Coillte MTB Strategy ?

remember this..
http://forum.epicmtb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15802

I've heard nothing but Niall Davis told me it was definitely going ahead and that Coillte had big plans to build trail centers all over Ireland. The big problem the MBI and The Offroad Commission had with us and our response to EPIC being banned from running events was that our "responses" would see all m
Mtbers tarred with the same brush and all their own personal projects would be halted. However, it was not going to affect the National strategy plan because it
wasn't linked to Club activity.Now bear in mind that we talked to Coillte several times over the years with MBI and the OC about the Leadmines, we even walked the course with them and I signed an agreement to manage the trail and nothing happened.
Now that was before we had any row with them.
I have posted this in here because I don't want people to start ranting on an open forum but theres no problem ranting in here as its members and people we trust.
Having said that I'd still rather have a constructive debate about it. It appears to have calmed down and the focus seems to be on the lad who is suing everybody for crashing in Whitehorse.
Now having no access to Coillte lands means we have to find a private venue to run events.
Now for XC that shouldn't be a problem. Excellent events can be ran in park venues. We just need a Park or like Killarney have found.a youth Hostel with a small forest on it.
I have had reports from all over the place about Coillte clamping down on MTB events for all manner of reasons. It seems to be the year for it. However it was always coming. Especially as they are building more trail centers.
It would be brilliant of we could secure a venue somewhere we could run an event.

Maybe even a replacement for the National Champs..

Don't tell me you didn't see that coming !!!! It would be a great way to show the few backstabbers and whingers down in AntiEPIC HQ that we are still Top Dogs with events !

It will be interesting to see how Coillte's plans to corral mountainbiking into there trail centres will work..I can only presume that MBI and the "offroad" commision are the ones helping to formulate the strategy on our behalf? Do we even know the potential sites they have earmarked?

As with anything to do with semi-states like Coillte it could be a couple of years before we get to see any trails being made...In the meantime we have to deal with permit refusals which are down to litigious people like the guy in Whitehorse..

So do we make our aim to secure a private venue while all this happens with Coillte in the background?

Is powers court an option there was an mtb race held there years ago I seam to remember ??

yeah, we have to accept that Coillte are going to squeeze us out of their forests for racing. So a private venue is the only option.
Lets work on that. Somebody must know somebody, I realise Dublin is probably a bad place to try and find a private Demense but Wicklow, Kildare should have something.

May well be that suitable private venue's are v thin on the ground, though it's good to see what MBCC are doing with Tracton.

Pardon my ingnorance, but if we offered to indemnify Coillte against liabilty for races being run in there forests would that work?
I know we have the likes of Bill Murphy to deal with but there has to be some way..

is anamoe not a possibility ??

Interesting!

http://www.stickybottle.com/latest-n...races-at-risk/

[QUOTE
It would be brilliant of we could secure a venue somewhere we could run an event.

[/QUOTE]
come here when you have an hour to spare some day i'll show you somewhere

Would tymon park work is there enough ups and downs ... And is there a reason we can't use phoenix park agen .. The reason I'm asking is my dad is part of a running club I've asked him to get contacts for us ???

I discussed CI with Ireland's most Famous / Respected and world beating cyclist this week. His view is that CI are piggy backing off the social cyclists in the country. They make no contribution, " we have a megazillion cyclists and we are great".
The inference is "we encouraged them all" .........when the fact, they do jack.......... so CI are spin city and they are claiming responsibility for the growth in cycling.

In truth the growth is down to the clubs and some jobsworth(CI) is claiming credit ...... sound familiar.......... ????????????

So, it may have nothing to do with the offroad commission, they are merely talking to a shower of muppets and
CI are about as useful to the roadies as they are to MTB. It's all PR...............

Jackson..Annamoe is in the Custody of Robin ..but I would be delighted for you to show me around somewhere deadly.
Andy, the Phoenix park is not available.
Brian W, you are 100% dead on the money.

