I am new to this neck of the woods and am interested in finding decent downhills in the Pentlands preferably on the north side. I have been out exploring on my hardtail and found some good stuff but would like to take the shocker out more. I would like to source some decent downhills that I could get to quickly from Livingston without having to travel to Innerliethen.

I doubt you will find downhills like innerleithan. There are some quite slow and tricky bits (in the woods above bonaly tower / around torduff resovoir) and some wide open fast descents but I know nothing in the pentlands that is downhill in a DHracer stylee

Would have thought Perth/Dunkeld/Falkland would all be around 40mins for you. (How long does it take you to inners? an hour?)
TJ – look harder! friends assure me there are some nice but short DH sections with nice turns/small jumps etc. @ Bonally – gotta be worth a look, eh?.
personally, if I lived in Livi for local riding I’d be getting the BMX out. 😉

GW has the right clues.

I have ridden every route I can find – including 4 / 5 different descents and variations of them above bonally. perhaps one persons nice short DH section is anothers nice XC section?

There’s some downhill style stuff in the trees above Bonaly – built up jumps, some small berms etc. I wouldn’t class it as XC unless you’re world cup level.

lol @ TJ 😆

I’ll have another look next time I’m out that way. Must be something I and the other folk I ride with have never seen. Small jumps and berms – does that make it DH?

There’s some stuff on youtube:

That’s obviously not XC as they’re wearing body armour 🙄

1st vid. crap. lots of silly foot off action when it’s not needed.

2nd vid. calum darling….. you ride like a gayer. only redeeming factor was you had kings of leon as a sound track. you still ride like a gayer though.

TJ. yeah, tis just singletrack.

some of that looks like more fun than most of the trails in the pentlands.

One of those tracks in the vids I have been down before on the tandem. Couldn’t ride the whole thing tho as it had a turn that was too sharp to get the tandem round – infact the day I was there no one could get a halfbike round it – too eroded away.

Those vids look like xc to me.