Never been up Benarty on bike,what route do you suggest.
cheers
We usually combine it with a spin around the trails at the Lochore Meadows country park. From there you join the Pit Road heading west where you pick up the trail up through the woods on Harron Hill. It’s a great rooty and rocky but very rideable climb which in springtime is covered with bluebells through the Beech woods. The trail pops out onto the ‘Avenue’ which is a farm track, turn left on to it to where it crosses the road.
Immediately in front of you are a flight of stairs. You’ll have to push the first flight and around the first bend, from there on it’s rideable up to where the path meets a track at the viewpoint with the bench.
Turn left up the track, it turns into single track which if you are fit is rideable as it turns to the right following the fence line up to an obvious point where the track crosses over into the heather towards the top. It’s rideable from there all the way initially to the Peak Stone and over the plateau to the trig point. Go a little further and you can look over Loch Leven where the picture was taken from.
As a return loop we ride back from the trig point back, over the peak stone and back to the fence. Dont cross the fence. Turn left and you’ll pick up an initially feint single track trail which contours then descends heading east. follow it until you come to a corner in the fence line where it meets the plantation. Cross the fence and descend. Be careful as there is a cliff on your right. You can either drop straight on down to the fire road or you can pick up a trail which runs alongside a dyke back up into the woods to the edge of the forest, where you then descend on the fre road. more work could be done to build a trail back through the woods here to make more of the descent.
Follow the fire road down until you come to a sharp left hand hairpin bend with a double track heading off uphill to the right. This doubletrack will take you back up to the bench at the top of the stairs you climbed earlier. From there on just retrace your tracks.
There are another two ways up. The first is a climb which starts nearer the shooting ranges up through the forest. leaving the Kelty to Kinross road signposted for Balingry you pass the shooting range hut and a couple of houses. As you enter the woods the start of the climb is on your left about 200 yards past the last house.
The path zig zags all the way up through the woods until you pop out over a fence onto the hill proper. There’s a hike a bike of a couple of hundred yards until you reach the Shooting Range flag pole at the top. from there follow the path which contours around the north shoulder. A lot of it is rideable, with one or two pushes. You’ll drop to a saddle where you’ll pick up a much more established path to the trig point.
There is one other way up. Mid way between the stairs at the end of the ‘Avenue’ and the shooting range climb, there is a lodge on the south side of the road. On the north side there is a gate into a field, which has a grassy road which climbs up to a deer fence, you cross it sticking to a more established ‘road’ until a single track grassy path turns off it to your left towards another deer fence. this will take you to the saddle mentioned above where you’ll turn right up to the trig point.
It’s not a huge hill, but you get amazing views from the top. The descents are much like those in the Pentlands.
Maybe we should try and organize a ride up there, perhaps combining it with some of the trails at Blairadam which are only a mile or so further away.