Depends what sort of riding you like, but Drumlanrig is nearer than any of the stanes and worth a trip if you like natural rooty slippery technical stuff.

Don't think you are that near any of them unfortunately. Glentress/Innerleithen is possibly most worth the drive to.

Depends on how far you want to drive but my preference would be

Kirroughtree
Drumlanrig (not a 7Stane but excellent)
Innerleithen
Glentress
Dalbeattie
Mabie
Ae

KT Red/Black is an excellent ride, Drumlanrig has a very nice natural feel for a man made trail. Innerleithen and Glentress can easily be done on the same day.

Did drumlanrig for the first time on saturday, awesome fun

Dalbeattie- excellent, and probably the best. Rocks, not too strenuous, long, enjoyable, proper descents none of this traversey nonsense.

Inners- again very good. Loooong climb, proper descent apart from one bit near the end that's a bit bobbins.

Kirro- good, a long ride that will tire you out. Very enjoyable in a non-tech way.

Glentress- hit and miss. Somedays it's fun, somedays it's gash. You really need to rag it to get the most out of it I find and if you're not on top of your game it's ultimately a let down- it's just not that much fun when you're not going as fast as you can. A lightweight XC bike helps, though.

Mabie- very tame, very dull, can get muddy. Unless you can do the Darkside in which case it's the most difficult and rewarding trail centre experience there is.

Ae- just awful. Bizarre in that there's a huge amount of climbing and very little proper DH. Badly built, badly maintained, no fun whatsoever.

No ridden Newcastleton or Glentrool.

Another definitive STW thread where all parties agree 😛

The last section of AE is almost worth the visit alone. The only bad part of my AE experience was the cafe.

My order of preference:

Kirroughtree/Innerleithen
Glentress/Drumlanrig
Dalbeatie
Mabie
Ae in fact don't bother its shite.

Like I have said on other threads regards Ae there are as many, nay more people who like it than there are forum members 😆
Good job not all the riding public do not know the existance of this site, given the potential damage it can do to the lbs/shops/cafes etc.

eg I ride with lots of people who neither buy mags nor use internet bike forums, not because they are tight, they just want to ride a bike regardless of hype etc.

I ride Mabie, Dalbeattie and Ae weekly but have not been to Inners/Gt for well over a year, maybe longer. Prefering to nip down to the Lakes which is just as close to me.

That's it – I suspect all the Ae haters are people who can't jump or ride drop offs properly. 😛

Funny it seems to rain when I have done Ae. Apart from the final descent I do not have fond recollections of Ae.

I dislike Ae and am actually pretty partial to drops and jumps. Just not flat sloggy "descents". Omega Man is one of the most overhyped descents of the stanes being a dull gravel strip with some blown out, poorly maintained jumps that are too short. That and it's got practically no gradient to it.

The DH track is fun, though. Specially when it's muddy.

as above kirroughtree for least risk of dissapointment …

drumlanrig is excellent but several folk on here have shown dissapointment in that roots and technical riding are not their thing and thus gone on to not enjoy it !

Ae's by far the worst of the ones I've ridden IMO, but that's not to say it's bad, it's just outshone by its neighbours, something has to come in last. I don't ever see a day when I decide I'd sooner do Ae again than Mabie or Drumlanrig, if I'm in that area.

Personally of the ones I've done there, I'd say go and do Kirroughtree, it's not technical for most of it but it has some brilliant riding and Mcmoab is a unique feature- you can get singletrack, berms and dropoffs anywhere after all. A very close second is Drumlanrig.