Now lets not get bogged down in the why can't we get the Phoenix Park , etc.

Lets accept that Coillte will never give us access.

Lets also be positive that there are loads of private venues we never even realised were private.

I understand some here won't really know me and that I haven't been involved in biking a fraction of the time as most members of the club.

However I have been around the outdoor / niche sport scene more than long enough to be reasonable well informed.

Firstly Richie I wouldn't believe a word out of the sack of Sh#t Davis mouth and him promising what Coillte have planned to do, all you have to do is look at how a non profile club like EPIC were treated and now how Garry in Ruffriders has had the rug pulled out from under him. While a commercial set up like biking.ie seem to have free reign to do what they like even wise. Davis is in bed with Coillte much more than any of us realise I would imagine.

Coillte what little or nothing to do with Mountain Bikers unless it is on their terms, as long as the Off road Commission / other Clubs seem happy to sell others down the river at will thinking that it will further their own personal goals we the MTB community will not be taken seriously by not only Coillte but also Cycling Ireland and any other body you can think of.

Only recently I spent over an hour with the famed Daithi De F and long story short is the land is theirs and they are under no obligation to do anything they don't want which includes entertaining most things MTB related.

There is however one way to get Coillte's attention and that's money, they love the stuff and until they can generate money from club run events relations are going to continue to deteriorate as time goes by.

We as a community / club could sit on our thumbs crying what a moral outrage this all is and don't get me wrong it really is an outrage OR as Richie said we can try go down the private land route.

I see the private land route as the only way we can secure locations for the future if Coillte keep their current stance.

At the top of my head there are two locations that come to mind. As all ready mentioned above there is Glendalough Estate that already has loads of single track designed by Robin and having ridden it a couple of times it could hold events almost straight away without any major work. It's possible the best place given the current coillte situation to hold the Nationals unless Killruddery becomes available again.

Having had a couple of meetings with both brothers and their marketing manager they are ready to rock and let people use the trails but this comes back to money. For the likes of the Nationals or NPS they want a fee of about €10 - €15 per rider, I've never run a big mtb event so I'm not sure if that kind of overhead could be supported or not.


Another potential place is Kippure Estate, most will know of the small intro race series that IMBRC held there a couple of years back, while that should a very small amount of what the place had to offer, the scope for more is massive. While I imagine Kippure would be more financially viable to run events from there would be massive work needed to design and built trails of NPS / Nationals standard.

Kippure doesn't have the money to invest in trails but I'm sure if handled correctly and with vision there would be the potential to have a set up that would last long into the future.


As I said those are just two venues off the top of my head there have to be far more, the main issue we will come across is money. Very few landowners are going to give up access unless they are getting something out of it. That said this is a sure fire way to continue the growth and secure the future of MTB in Ireland.

As a side note to the venue situation if all the clubs (same could be said for business mtb related) don't unite and continue to cut the back off each other we won't have a MTB community worth saving and the likes of Coillte / CI will continue laughing at us as they seem to be doing now.

If all that seems like a frustrated rant, then I suppose it is.


Adrian

Adrian..I am in both the Outdoor world and MTB one longer than anybody. Coillte unfortunately are not interested in making money from Mountainbiking, only wood.
Lets try and keep this civil, we have already proven that bad mouthing people doesn't work. Niall has never done anything on me and I like the guy. So lets keep it civil.
We need a private venue. If Robin is in Annamoe, I am not going to use it as well. I feel very strongly about people raping other peoples venues. I don't care if other people have done it.
Besides this discussion is about getting our own venues.
Coillte ? who are they now. ?

