Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Oct 2003
- Posts
- 14,341
- Location
- Huddersfield
Aye it was a good weekend, nice to see some new trails.
I think I slightly overestimated how much we'd be able to fit in, we rode Mabie red on Fri, Kirroughtree Red & McMoab (black) on Sat and sessioned The Shredder and Omega Man (red) at Ae today.
We had an amusing albeit frustrating 1hr at Kirroughtree where the bead on my rear tire (Kenda Excavator) decided it would explode itself from the tire, causing my inner tube to blow with a satisfying 'bang'. Cue a bodged fix and limp back to trailhead to purchase a UST Maxxis Ignitor, which is shaping up nicely despite getting a puncture at Ae.
Anyway, Mabie was ace. Very fast and flowy, not an awful lot of climbing, big fun this time of year as there's a lot of leaves on the ground meaning it's hard to see the line/rocks/roots; which there are plenty of in certain situations.
Kirroughtree was also excellent, ace training for maintaining flow and speed, again not very many climbs, lots and lots of technical rock features (which I love) so I was having fun 'The Judgement' on the red was a real test as well as McMoab - I managed to fall hands and knees into a boggy green puddle here
Still road the (made famous by epic fails on youtube) 'Slab' at the end though.
We didn't see much of Ae on recommendation that it'd be hard to fit in with the amount of time we had on Sunday, thanks to Keiran and his mate Scott for showing us the DHs and best bits to session - 'Omega Man' (final red descent) is ace for practising high speed kickers, tables and drop offs.
The weather was pretty good despite it absolutely throwing it down all Friday night. Accomodation at the Mabie House Hotel was OK. We stayed in the camping pods, they apparently sleep 4 - if you tried this you'd have no space for any kind of bags/kit, I'd say 3 people at a maximum, the car park is a 2 min walk from the pods which isn't far, but wouldn't be great if you had to keep all your gear there. Washing facilities were basic comprising of a small outdoor building featuring a single toilet, basin and shower, this is only for the 3 outdoor cabins (max of 12 people) so in busy times you may have to queue, we didn' t have a problem here, and it was nice having a proper shower as opposed to one of those ones you have to push every 20 seconds. The pub and restaurant at the hotel itself were really nice, good beers on tap and the full English breakfast was decent (although if you're a greedy arse like me you'd except 2 rashes of bacon and 2 sausages in stead of the singular!!)
We didn't get many pictures (too busy riding!)
Camping pod and obligatory bike shot #1 (I don't always leave my bike like this - it was about to be cleaned!)
Me riding down a slab at Kirroughtree
Obligatory bike shot #2 at Ae on Omega Man
"Let's launch over it", doing a little drop off on the same trail:
All in all, I still think Glentress is still my favourite trail centre, it almost seems unfair to compare it to the others we visited this weekend as it seems to have so much more trail, the facilities are really top notch and the camping options are good too, I'm sure this is because they have a lot of £££ due to the high visitor numbers. However if you are fit and have a good long weekend (bank holiday or get Friday off like we did) you can fit in a lot of the trail centres we did over the west side of scotland. I think next time it would be good to hit Glentress/Inners again but get some of the off-piste action in at Innerleithen (which there's supposed to be plenty).
I think I slightly overestimated how much we'd be able to fit in, we rode Mabie red on Fri, Kirroughtree Red & McMoab (black) on Sat and sessioned The Shredder and Omega Man (red) at Ae today.
We had an amusing albeit frustrating 1hr at Kirroughtree where the bead on my rear tire (Kenda Excavator) decided it would explode itself from the tire, causing my inner tube to blow with a satisfying 'bang'. Cue a bodged fix and limp back to trailhead to purchase a UST Maxxis Ignitor, which is shaping up nicely despite getting a puncture at Ae.
Anyway, Mabie was ace. Very fast and flowy, not an awful lot of climbing, big fun this time of year as there's a lot of leaves on the ground meaning it's hard to see the line/rocks/roots; which there are plenty of in certain situations.
Kirroughtree was also excellent, ace training for maintaining flow and speed, again not very many climbs, lots and lots of technical rock features (which I love) so I was having fun 'The Judgement' on the red was a real test as well as McMoab - I managed to fall hands and knees into a boggy green puddle here
Still road the (made famous by epic fails on youtube) 'Slab' at the end though.We didn't see much of Ae on recommendation that it'd be hard to fit in with the amount of time we had on Sunday, thanks to Keiran and his mate Scott for showing us the DHs and best bits to session - 'Omega Man' (final red descent) is ace for practising high speed kickers, tables and drop offs.
The weather was pretty good despite it absolutely throwing it down all Friday night. Accomodation at the Mabie House Hotel was OK. We stayed in the camping pods, they apparently sleep 4 - if you tried this you'd have no space for any kind of bags/kit, I'd say 3 people at a maximum, the car park is a 2 min walk from the pods which isn't far, but wouldn't be great if you had to keep all your gear there. Washing facilities were basic comprising of a small outdoor building featuring a single toilet, basin and shower, this is only for the 3 outdoor cabins (max of 12 people) so in busy times you may have to queue, we didn' t have a problem here, and it was nice having a proper shower as opposed to one of those ones you have to push every 20 seconds. The pub and restaurant at the hotel itself were really nice, good beers on tap and the full English breakfast was decent (although if you're a greedy arse like me you'd except 2 rashes of bacon and 2 sausages in stead of the singular!!)
We didn't get many pictures (too busy riding!)
Camping pod and obligatory bike shot #1 (I don't always leave my bike like this - it was about to be cleaned!)
Me riding down a slab at Kirroughtree
Obligatory bike shot #2 at Ae on Omega Man
"Let's launch over it", doing a little drop off on the same trail:
All in all, I still think Glentress is still my favourite trail centre, it almost seems unfair to compare it to the others we visited this weekend as it seems to have so much more trail, the facilities are really top notch and the camping options are good too, I'm sure this is because they have a lot of £££ due to the high visitor numbers. However if you are fit and have a good long weekend (bank holiday or get Friday off like we did) you can fit in a lot of the trail centres we did over the west side of scotland. I think next time it would be good to hit Glentress/Inners again but get some of the off-piste action in at Innerleithen (which there's supposed to be plenty).
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