In the UK there are a few relevant laws to do with
illegal building.
Firstly, even if the woods are open access for pedestrians
you're probably not supposed to ride off bridleways, so
you're trespassing. This is a civil offence though, so it's
not like the police can haul you in for it. Also riding is
unofficially tolerated in a lot of areas anyway. Basically
if you're allowed to walk your dog in the woods, this isn't
too much to worry about it.
Next up, if you damage trees, you're potentially up for
criminal damage. However, unless it's a commercial woods and
you've destroyed tons and tons of trees, this isn't ever
likely to happen to anyone.
The most important one though, is that the landowner of the
woods has a legal duty of care to people who are in the
woods. What this means, is that if the landowner knows there
are dangerous structures in the woods and someone falls off
them, there's a possibility that the landowner could be sued
for it. Because of this, if the landowner finds out about
anything you build without permission in the woods, they'll
probably chainsaw it down.
The best thing to do is to try and find out about any legal
trail-building near you, maybe ask in bikeshops, or ask
local mountain bikers. However, it's quite likely that this
will not be north-shore, because it requires quite a lot of
organisation to get allowed to legally build structures.
That's why only 3 or 4 of the forestry trailbuilding sites
have got permission to build north shore yet.
However, if you're building illegally, the most important
thing is that it should be hard to find. It shouldn't be
near any obvious paths or visible from any of the main paths
in the woods. You need it to be made so that dog walkers
don't come across it and tell someone. You should also keep
quiet about exactly where it is and definately never post
the exact location on the internet.
If you get told by the landowner to stop building, or if
stuff gets torn down, it's not worth building any more in
the same location, it'll just get chainsawed.
Practical things to remember when building
1) Only use dead wood (fallen down), best is wood you got
from somewhere else.(*)
2) Don't use really rotted up wood
3) If you're using a live tree as a support, if
possible don't nail into it, use forks in the tree
as support points.
4) Expect illegal building to get pulled down at some point,
don't spend too much time on it.
You need a saw, lots and lots of nails and maybe an axe. A
chainsaw is nice if you have one, but not really vital.
Don't forget, even if the wood costs nothing, nails cost
money, so building shore isn't totally free. The stuff in
unicyclist.comalbuo83Open ↗ apparently had
several hundred pounds worth of nails in it.
Joe (*) Building sites often have skips full of wood going
for nothing if you ask.
--
joemarshall - dumb blonde
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