Get this back on track now.

ok we are looking for a venue but am i right in thinking that realistically we are looking to run an event in 2013 because its unlikely we can create something from scratch for 2012

sorry Jackson, just saw this. I think realistically we are looking for an event in 2013, after talking to the Committee its probably best to have a break this year and come back next year flying.
So if we could come up with a couple of private venues and run a couple of races, I think we'd be on to a good thing.

remember this..
http://forum.epicmtb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15802

I've heard nothing but Niall Davis told me it was definitely going ahead and that Coillte had big plans to build trail centers all over Ireland. The big problem the MBI and The Offroad Commission had with us and our response to EPIC being banned from running events was that our "responses" would see all m
Mtbers tarred with the same brush and all their own personal projects would be halted. However, it was not going to affect the National strategy plan because it
wasn't linked to Club activity.Now bear in mind that we talked to Coillte several times over the years with MBI and the OC about the Leadmines, we even walked the course with them and I signed an agreement to manage the trail and nothing happened.
Now that was before we had any row with them.
I have posted this in here because I don't want people to start ranting on an open forum but theres no problem ranting in here as its members and people we trust.
Having said that I'd still rather have a constructive debate about it. It appears to have calmed down and the focus seems to be on the lad who is suing everybody for crashing in Whitehorse.
Now having no access to Coillte lands means we have to find a private venue to run events.
Now for XC that shouldn't be a problem. Excellent events can be ran in park venues. We just need a Park or like Killarney have found.a youth Hostel with a small forest on it.
I have had reports from all over the place about Coillte clamping down on MTB events for all manner of reasons. It seems to be the year for it. However it was always coming. Especially as they are building more trail centers.
It would be brilliant of we could secure a venue somewhere we could run an event.

Maybe even a replacement for the National Champs..

Don't tell me you didn't see that coming !!!! It would be a great way to show the few backstabbers and whingers down in AntiEPIC HQ that we are still Top Dogs with events !

It will be interesting to see how Coillte's plans to corral mountainbiking into there trail centres will work..I can only presume that MBI and the "offroad" commision are the ones helping to formulate the strategy on our behalf? Do we even know the potential sites they have earmarked?

As with anything to do with semi-states like Coillte it could be a couple of years before we get to see any trails being made...In the meantime we have to deal with permit refusals which are down to litigious people like the guy in Whitehorse..

So do we make our aim to secure a private venue while all this happens with Coillte in the background?

Is powers court an option there was an mtb race held there years ago I seam to remember ??

yeah, we have to accept that Coillte are going to squeeze us out of their forests for racing. So a private venue is the only option.
Lets work on that. Somebody must know somebody, I realise Dublin is probably a bad place to try and find a private Demense but Wicklow, Kildare should have something.

May well be that suitable private venue's are v thin on the ground, though it's good to see what MBCC are doing with Tracton.

Pardon my ingnorance, but if we offered to indemnify Coillte against liabilty for races being run in there forests would that work?
I know we have the likes of Bill Murphy to deal with but there has to be some way..

is anamoe not a possibility ??

Interesting!

http://www.stickybottle.com/latest-n...races-at-risk/

[QUOTE
It would be brilliant of we could secure a venue somewhere we could run an event.

[/QUOTE]
come here when you have an hour to spare some day i'll show you somewhere

Would tymon park work is there enough ups and downs ... And is there a reason we can't use phoenix park agen .. The reason I'm asking is my dad is part of a running club I've asked him to get contacts for us ???

I discussed CI with Ireland's most Famous / Respected and world beating cyclist this week. His view is that CI are piggy backing off the social cyclists in the country. They make no contribution, " we have a megazillion cyclists and we are great".
The inference is "we encouraged them all" .........when the fact, they do jack.......... so CI are spin city and they are claiming responsibility for the growth in cycling.

In truth the growth is down to the clubs and some jobsworth(CI) is claiming credit ...... sound familiar.......... ????????????

So, it may have nothing to do with the offroad commission, they are merely talking to a shower of muppets and
CI are about as useful to the roadies as they are to MTB. It's all PR...............

Jackson..Annamoe is in the Custody of Robin ..but I would be delighted for you to show me around somewhere deadly.
Andy, the Phoenix park is not available.
Brian W, you are 100% dead on the money.

