What a Sunday – riding in Glentress (I forgot how perfect it was)

I have never been one to huck off mountains … mtb for me is about the adventure of the ride as well as the flow though my trails …. Sunday I joined a cousin (in-law) who had made the trip down from Orkney for the weekend with some pals to sample some of the best UK riding on offer for MTB’ing.

INFO BLURB

Glentress Forest is a mountain biking Mecca deep in the heart of the stunning Tweed Valley. The biking experience here includes Green, Blue, Red or Black graded trails, as well as a magnificent multi-graded free-ride area. In the unlikely event that Glentress fails to meet your thirst for biking exhilaration, you are only a short hop from Innerleithen’s famous Red Bull down-hill and cross country trails.The area offers a rich variety of things to do with the small Borders towns of Peebles and Innerleithen the ideal base for visitors, but don’t just take our word for it, come and experience it for yourself, you won’t be disappointed !

If you have never made the trip to Glentress -Then you owe it to yourself to go. Everytime it just gets better (with the possible loss of the old cafe folks who ran the old cafe)

The trails are beautiful and graded much like skiing with a Black,Red Blue designation to show difficulty. The boys i met up with all had full suss bikes with 5/6inch travel and decent 2.3 Maxxis rubber and i was there on my 96er hard tail with 80mm of front fork travel flashing my race pedigree Racing Ralphs … more XC than DH. My white clip in spd shoes screamed out my desire to head up and across more than their soft shoes and platform pedals – at least we all had GoPro‘s to play with (3 cameras for 5 people)

will try edit something together and put it up but may insert a quick clip soon.

But at the end of the day I realised that my lovely ti Carver 96er is a beast when it comes to the trail – I could hang with the best of our bunch and as i saw later my Strava sections were all alright.

Here are my 5 runs on the Berm Baby Berm section (blue but very flowy at speed) – we spent most of the day doing the same small red and blue sections grinning ear to ear all the time ….

I have a free day Saturday and then moving house Monday Aaaargh – so planning another ride – after the last 2 MTB rides I am tempted to scrap the road ride on offer …. Mmmm decision decisions ….