Velodrome News

At last there is something to see on the site of Derby's emergent  Velodrome with the completion of a path from NCN Route 6, which passes close by as it follows the banks of the River Derwent. 



This is the new path, with the Route 6 path in the foreground - Derby  City Centre to the right and Alvaston to the left, backs to the river.

Top right we see Derby County's Pride Park Stadium and on the horizon the tops of the two redundant gas holders, last vestiges of the area's previous function as a coal gas works. The Velodrome site is behind the chain-link fencing on the top left of the picture.

Rather more spectacular is the sound of the two pile-drivers which are hammering the concrete piles into the ground where the structure will stand in 18 months time.  The incessant thumps are hardly musical, but will be music to the ears of the thousands of cyclists awaiting a chance to ride on the new track or to watch their heroes speeding around it's smooth wooden surface.

The pile drivers lift the piles into the vertical position over the marked position and a large weight is dropped onto the top of the pile, hammering it into the ground by about 2 feet per thump.
The machine on the left has almost completed the process, and the one on the right has the next pile vertical and ready for thumping. You can see that the piles go into the ground for quite a depth.

Once the piles and ground-works are done, the framework of the structure will rise rapidly, and I would expect that the roof will be on before next Winter sets in.

Already two new bike shops have opened in the Derby area, both hoping to sell top class track bikes to the budding championship cyclists of the future.

 

Watch this space for further updates as the building work progresses through the Summer months.