Now lets not get bogged down in the why can't we get the Phoenix Park , etc.

Lets accept that Coillte will never give us access.

Lets also be positive that there are loads of private venues we never even realised were private.

I understand some here won't really know me and that I haven't been involved in biking a fraction of the time as most members of the club.

However I have been around the outdoor / niche sport scene more than long enough to be reasonable well informed.

Firstly Richie I wouldn't believe a word out of the sack of Sh#t Davis mouth and him promising what Coillte have planned to do, all you have to do is look at how a non profile club like EPIC were treated and now how Garry in Ruffriders has had the rug pulled out from under him. While a commercial set up like biking.ie seem to have free reign to do what they like even wise. Davis is in bed with Coillte much more than any of us realise I would imagine.

Coillte what little or nothing to do with Mountain Bikers unless it is on their terms, as long as the Off road Commission / other Clubs seem happy to sell others down the river at will thinking that it will further their own personal goals we the MTB community will not be taken seriously by not only Coillte but also Cycling Ireland and any other body you can think of.

Only recently I spent over an hour with the famed Daithi De F and long story short is the land is theirs and they are under no obligation to do anything they don't want which includes entertaining most things MTB related.

There is however one way to get Coillte's attention and that's money, they love the stuff and until they can generate money from club run events relations are going to continue to deteriorate as time goes by.

We as a community / club could sit on our thumbs crying what a moral outrage this all is and don't get me wrong it really is an outrage OR as Richie said we can try go down the private land route.

I see the private land route as the only way we can secure locations for the future if Coillte keep their current stance.

At the top of my head there are two locations that come to mind. As all ready mentioned above there is Glendalough Estate that already has loads of single track designed by Robin and having ridden it a couple of times it could hold events almost straight away without any major work. It's possible the best place given the current coillte situation to hold the Nationals unless Killruddery becomes available again.

Having had a couple of meetings with both brothers and their marketing manager they are ready to rock and let people use the trails but this comes back to money. For the likes of the Nationals or NPS they want a fee of about €10 - €15 per rider, I've never run a big mtb event so I'm not sure if that kind of overhead could be supported or not.


Another potential place is Kippure Estate, most will know of the small intro race series that IMBRC held there a couple of years back, while that should a very small amount of what the place had to offer, the scope for more is massive. While I imagine Kippure would be more financially viable to run events from there would be massive work needed to design and built trails of NPS / Nationals standard.

Kippure doesn't have the money to invest in trails but I'm sure if handled correctly and with vision there would be the potential to have a set up that would last long into the future.


As I said those are just two venues off the top of my head there have to be far more, the main issue we will come across is money. Very few landowners are going to give up access unless they are getting something out of it. That said this is a sure fire way to continue the growth and secure the future of MTB in Ireland.

As a side note to the venue situation if all the clubs (same could be said for business mtb related) don't unite and continue to cut the back off each other we won't have a MTB community worth saving and the likes of Coillte / CI will continue laughing at us as they seem to be doing now.

If all that seems like a frustrated rant, then I suppose it is.


Adrian

Adrian..I am in both the Outdoor world and MTB one longer than anybody. Coillte unfortunately are not interested in making money from Mountainbiking, only wood.
Lets try and keep this civil, we have already proven that bad mouthing people doesn't work. Niall has never done anything on me and I like the guy. So lets keep it civil.
We need a private venue. If Robin is in Annamoe, I am not going to use it as well. I feel very strongly about people raping other peoples venues. I don't care if other people have done it.
Besides this discussion is about getting our own venues.
Coillte ? who are they now. ?

Get this back on track now.

ok we are looking for a venue but am i right in thinking that realistically we are looking to run an event in 2013 because its unlikely we can create something from scratch for 2012

sorry Jackson, just saw this. I think realistically we are looking for an event in 2013, after talking to the Committee its probably best to have a break this year and come back next year flying.
So if we could come up with a couple of private venues and run a couple of races, I think we'd be on to a good thing.