Jamie Beaton and the Petersfield massive have been putting in some hard graft down at the Queen Elizabeth Country Park.

Jamie: You want winter digging? Well here goes! Since June myself and a group of mates have started making improvements and extensions to the trails at Queen Elizabeth Country Park, near Petersfield in Hampshire.

There has been an orange “advanced” mountain bike trail there for about 20 years, but not a lot has changed in those 20 years so the park approached us to help out. Since June we have added over 1.5km of new trail and at a recent trail building committee meeting (4 guys in a pub) came up with a plan for the next year and a half. The trail will be re-launched as a red graded trail next summer, by which time we should have added another 1.5km and tidied up and improved a lot of the trail.

The trails will have jumps, berms, tables and pump sections all designed to improve the skills of people that ride here. Long term plans include a black run, skills area, blue and green trails. So far the feedback from people riding the trails has been really positive and hopefully we can continue to get more people riding the trails.

The park operates at a loss and we are volunteers with full time jobs who give up their weekends (and riding time) every 4 weeks for our dig weekends.

Our next dig weekend is 5th & 6th November.

We are always looking for more volunteers, people to ride the trail and sponsors would be great. If anyone wishes to contact us they can e-mail [email protected] or contact me on twitter @eldiablobrewery

Keep your Winter Digging photos and stories coming in to Billy