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Forestry England has announced it intends to have a tender for the lease to rebuild and run Aston Hill live in the next couple of weeks. The awesome news is the Aston Hill crew will be tendering. We are one step closer folks to having this gem of MTB history re-open. 

For those that don't know Aston Hill Bike Park is located in the Chiltern Hills and was a famous Downhill bike park. In its heyday there were five graded Downhill runs with a push-up track, a 4X track, a spicy 5-mile cross-country loop, and a pump track. 

It has been closed since the winter of 2020 (following on from lockdown closures which ran straight into it being decimated by Ash Dieback disease infecting the local tree population). The site has since been felled so whoever wins the tender will need to do a a full redevelopment (so a way off). 

The best bit of news is the crew who made the Aston Hill dream live, in the beginning, have set up a Community Interest Company (CIC) called Bike Park Chilterns to tender and so take on the redevelopment and then the day-to-day running of Aston Hill. The new organisation is being led by Aston Hill stalwarts Ian Warby, John Holbrook and Mark Harris.

“It’s great to see things moving and we look forward to submitting our Tender for Aston Hill in the next few weeks. Hopefully there’ll be exciting times ahead”. Said Ian Warby.
 
For me, this riding spot is an integral piece of our MTB legacy jigsaw. Being one of the first techy downhill spots with official backing it cut new territory that was the blueprint for many that followed.
 
Also buckets of nostalgia as back in the day, I used to bunk off work when first bitten by this sport with more bike than skills (my Big Hit 3 if I recall right) to go get in a cheeky morning ride given how addictive this place was.
 
Fingers crossed for the crew. 
Published: 06/07//2024

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