East

For the dedicated young men and women who enjoy it downhill mountain biking and boarding is dramatic and dangerous.

For country walkers it can be a menace.

Ringland Hills

For 10 years ‘AJ’ built jumps in his local woods in Ringland Hills;

AJ had built a number of jumps

"I came up here first time in 1995 – found that the hills were a good place to ride – met a few friends."

The hills are in open countryside a few miles outside Norwich.

And AJ’s jumps also attracted mountain boarders… Raphael Laroche is a UK champion and a member of the 'Flying Squirrels Mountain Board Club':

"We decided to relocate and make it our local place to ride… we moved here from Kent... it was that good.

"Out of all the places in the country that  I’ve ridden in… like non-competition places… Ringland Hills is by far the best that I’ve ever ridden."

Flattened

But, the Ringland jumps are no more.

In March 2008 Ringland Parish Council hired a bulldozer and flattened the lot.

Before the bulldozers

The council said residents had complained and the council was concerned about safety and damage to trees.

So they asked the bikers to stop digging and form a club to manage the site.

The council told Inside Out that it had tried to reach a compromise with the bikers but an agreement couldn't be reached.

Chicksands

There are other sites where the authorities and the bikers have managed to work together.

When AJ was starting to build his jumps at Ringland, a group of bikers was doing the same thing at Chicksands near Bedford.

The Chicksands Bike Park has developed into one of the best places for dirt jumping in the country.

It’s run by a bikers club, the Beds Fat Trax, but the woodland is managed by the Forestry Commission.

'Them and Us'

Kevin Stannard from the Forestry Commission says as fast as they were filling in lumps and bumps for the sake of public safety, the bikers were building the jumps again and it was starting to create a 'them and us' situation.

So, they got a group of riders together and as a result the Beds Fat Trax was formed.

Inside Out took AJ and fellow mountain biker, Simon Hunter, from Ringland to Chicksands.

AJ was impressed:

"With a little bit of work, this is what we could have had – something like this, if not better."

Could it work at Ringland?

Help to find a new site may be available from Active Norfolk which is a partnership between local councils and Sport England.

Ian Grange from Active Norfolk says there are various ways they can help both in terms of finding them somewhere to ride and organising club membership.

But, in the meantime, for AJ and Simon, Ringland just isn’t the same without the jumps:

"Here at Ringland, we were at home… it was our stomping ground… And it hurts if you lose your home, it hurts."