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Glentress Weekend

One of those few opportunities we get these days for the lads to head off for a weekend with nothing to think about other than eating, drinking and biking. For our weekend away this year we choose to head up to the Scottish borders to have a couple of days riding two of the 7 Stanes Forest trails, Glentress and Innerleithan.

For accommodation we choose to stay at the Glentress Hotel, which is located at the foot of the Glentress Forest Park trails. The hotel itself is relatively basic, but it offers up a fantastic restaurant and very friendly service. A very welcoming team, run by a fellow mountain biker, they offer a secure lock up for the bikes and facilities to clean your bikes down after a days riding. All this and possibly one of the most stunning views from the balcony at the bar.

On the Saturday morning, we hit the Red and black trails at Glentress, which is a trail that blows me away every time I ride it. There are so many sections of this ride to talk about, the views at the top of Shield Green Kipps, Britney Spears and my favorite Spooky Woods. We have developed a slightly different route when we ride Glentress to get the best descents. We ride the black until the boundary trail and then cut across and meet the red Caresman Hill just before Spooky Wood. It takes out the less interesting back section of the black.

After lunch back at The Hub, we climbed back up to the Buzzards Nest to spend some time practicing our jumps in the Freeride park. This is not something I do very often, but this is such a fantastic course to try new things. We must have done the table top section at least 20 times, before heading down to tackle the drops and the walls. After Ian showed us all how you are supposed to do it, we resigned ourselves to jumps and drops and him to the walls.

On the Sunday we headed over to Innerleithan to tackle the Cross Country route. As far as trails goes this one is something else as it is designed to be predominantly all up and then all down. But don’t be disheartened by the level of climbing required to get to the top because it is 100% worth it. The Cadon Bank descent is possibly the best piece of cross country descent in the country that will keep you on the edge all the way down. All 2kms of it! But beware, this descent is not for the faint hearted and it might be worth a bit of a look before you tackle it, the third drop in is a good 4 footer and you’ll need some speed!

A great way to spend some time with your mates, next year we are talking about having a go at the West Highland Way following the article in Septembers MBR. Anyone done it yet that has any advice?