Any good?
Mrs SOAP and I are staying for a week in the Lake District this summer and thinking of traveling up for a day.
Will this routes take in the best parts of both trail centres like “w2 Afan” or would it be better just riding one centre?
Rode 4 of the stanes last summer so no need to go further North.

It’s OK – but not to drive from the Lakes for! There’s such quality and variety in the Lakes, you shouldn’t need to go anywhere.

Have to agree – don’t do it. Stay in the Lakes

Newcastleton is local to me. The cross border is fire road, fine for training but not fun, keilder just doesn’t work especially the stuff you’d loop into that ride.

Stay in the lakes.

Thanks guys. We will give that one a miss then.

Newcastleton is fun though.trail centre versus lakes though.

Stay in the Lakes. Hidden Valley in Newcastleton is great and Skydive in Kielder is fun but the rest of it is just fire road / really not that interesting singletrack / more fire road. Having said that I do try and do it at least once a year in good weather for the views, the isolation and to do a nigh on 60km route 99% of which is offroad.

Strava link to my version

Write up with pics I did on another forum

Ah, memories, I built a big chunk of the original cross border route back in 1990 😯

Trail design has come on a bit since then 😆

The original route was always what it was, mainly forest road but more of an old fashioned day out in the hills

The new stuff there, I think is lovely, far from being gnarcore but a fantastic day out in the hills and a lot more flow and more chilled out way of exploring the hills. It’s not adrenaline but IMO that’s its beauty. It and the lakeside trail are much more subtle and chilled out than the seven states stuff, but i think that’s much more in keeping with kielder really, descent from bloody bush to willowbog was the old climb for the cross border route, feels like a wasted opportunity to lose all that gradient on fireroad, as if the job was left unfinished?

certainly more so than the stuff on dead water, that I think is a bit schizophrenic myself, doesn’t know if it wants to be an XC or a downhill run.

Our recent trip over to Newcastleton for lunch.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpqgayNosFo[/video]