I am heading up to Scotland and will be staying in the middle of the 7Stanes trails for Glentrool, Kirroughtree, Dalbeattie, Mabie and Ae. I will have 2 days there, therefore which are the best trails to ride?

Any to definitely avoid?

Thanks 🙂

Kiroughtree on day one and then mabie and Dalbeattie the following day. Didn’t like Ae and I think Glentrool is a bit too easy going by the trail descriptions on the 7 stanes website.

Pretty muuch what Haggis said. The black at Kirroughtree is currently closed and a lap of the Red wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. Mabie and Dalbeattie are pretty close so one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

I’ve only ridden a little of AE and it seemed ok but not as good as the others from what I’d ridden, but it does have two DH tracks to play on if you fancy it.

Can add Drumlanrig into the mix. Depending on where you are staying it might be a better option than Kirry 💡 Rik has just announced all red is open with black still closed.

Day 1 Mabie+Dalbeattie
Day 2 Ae+Drum
Sorted 😆
Dalbeattie is probably the most technical with all the boulders and tight singletrack, needs some effort to get the best out of it. No big hills, the Scree slope and Jacobs ladder being the only “big” descents. Some people do moan about the amount of forest road linking sections. 2hrs at a leisurely pace and not messing on any of the “feature”

Mabie. Fairly easy, climb, descend, repeat. Some table tops and big berms on Descender Bender. Some wide boardwalk sections. A rough plunge down to Burn Splash followed by a leg/lung bursting climb up Scorpion.

Ae. Love it or hate it. You decide 😉 Good cafe and the bike shop boys are on their way home from the UCI World Cup races in Canada and USA.

Drum. Not familiar with it but as above almost all roots, natural trails.

Trekster +1. The red at Kirro is good, but it’s just not the black…..

PS Nice scenic run over to Drum via Loch Ettrick back roads 😀

I got some good responses on this thread:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/long-weekend-in-7stanes-where-to-ride

In the end we decided to save Kirroughtree for another trip when it’s all open and rode the following:
Dalbeattie – good fun but mostly flat and easy
Glentress – really enjoyed it, but probably a bit too far away for you
Ae – far better than most people give it credit for, some fun jumps, lots of flowy berms and a couple of long descents.
Mabie – didn’t have time to ride it all but from what we did it all very disappointing. Definitely the one to avoid.

Ae is the worst trail centre in Scotland.

Kirroughtree and Dalbeattie are cracking, though. Drumlanrig is also good fun in a “pedal hard to go a million miles an hour” kind of way.

Kirri Red is top fun, the black is half fun, half painful slog anyway, if I hadn’t been completely lost I would have jacked it in and gone back to the car before it got good.

Is Ae really that bad? I’m up a week on saturday staying at Lochmaben and was planning on doing Dalbeattie Mabie and Ae during the week, might leave Ae til last then.

Put it this way, the only people I know that have enjoyed Ae are the ones I have read on here. Not one person I have met in the flesh or ride with enjoys it. We did it for the student champs a few years ago and not one person from my uni liked the XC trails.

Bloody students! 😀

Is the new visitor centre/cafe/behemoth open at kirroughtree yet. Saw the plans there last summer..may head that way easter 2015

Yep, new centre is open and pretty impressive.

Not an Ae fan myself but it mostly suffers by its neighbours, if you were to lift the entire trailcentre and drop it into surrey or something, it’d be much more popular. There is good riding though and it’s a nice location but it’s surrounded by great riding.