Trail sabotage has becoming a near regular horror on UK mountain bike trails recently, and there doesn’t seem to be any limits. One recent instalment near Delamere (above) looked as if it was taken straight from the set of a low-budget horror film.
The big question is, why do some people think placing potentially deadly obstacles in the middle of a trail is acceptable behaviour? These aren’t the kinds of people who would be starting bar fights or kicking dogs in front of cars when they’re back in the city, so how come they don’t think twice before stringing a piece of wire between two trees?
Largely, the guilty parties in all this seem to be dog walkers or hikers who believe they have some sort of vigilante calling to “take back their outdoor trails” – the problem with that of course being that more often than not, it wasn’t their trail to start with, and often the trails in question are specifically mountain bike dedicated.
In our view though, the rise of trail sabotage has come as a direct escalation of the almost commonplace ill-will being directed towards commuting and road cyclists in cities around the world.