I’ve gone and entered SES Round 3 Glenlivet – eek! But assuming I survive and am gagging for more, I’d like to see what kind of riding is in the next two rounds as I may enter the rest of the series.
I’m just old enough this year to have gone into the MGV category and I’ve managed to get to this age without really having any gnaar skills to speak of – I’m a mincer! I own a mince tank (29er full suss, Pikes etc…).
So, I’m off to Spean Bridge for the weekend and will have a day at Fort Bill and a day at Laggan on the way back to Aberdeenshire. I’d like to ride the SES courses to give me some idea of what terrain I will need to handle to get down in one piece.
Strava rides please, preferably from the actual race day rather than practice as they’ll be easier to make into routes.
Thanks in advance

bumped for the evening crowd…

Laggan was

S1 = black descent
S2 = top red climb in reverse
S3 = one of the “brown” trails on the other side of the hill
S4 = the other brown trail
S5 = orange trail

Fort William was

S1 = world cup xc descent
S2 = blue crane with horrific off piste
S3 = 10 UTB bit
S4 = WC DH from the road gap into the red DH

Just use the segment explorer on strava to find the segments then find someone that did the races. Me for example: bob millar

I’m in belgium on a crappy blackberry or else I’d email you my gpx

https://www.strava.com/activities/159531244

I think the only bit of much use to you is the two routes across the road. A few trail reversals on the first two stages so you can’t replicate that. Stage 5 is just the orange route.

Thanks all, I’ll have a check this weekend. Apart from Pitfichie, Bennachie and Glenlivet, I’ve not done much beyond Peaks and Cannock.

Just one more thing… What is the usual race format? It’s over two days, is it practice day one, race day two?

Laggan might be tricky as mentioned up there- lots of little random offpiste that might be closed off too, especially with the damage in the forest. But you could replicate it reasonably just by doing the trailcentre and the 2 browns. It wouldn’t be the same day but it’d be a similiar overall experience I reckon.

At Nevis, Blue Crane is pretty easy to find at the start, it gets a wee bit more complicated further down though from memory when you hit the fire road. Stage 4 ended up weird as they had to change the stage because of flooding, so it was almost a fire road descent, kamikaze style, with a bit of slobbery offpiste.

Is the offpiste bit on the Cackle still open? That was mint on practice day, I killed myself to bits on race day though after it’d all washed away

BoardinBob – Member

horrific off piste

Or as someone put it on the day, “If Ben Cathro got off and ran it, it can **** off”