New Mountain Bike Trails
Tuesday 8 November 2011, 1:38PM
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Fancy doing some hard labour building tracks in your lunch hour?
John Randal does. Every Wednesday at lunchtime he swaps his suit - from his day job as senior lecturer at Victoria University's School of Economics and Finance - for shorts and a t-shirt, throws a grubber over his shoulder, jumps on his bike and rides to either Mount Victoria or Polhill Reserve. There he spends a good hour digging and clearing scrub.
He's one of many mountain bikers adding trails in and around Wellington City Council reserves. He's also the head of a newly formed mountain bike group, Wellington Trails Alliance (WTA), which is a collective of trail builders from the Wellington region.
The tracks are planned in consultation with Council parks staff and aren't exclusively for mountain bikers - recreational walkers and trail runners are big users as well. They are there for everyone to use.
Trail networks have been extended all over Wellington, particularly on the Town Belt, Polhill Reserve and Miramar Peninsula.
John says the group has around 150 core volunteers who spend a couple of hours at the weekends, after work or during lunch-breaks, trail building.
He says WTA's goal is to eventually connect the city to all suburbs and the suburbs to one another.
If you want to get involved in helping extend Wellington's off-road network, contact Wellington Trails Alliance on wgtntrails@gmail.com or via Facebook: