About three years ago, a group of trail riders started a passion project—a journey to realize a bike park, with a clear goal: “Trails and jump lines in our own riding area, close to home. Riding jumps not only during our summer holiday, but daily.”

Aside from not having mountains, the second biggest hurdle to overcome in the Netherlands is the law: Policies and procedures are, along with “stroopwafels” and “bitterballen”, what the Dutch relish in. “That’s why everything works,” they will tell you.

Well, this group of mountain bike enthusiasts were adamant, relentless.

This community, however, looks at the bigger picture of creating something sustainable that will benefit the entire population of Mook, mountain bikers and non-mountain bikers alike.

“In order to be able to construct these trails, we had to remove some fields with blackthorns from the Zandberg. We have an agreement with the manager of the area, Bodemzorg Limburg, that we will compensate for this by placing several types of native shrubs back next to the paths,” says Micha Salden, one of the original visionaries of the bikepark, alongside Alex Peters, Peter Mark, and Harm Schepers.

They partnered with a local primary school to plant 530 native shrubs of 15 different species on the Zandberg hill. By including the youth in activities like these, they learn about environmental stewardship at the same time as throwing a “whip” with their bike over a perfectly built tabletop.

At Specialized, we have a single-minded mission: to pedal the planet forward.

Building bike parks and community gardens on old garbage dumps…yup, that fits perfectly.

Learn more about the project at www.bikepark-mook.nl