In August 2024 we reported on Hadleigh Park’s Olympic cross country course shifting “from glory to neglect” in our previous article on Hadleigh Park MTB. One year on, rider feedback from the iBikeRide Trail of the Year campaigns in 2024 and 2025 points in the same direction. Hadleigh has finished at the bottom of the ranked trail centres in both years, and 2025 reviewers are still scoring it low, often one or two stars out of five.
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The 2025 reviews on the Hadleigh Park Mountain Bike Trail Centre listing describe a venue that still has strong community use and a good setting, but mountain bike trails that riders increasingly see as worn, compromised, or treated as a general country park rather than a purpose built trail centre.
What 2025 riders are saying
Several reviewers draw a clear line between the wider park and the MTB offer.
“Sadly the park is slowly being reduced to a series of walking trails, worth visiting if you’ve never been but don’t expect too much. A nice day out, not really a trail centre.”
Many comments focus on surfacing, closed features and the feel of the riding.
“Mtb trails are poorly maintained with tons of loose gravel dumped on corners making most of the trails dangerous to ride. Most of the Olympic features are closed following a poor attempt at maintenance many years ago which made things worse.”
“This park used to be a fun and family friendly with trails for all ability’s now it’s for people with high skills due to the condition of the runs. Half of the trails are unusable or closed, all this with the cost of parking makes this a costly and non fun place to visit for me.”
The idea of a missing Olympic legacy appears often in the comments.
“After 2012 all we heard across many sports was the ‘Olympic Legacy’… where has that gone? It had everything going for it, but now needs serious cash injection to get it back on its feet.”
“It used to be brilliant, but someone seems to think it should now be a dog walk and park run venue. What a shame and wasted opportunity. Where did the Olympic legacy go?”
A later review titled “The usual silence and lack of care from the Council” talks about sections that feel almost unrideable, a lack of visible trail work, and a fear that the long term direction is away from mountain biking.
Investment in the park, but an unclear trail plan
Since 2024 Essex County Council has highlighted new work at Hadleigh Country Park on the environmental side. A Hadleigh Country Park User Survey invited visitors and residents to say how they use the park and how it should develop. Through the Explore Essex programme the council has also publicised landscape restoration at Hadleigh, with dense scrub cleared to restore grassland and new livestock fencing installed as part of long term stewardship funding for the site.
Public facing information still describes the Olympic course as having been split into blue, red and black trails that have been maintained and added to since the Games. Local riders speaking to other outlets in 2024, and the 2025 iBikeRide reviews, tell a different story about how the surfacing, features and signage now feel on the ground. In previous coverage a council spokesperson said the Hadleigh Country Park team was working to reopen closed features and that repairs and renovations were ongoing, but there is no widely available, detailed plan that riders can point to.
Event listings suggest that the Olympic circuit is still used at times, but often under specific arrangements. A recent running event follows the Olympic mountain bike route as a one lap off road race, with a future listing explaining that the circuit is officially closed and can only be used with permission. For mountain bikers, that adds to the sense that Hadleigh is no longer operating as a straightforward, always open trail centre loop.
Community activity around the trails
Despite the concerns about the main loops, the wider cycling community at Hadleigh remains active. Hadleigh Park Cycles continues to run as a community focused bike hub with hire, workshop services and coaching. Several 2025 reviewers go out of their way to praise the shop and its staff.
“Great place for kids to learn to ride with Hadleigh Park Cycles, mechanics and staff are great in there too… Bike repairs spot on, learning to ride and coaching there is great.”
Hadleigh Park as a whole still draws families and local visitors for walking, views over the estuary and general open space. The tension in the rider comments is that this wider use seems to be thriving while the purpose built MTB side of the offer feels left behind.
What riders say would help
Across the 2025 reviews there is a fairly consistent set of suggestions. Riders talk about:
- Engaging experienced MTB trail builders to resurface and reshape the existing loops, and to reopen appropriate features with clear grading and signage.
- Re establishing a structured maintenance partnership between the council and the local MTB community, including the club.
- Separating technical MTB lines from walking routes more clearly, especially on red and black sections, to reduce conflict and improve safety.
- Reviewing event policies and costs so that low cost community MTB events can sit alongside park runs and other activities.
Under the criticism there is still some hope that Hadleigh could yet be recovered if a clear choice is made to prioritise the MTB side of the park.
“I used to enjoy riding the variety of trails when I first started riding at the park. Over the years the trails have been allowed to fall in a state of disrepair and any attempted maintenance has been a dismal failure… I feel there is still hope in the mtb community but maybe the decline is too much to recover.”
We spoke to Hadleigh MTB Club
We spoke to Jeremy Vince, chair of Hadleigh MTB Club, about how Hadleigh Park rides now, whether the club is still involved in looking after the trails, and what changes he thinks would make the biggest difference for riders.
He told us that many club members now find the Olympic loop a poor riding experience, mainly because of surfacing issues, long term feature closures and tired skills and pump areas, even though the wider park facilities remain strong. Formal volunteer trail maintenance has effectively stopped. One reason is that ranger cover moved away from weekends, which is when most volunteers are actually free to help. Another is that the earlier Olympic legacy arrangement, where the club could run events and coaching on site, has shifted to a paid, application based model, which makes it harder to justify giving up free time.
The club recognises the environmental and heritage constraints on new trail building at Hadleigh, but believes there is still real potential if the Olympic course can be fully reopened, the skills and pump areas brought back up to standard, and the park once again works proactively with clubs and organisers to host MTB events. To read Jez’s full written response on behalf of Hadleigh MTB Club to our questions about how Hadleigh rides now, volunteer maintenance and what could help next, open the section below and expand the detailed answers.
Hadleigh MTB Club: full written response (click to expand)
How would club members describe the current riding experience at Hadleigh?
