mountainbiking and beer in sunny scotland

from which I am now sadly returned. it was awesome though. in fact I note I must have said the word awesome about 3000 times during the week

GLENTRESS



^^red, red and blue routes there. Not me in the vids sadly, due to a forgotten camera, but besides that Spooky Wood is pretty cool. The start is somewhat sobering inasmuch as the landing plateau for the emergency trauma helicopter is there as well. kind of bringing home potential risks. well, to me at least. Sadly, the clips don't particularly show the roughness of it all, and they certainly don't show the lung-exploding climb to the top of the hill, of which my legs are still twitching.

Your trail is made of stones and earth, packed down on the blue trails and loose-ish on the >blue with bumps, jumps and other stuff both natural and man made. The loose gravelly nature of riding the red made me freak out as my rear tyre was a very euro Schwalbe Racing Ralph 2.0 and while it's a good (no punctures at GT or other places) and fast rolling tyre, it also imo is made for other things than big and little rocks. Going through the berms at speed was quite an...um...experience as I was struggling with some grip issues. Ofc it was the first time I'd ever done it so it also could have been my noobness


DRUMLANRIG

Rik's Bike Shed Services - Drumlanrig Country Park, wildlife trails, walks and beautiful countryside

^^everything I could find quickly, and once again not me. I think it's the blue routes in the vids too, but Will and I did the red, and Will went on to also do some black (because he's a nutter you see). Trails are somewhat like the trails I know in NL, but much rougher and ofc steeper here and there. The general climbing in Scotland is far more sustained where in NL you'd be climbing for a bit, Scotland you'll be climbing for a while, and then some more Anyway the root and mudfest that was the first 4 km of the red route took us about an hour and a half, so that translates to under 3km/h haha o0 Very rootsy, usually nicely in the switchbacks or turns so you had to pay attention heh. we'd been quite worried about the weather on the ride down from Edinburgh, but it had cleared nicely once we arrived and after some technical issues swiftly resolved by the awesome Rik (who makes the trails round Drumlanrig Castle) we seriously enjoyed ourselves.

Scores:
flat tyres: 0
falling: 2 (tdc and Will)
smacking trees: 1 (tdc)
beer: lots
weather: very good (surprise, sunny Scotland )