Hamsterley Trailblazers

The Hamsterley Trailblazers – established in 2003 – are an affiliated British Cycling club with Go Ride status. We are responsible for the funding, building and maintaining of mountain bike trails in Hamsterley Forest which are free to use, open to everyone and cater for ALL abilities. Having built over 20km of single track trail (much of that by hand) The Trailblazers won the prestigious ‘Trail of the Year’ award from MBR magazine in 2019 for our newest trail ‘K-Line’ and in 2017 were awarded the Queens Award for Voluntary Service for our contributions to the local cycling community. Despite lockdown, official Forestry England figures from ‘trail counters’ show 94,000 users from April 2020 – April 2021, in a year where we have been prevented to carry out ANY maintenance, the trail network is in need of some serious renovation.

Additionaly, the Trailblazers have financed the training and assessment of 20 coaches with British Cycling to deliver professional mountain bike coaching to children from as young as 3 to 18, including not for profit coaching to adult groups. Pre COVID, over 90 young people were coming to these regular monthly sessions with over 180 children on our registers.

After a 14 month – Covid forced – break, we are finally getting back to coaching and fixing the trail network but now need to find additional funds to purchase materials, (stone, shovels, wheelbarrows etc) and to renew first aid qualifications for coaches. Your support will help us to ‘make it happen’.