The Tale of a Dartmoor Cycle Track (or two)
A silly story about an udderly ridiculous plan
Part 1: The Big Plan
Farmer Phil has the weight of the world on his shoulders. There’s been a late frost and his lambs caught a chill and everyone keeps saying that this bonkers weather is farming's fault anyways. To make matters worse, his wife, Pat, is getting rather rotund which makes her very grumpy. She spends her life shuttling Jack and Jill between school and beyond, and between that and the farm rarely gets a moment to do much else. She keeps herself fueled with Maltesers which helps her mood, but does nothing good for her waistline.
Farmer Phil has a brainwave! How about he build an exercise track on the perimeter of his farm. He’ll buy Pat a bicycle so that she can quickly nip out for a bit of exercise whilst waiting for the dough to prove in the oven. He’ll make it 3 meters wide so that Granny Annie in her mobility scooter can race the kids up and down without causing an accident. His neighbour, Flash Harry, thinks an exercise track is a great idea as he’s dead keen on making it to the Olympics one day and has already acquired every form of lycra you can possibly dream of. Harry’s not so keen for Sally to use it though, as her pony’s poop might make him slip and that might spell the end to his lifelong aspirations.
Phil is having a bit of a problem with the maths. He needs to order hardcore to lay a firm base to support all the comings and goings on this track. He’s not quite sure how thick it should be, so does a quick Google and comes up with this: https://www.sustrans.org.uk/for-professionals/infrastructure/sustrans-traffic-free-routes-and-greenways-design-guide/sustrans-traffic-free-routes-and-greenways-design-guide-contents/2019-design-guidance/part-2-design-details/8-path-specification-details
Phil scratches his head. That all seems a lot more complicated than he ever imagined. It's a bit boggy around here, so he’ll surely need a capping layer underneath the sub-base, so that means a lot more rock and a lot more digging. All these calculations are doing Phil’s head in, so he decides to enlist the help of Jack and Jill’s maths teacher. He sends the following simple questions along:
For a track 1 mile long and 3m wide, how many tons of stone will he need, to create a 200mm thick compacted capping layer? And how many tons of aggregate, to form a 150mm compacted sub-base on top of that? He hasn’t quite decided on a surface layer yet as Harry and Sally are still arguing on that one.
How many 10 ton trucks (since bigger trucks can’t fit down the lane) will he have to order to bring these materials up from the nearest quarry in Cornwall?
Jack and Jill are looking a bit glum. It turns out that their maths teacher is a bit of a no-dig gardening green bean and has sent some rather tricky questions back to Dad:
What is the total volume of soil he plans on digging out or compacting for his track construction project?
Has he heard of soil carbon sequestration?
Has he calculated the carbon cost of The Big Plan?
Farmer Phil now has a severe bout of eco-guilt. He tosses and turns that night, thinking of all the pros and cons of his well-meaning plan. Surely his track will get more people cycling, which must surely mean less driving in the long run? That can only be a good thing for the planet, surely. Surely? In any case, the government says too many people are getting diabetes and we all need to exercise. On that subject, he’s already bought Pat a snazzy bicycle for Christmas.
A hedge! Phil is ecstatic with his new idea! A hedge will make up for all that soil damage and might even bring the turtle dove back if he lets it grow 4 meters tall and nice and thick with lots of hawthorn and brambles. Better still, to appease his eco-guilt, he’ll only clip it every few years which should save him a lot of time and money. He should even be able to claim some cash back from the government on the Environmental Land Management scheme. Genius! This is good all round!
What could possibly go wrong?
Part 2: A few years later…
Granny Annie seems a bit miserable. At first the grandkids spent loads of time with her racing their scooters along the track, but now Jack and Jill are constantly up the hill instead. They seem to think the track is boring and Grannie Annie is inclined to agree, since all she can see from her mobility scooter, is hedge. Plus that, Flash Harry is annoyed because he got thwacked on the face by a rogue bramble and it even tore a hole in his lycra vest. At least he doesn’t have to worry about pony poop, because Sally’s gone to ride elsewhere, because why would she ride on a track when she’s got the open moors instead?
As for Pat, her snazzy bicycle is rusting in the barn. She complains that the seat feels like she’s wearing a granite g-string and in any case, she doesn’t have enough time between the kids’ activities and cooking, to get in and out of sweaty exercise clothes. Besides, whoever thought that the kids might start cycling to school and back didn’t bother to ask her about the practicalities of it all. She could have told them that when it’s bucketing with rain (which seems to be a lot of the time) trying to get the kids to cycle (let alone her to accompany them) is about as ridiculous as trying to herd sheep in a straight line. Besides, she prefers doing Joe Wicks’ exercise class on the telly when nobody is looking and when the kids are out of her hair. There’s a bucket of Maltesers hidden behind the sofa, which makes this whole exercise malarkey infinitely more tolerable.
Farmer Phil decides he’d best do some hedge maintenance so that Grannie Annie can see Castle Drogo again. Harry seems pleased that those annoyingly wide hedges will be cropped back, making space for him to whizz laps around Annie again. In any case, nobody’s seen a turtle dove yet, so a thorough hedge hack probably won’t do too much harm. Phil revs up his favourite blue tractor and gets to it, pushing that pang of eco-guilt out of his mind.
Harry’s not so pleased in a few days' time. After the tenth tyre puncture, he gets into a massive argument with Phil about whose responsibility it should be to sweep up those devilish thorn clippings. Granny Annie is also not using the track, because even though the new view is much better, all that debris is making for a bumpy ride and she dare not ask Harry to fix her flat tyre when he’s swearing and cursing like a sailor. Besides, one needs to be a sailor to get around the track, what with that massive pool of water flooding the way. Nobody had thought to consider run-off when choosing that nice flat contour at the bottom of the slope. It turns out that water seeps to the lowest level, just like some people do...
Phil slumps down on the sofa. He still has the weight of the world on his shoulders. There are huge potholes in the middle of the track, but no budget to fix it. Flash Harry has decided to start his own Grand Plan and applied for funding for a brand new track. Granny Annie has even signed a petition to say that she’ll use it. Why? The old track is not fit for purpose, is it, so we need a new one next door, don’t we all?
Pat snuggles up next to Phil and fishes behind the sofa. It was a right pain in the arse getting that track built, she says (not to mention the pain in her arse from that bicycle seat). But it’s not all bad. At least we have a hedge and it doesn’t need regular cutting now that nobody seems to care what we do with it. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll get to see a turtle dove after all, if only all that construction noise from Harry’s place would quieten down... She pops a Malteser in her mouth and hands the bucket to Phil. Here, have one, she says. It’ll make you feel better. Besides, there’ll soon be a brand new exercise track next door where you can work it all off...
Farmer Phil sighs. At least the weather was a bit better today.
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