Had a day spare today so took a birl up to Ae and it was excellent.

Nice and cool in the trees and lovely and toasty in the sun whilst pedalling along. With the recent nice weather the fire roads were almost pavement like with a smooth sheen of dried mud on top. A bit different to the melted frost gloop over the winter. The trail fairies have also been busy sorting bits of the trail as well so it did actually have some flow today which I personally have found in the past it lacked, but with the dry trails it was rolling a lot faster.

I went off Ae for a long while but I have to say today was a superb ride, did not see another soul on the trail or even a car in the car park.

Worth a visit if you havent been for a while.

🙂

Are you kidding? Went on Friday after not visiting for a couple of years as we’d heard some work had been done to make it more flowy (last time it seemed as if the trails had been made out of broken bricks). Says a lot when my favourite part of the whole ride was the first climb…

The whole place just seems to lack anything resembling flow which for a man made trail seems weird. The bits after the first climb leading the Granny Green Love or whatever its called are knackering, Granny Green Love itself seems to be a washed out mess, even worse with those two flat corners at the end now which you hit at a fair whack. The climb out of there was kinda challenging on a 1×9 but do-able. Then after that it goes really wrong. The loooong section between there and the fireroad climb is shocking! Only the last 100m or so as it starts to drop is alright. The rest of its just sat spinning away, bored! Next bit of north shore, suppose thats got to be included at a trail centre. Fun little drop off the end. More knackering pedalling but finished off with a fun, floaty step up and some fun twisty stuff in the trees. Next bit with the temporary surface, no flow and the only bit resembling fun is the very last switchbacked descent. Then the next bit of singletrack after the fireroad climb is horrific. Can’t be just me thinking that as halfway down as it gets close to the fireroad you can see where people have ridden off the trail to get back onto the fireroad! I followed suit for fear of losing the will to live. Omega Man is always a decent finish but its a hell of a slog around just for that. Had to ride up and do Shredder just to make us feel a bit better but even that wasn’t brilliant considering the amount of drop you had from the top to the bottom – cutting a trail straight down seems odd – at least put some corners and traversing in!

Never off again, shocking. Mabie is better…

Seem to recal last time i went to ae one of the more entertaining decents had been tamed making it ride like a smooth bridleway.
Shame.

But, a balance must be struck between sustainable trail and knar.

Good god DBW did you have a bad day or something?!

It was grand – worth a visit for sure!

BTW Mabie is my favourite local trail, but the likes of Ae, Dalbeattie are so much diferent its makes a real change to visit them.

We are spoilt for choice living in Dumfries for sure.