Like a lot of the other comments you have mentioned, quite a few of our members find the experience not a good one, for the main Olympic circuit, the surface being the biggest issue followed by the closure of some of the more exciting and challenging parts. Both of these greatly reduce the experience of riding the course.
There are other challenges for riders at the park;
- The signage is not great and a rider will come across a walker on the track leading to a dangerous encounter quite often ending with the walker moaning at the rider muttering, slow down, watch my dog, etc. as a regular cyclist you will know the usual comments made toward cyclists in these situations, but with the rider not being at fault.
- Other areas of the park, both the skills area and the pump tracks have not been properly maintained. The skills area has had parts removed rather than maintained, thus making it an area not to learn new skills, just another basic riding area, the pump tracks were not made as a full tarmac loop just tarmacked in parts, this has led to the main pump track wearing out you be almost flat and puddles appearing each time it rains. Again these are negative to any rider’s experience at the park.
Is the club currently involved in any organised trail maintenance at the park?
Currently we are not involved, there are a few reasons, the first being the rangers were no longer work at the weekends, (I’m guessing an ECC management decision) which meant maintenance would now take place during the working week and our volunteers have jobs and only could only help at the weekends and we are not permitted to do maintenance unsupervised by a park ranger.
The second, was that we were giving back to HP for the access we were given to use the park (as the Olympic Legacy club associated with the course) for our club events, coaching etc., but with a change of structure within ECC and how HP was now to run, suddenly we told we cannot use the park as we had done since it was opened, but now had to apply, pay, etc. to hold any event at the park, so the reciprocation was no longer there it was a bit much for us to ask members to give their time but the club could not offer them anything back by running club events at HP.
We would still monitor if HP needed volunteers for any trail maintenance and advertise these to our members, but we have not seen any trail maintenance being advertised in a long time.
What do you think would most help to restore or improve the MTB offer?
This is a difficult one as there are a quite a few factors involved at HP.
While the facilities are great with the on-site Bike Shop (great people), Café (great chips), toilets and large car park. The actual amount of trails there are always going to be limited.
A lot of people do not know that there are a number of restrictions in-place stopping the possibility of building new trails. On park site there is endangered wildlife and other environmental protections, there are listed buildings, some being underground which people are not aware of, (post Olympics the course had to change as it was originally running over one of the listed buildings) and I believe there are other limitations between the landowner and ECC. This all limits what and where trails can be placed.
HP can never be like some of the other bike parks in East Anglia like Twisted Oaks and Pheonix where they can build, change, adapt trails as they desire or how demand dictates.
It was opened to be a chance to ride an Olympic level cross country mountain bike course, and where MTB has changed and there are a lot more riders using enduro, freeride bikes etc. I do not think it will be possible to change HP to suit these fully.
They do need to reopen the Olympic course fully again and sort out the problems, but I’m led to believe there has been a legal dispute going on between ECC and the people who last did the work on the trails. This has stopped a lot of work being able to take place and only work that keeps the insurers happy is taking place (hence closures etc.). If this is true or not only ECC can fully answer that.
If the Olympic course was open I would encourage ECC to have a people that would work proactively with organisers, Hadleigh MTB Club and other cycle clubs and get the park open to cycling events again, I think as a minimum an Olympic course should be on the BC list of courses to run nationals.
With the pump tracks and skills area are all an easy distance from the car park and main facilities (the children’s play area, on -site Café, bike shop and toilets) which makes them great cycling facilities for families as they do not have to go far for kids to use these and parents can keep them in sight, etc. So bringing these up to date and back into a fully usable state would be a great start to restore what’s on offer there I understand that the pump tracks are to be looked at and updated, but I have not been made aware of any timescales for this.
They do need to get creative in how they can introduce new features that attracts riders. I understand the limitations but there should be ways around this, rather than just say it is too difficult, once I was told they could build jumps using logs as the basis of the jump and the logs would make good nesting for insects. If the insects liked people riding over the top is something for the experts to confirm.
That said, I’m sure they could build a jump area near the large pump track and skills area as this is the most requested thing I have heard from people whenever I talk to people about HP.
Any points in the rider feedback or article that you would particularly agree or disagree with?
I think your article captures what riders are feeling about HP, its focus has become a country park, run as a country park and not an Olympic legacy cycling venue.
The future: ECC is no longer going to exist in a few years, HP will move to a newly formed Unitary Authority and whatever the outcome of the government consultations Castle Point where HP is located will be merged with Southend-on-Sea, and with this happening how the park will run could drastically change and with encouragement from local riders, Hadleigh MTB Club and the wider MTB community it could change back to being a cycle focused venue once again.
Trail of the Year context and next steps
Within iBikeRide’s Trail of the Year campaigns, which are driven 100 per cent by rider reviews and scores on the site, Hadleigh’s position is now clear. In both 2024 and 2025 it finished at the bottom of the ranked trail centres. The 2025 reviews behind that result are largely from local riders who know the site well and remember how it rode in the early years after the Games.
For this follow up piece, iBikeRide contacted Essex County Council, Hadleigh Park management and Hadleigh MTB Club. Hadleigh MTB Club provided the written response summarised above. Essex County Council acknowledged the request and said senior leadership were reviewing it, but had not provided a full response by the time of publication. This article will be updated if further statements are received.
In the meantime, the combination of rider feedback, previous coverage and the council’s own public statements on environmental investment raises a straightforward question: if the park is important enough to secure long term stewardship funding and to restore habitats, is it not also important enough to rebuild and maintain the Olympic mountain bike legacy that many riders still see as a major asset waiting to be recovered?
For riders looking at where to ride next, you can explore other trail centres across the UK in the iBikeRide Trail Finder and see how they compare in the Trail of the Year results.
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