Rad South West DH spot Gawton gets a new track and a posh hut!

Gawton Club Secretary Brett Nicolle sent over some details of the new track and hut (which may or may not contain a mini-bar, jacuzzi and cafe) at Gawton.

The new, as yet un-named track, will be open to ride from Monday the 7th of May. There will be an ‘official’ opening some time in the summer, hopefully to coincide with the start of the uplift service and the hut opening (which are now finally going ahead having agreed terms for the lease with the local authority).

But they’re going to have a ‘soft’ opening to get it ridden in and give us the chance to tweak it a bit over the next couple of months.

Brett says about Jabba The Hut: “The plan is to have an employee, at weekends at first. The hut has a separate toilet. We will contract a cleaning company to come and open and close it during daylight hours 7 days a week. Inside the main part of the hut there is a small kitchen, an ‘admin’ area, a small display section for bike spares and accessories supplied to us by Koo bikes and a seating area around the wood burning stove.

We will be serving pre-packed snacks, drinks & tea and coffee, we will not be serving food prepared on site at first, but hopefully that will come (because that’s a whole other level of red tape!). Having an employee means that you will be able to buy memberships or day tickets on site (although they will still be available online and from Dartmoor Cycles). It also means that the site will be more secure (although we have never had a theft of bikes from the site, only fly tipping after hours).

There will also be a ‘pound in the slot’ bike wash and hopefully some ‘keysafe’ lockers, so you don’t have to carry your keys with you on the tracks. The uplift service will also run from there.”