Is Parkwood Open Yet?

The status of the new trail at Parkwood Springs is what we get asked about more than anything else at the moment. Not to mention the lively debates that it has sparked over on our Facebook Page. The project has been running nearly five years, so what you see on the ground is the product of years of hard work. But before it can be opened to the public there are still a few little things that need to be sorted before it can be fully open. SCC Parks and Woodlands trail guru Jon Dallow fills us in on where it’s at….

The good news is:

The trail works! (We think so.. Tracey Moseley thought so too when she was shown round the other day).

The trails bedded in nicely, bar a few bits of tlc that Tom is on with. The signage is nearly all in, bar the notice boards that Kieran the designer is working on. Sight lines and trail corridors have been checked, tweaked and cleared where needed thanks to Tom again and volunteers Faccado and Mick with over 80 bags of rubbish being cleared as part of that process.

There has been lots of work with local community (with Ed and Alex from Recycle) and continued support from the Friends of Parkwood Springs. As always remember this is ‘City centre’ not ‘Trail centre’, more on that in Dirt Magazine hopefully.

Plenty of people have been involved in helping us test the trail to date, so thanks for everyone input its been invaluable, local riders like Ben have also been fantastic at keeping their eyes and ears open if any problems have arisen and helping sort things out .

We will consider accommodating an extra volunteer tester session, if things drag on too long, so watch this space.

Finally the demise of the Ski Village means we have been working hard so the car park at Cookswood Road should be open at weekends. Clubs will also able to get hold of keys to the car park for other sessions at other times of the day. So all good…..

However we still need complete a number of tasks that support such a free and open access Mountain bike facility on public land.

Before it can be ‘Officially Open’ .

So here is the still ‘ to do’ list

-We are working with Biketrack finalising the ‘trail inventory’. This lists all the trail features / corridor / signage etc and is what we use to manage the trail from.

-Risk assessments are being finalised. We need to take the emergency services around the trail so they know what is where should someone have an off and need their assistance.

-As the first purpose built mountain cycle trail on SCC land we are also doing an extra bit of work around ‘grade benchmarking/ standardising for Sheffield’.

In short that means demonstrating that the grade for Parkwood skills loop fits in with the grades of the other trails around the city. E.g. Steel City Track / Heeley / or commonly ridden Bridleways. Houndkirk, Devil’s Elbow, etc

So is parkwood open? … In short, sorry, No.

Will give you another update in couple of weeks

Jon Dallow