leaving obvious and badly eroded tracks. Colin Wells was telling me on Facebook that the west side of the dale which is a Scheduled Monument because of early (Roman) lead mining, and that's been damaged by motorbikes.

I agree with everyone else that what has been done there so far looks rubbish though.

Fair play, youre quite right the bottom section of pin dale is rather post industrial. to be honest I was getting confuses in my righteousness indignation and more thinking of cave dale.

Cave Dale is a beauty, on foot or on bike. Not ridden down it for some time, should go again soon and see if I can get down cleanly again - no dabs!

The main part of Pindale is a (geological) SSSI.

The abuse by others of the old quarry area (and Pindale in general) does not excuse DCC for the materials used and their apparent gung-ho approach.

I shudder to think what they could do with Cave Dale

Yeah, on the FB group Colin pointed that out. Like lots of the old quarries they seem to support a lot of plant diversity and probably animal that go with that. I don't really see what there was to gain by resurfacing it in any way, but maybe they have some legal responsibility to keep BOATs drivable? It's got to cost tens of thousands of pounds even doing a bodge job like that. I wonder why they are doing it?

Not that this is really relevant but a lot (most?) Of geological SSSIs are created through quarrying rather than dispite it. In fact sometimes to preserve a geological SSSI someone needs go in with an excavator and clean up old faces.  No idea what the Pindale SSSI is based on, just a point of interest. 

It's geological: https://designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk/SiteDetail.aspx?SiteCode=s100...