No dig, no ride: Repairing and caring for DIY-designed mountain bike and BMX trails

This chapter draws on research produced with DIY bike trail builders to unpack the forms of repair and care that they employ. I first outline the practices involved in keeping trails running, conceptualising the squatted spaces they occupy as ‘ruins’. Second, I draw from literature around care and commoning to argue that these spots are not neglected due to being overlooked, but that this is cultivated, and is a requirement of their subsistence. I find that in these spaces, the mundane practices of shovelling and watering, to the forms of governance and exclusion enacted, illustrate forms of repair and maintenance that are multiple and layered, and that this can lead to a ‘repair’ of the macho, hetero-normative culture that has previously pervaded in these spots.