Landseer Park BMX Track, Ipswich

Ipswich BMX Club is the UK's longest-running bicycle motocross club. It formed in 1980 and has been holding events at its Landseer Park track ever since. In November 1980, the first-ever race held by Ipswich BMX Club took place at Landseer Park, Ipswich, on one of the country's first purpose-built tracks.

Motocross champion Dave Bickers and Barry Scott-Webb from Ipswich Witches Speedway helped to construct the track, which used a ramp attached to the side of a lorry for its start hill. The mayors from both Ipswich and Colchester were in attendance that day to see the action.

A dirt start hill soon followed on the former landfill site, and old shale from Foxhall Stadium's speedway track was used to surface the country's first local authority track. Bryan Potter was one of the club's founders and was a key part of the early local scene, running the local BMX emporium Leisure Wheels on Nacton Road.

The club continued to grow through the 1980s, and its Landseer Park track underwent an extensive rebuild and layout change in time to host the first of two consecutive international events in 1989 and 1990. These highly successful events continued to keep the club in the BMX community's wider consciousness, and Ipswich hosted further national races in the 1990s, culminating in their last major event, the 2002 British BMX Championships.

Over the years that followed, the Landseer park track began to fall behind the standard of national BMX racing tracks being built across the UK. It was 2021 before the club raised £350k to bring their out-of-date track up to a modern national standard.

Clark & Kent Contractors were chosen to help the club realise its 20-year ambitions. With years of experience and expertise in designing and constructing high-level competition BMX racing tracks, we were the obvious choice for the project.

Following a detailed design process in consultation with Ipswich BMX club, British Cycling and Ipswich Borough Council, Clark & Kent created a modern track design that would future-proof the Landseer park site for years to come.

Construction started in June 2021 on the full-size national standard race track that incorporated tarmac-surfaced corners, a 5m-high UCI shape start hill surfaced in tarmac with a new all-electric ProStart BMX gate.

The 325m track was realised through a comprehensive cut-and-fill exercise across the entirety of the original Landseer Park BMX track. The finished product sat very comfortably in the park as if it had always been there.

Please see BBC News item here.

Location: Landseer Park BMX, Landseer Rd, Ipswich IP3 0HH

Other National BMX Tracks from Clark & Kent

Burgess Park, Cumbernauld, Dedemsvaart, Gravesend, Huyton, Merton Saints, Nottingham Outlaws,
Perry Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, Royston Rockets, Shanaze Reade, Telford, Western Titans.
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Clark & Kent Contractors were chosen to design and construct a high-level competition BMX racing track at Landseer Park.
Construction started in 2021 on the full-size national standard racetrack that included tarmac-surfaced corners, a 5m start hill with an all-electric ProStart BMX gate, and a 325 metre track.