Penmachno village in the heart of the Snowdonia National Park in North Wales was the home to this long term project to deliver a community regeneration and local tourism project. Working with the local community group Menter Bro Machno. Gwydyr Forest near Penmachno was chosen to be developed as one of Wales's original 'Big 5' mountain bike trails.
Stage 1 of the contract was all project development, developing the concept, sourcing funding options, commissioning route corridors and designs, community consultations and statutory permissions. This work lasted for nearly two years working closely with Menter Bro Machno and included:
Project management
Project planning
Concept development
Community consultations
Statutory consultations
Managing community and landowner agreements
Mentoring and facilitation
Funding sourcing and funding strategy
Planning consultations
Stage 2 of this project was to project management the delivery of the trails on the ground. This stage lasted nearly two years and involved the project management of Loop 1. This included 10 new sections of red graded singletrack mountain bike trail totalling 11.5 km, in some of the toughest trail building terrain in Wales. The project management role included:
Managing planning applications
Managing partnership agreements and memorandums of understanding
Funding bid preparation and management
Procurement of all trail construction services
Managing project schedules and budgets
Design supervision during construction
Contract management of all commercial and voluntary services
Installing trail counters
Managing the delivery of the signage scheme
Stage 3, the final stage of the project included the project management and delivery of Loop 2. This included 9 new sections of red grade singletrack mountain bike trail totalling 9.75 km.
7 separate professional trail construction crews delivered the two loops over a three and a half year period.
Cartwright Associates raised and managed over £900,000 of funding for this project. After several years of planning and a 3 year build by 7 separate professional trail construction crews, 18km of red grade mountain bike singletrack trail was completed, creating the 30km Penmachno MTB Trails.
At time of completion it was the UK's longest red grade MTB trail and referred to as an exemplar project, the definitive red grade XC MTB trail.
It was a privilege to work with Menter Bro Machno members, past and present along with the trail crews, both professionals and volunteers for what was a truly epic build in beautiful, but highly challenging terrain. Penmachno trails was funded by Cydcoed and Adfywio grants.
Visit MBM's web site and Facebook pages at penmachnobiketrails.org.uk, they remain a resourceful and highly active MTB community group (since 2003) with exemplary car park charging and volunteer maintenance schemes.
