I met a guy the other day who works there and I mentioned some of the comments I had heard. He said they wanted it for famillies to ride and therefore didn't want people riding it "at speed".
I’ll add my view having taken my 8 year old daughter on it last week. Firstly, GREAT to see the place so busy even on a week when not many schools were off. The weather had been pretty foul so I was interested to see what state it was in.
My daughter is an average rider, certainly not hung ho and can be a bit timid. She rides down at Glentress a fair bit and is happy on the blues and a bit of the red there.
She found the top section which I assume was last built a bit scary - it’s very loose in places and just needs ridden in. For context I’ve done a bit of trail building and done an IMBA course back in the day so always look quite critically at what’s been built. The mid section is nicely built and the section into the woods is the most cohesive. Signage needs improved down there though. My daughter enjoyed the lower 1/2 and did not enjoy the top half. It’s neither a flow trail nor what I would call a blue trail either. It’s steep in places with some intimidating looking run offs due to the terrain. I think it’s a great asset and once bedded in will be useful but def a step up from a Glentress or similar blue at a 7 stanes so just be aware of that. I also some some properly sh1t riding and two bad crashes caused by riding too fast and missing the corner or a trail direction change. You could blame the trail but having watched one happen the rider was going too fast with not enough skill ! That one was a broken collarbone query wrist. We enjoyed ourselves and I rode it a couple of other times which was quite fun, certainly the bottom is.
He said they wanted it for famillies to ride and therefore didn’t want people riding it “at speed”.
Yet there are steeps and bigger berms...hmmm
That’s the thing, it’s neither Arfa’ nor Marfa’ is it.
I know what you mean Matt, it does sound like a reason after the fact.
Indeed, neither one or the other.
That said, it's a great addition to Scotland's tourist attractions, and one I think could/should be repeated elsewhere. Making the adventure and outdoors both accessible and 'packaged up'* for visitors.
*I know, I know. The outdoors doesn't need packaging up. But it does for some. Nature deficit and nature disengagement and all that.
I met a guy the other day who works there and I mentioned some of the comments I had heard. He said they wanted it for famillies to ride and therefore didn’t want people riding it “at speed”.
Then build a green trail. A good blue trail should have something for everyone.
I’ve just taken my 12yr old down it and he thought it was ace but did comment on the “consequences” if he were to overshoot some of those corners. There’s no way I’d take my 9yr old daughter down it. I genuinely couldn’t believe how dangerous it looked if anyone were to overshoot some of the corners nearer the top! I believe the consequences of things going wrong should be considered when designing different graded trails. Also, the sections of fence they’ve installed on the lower sections seem very close to the trail. The fence isn’t exactly well designed as the angle of some of the planks used could cause some serious injuries. Fully expect a few wee hands to be rattled off the fence at some point!
I’m far from an expert (the STW way!) but the build quality of most of the trail seems very poor. It looks like lots of mud dumped on the mountainside. How that will withstand the weather I’ve no idea. There were already some deep muddy holes developing in sections.
There will be lots of families take their inexperienced kids down it because it’s a blue but it won’t be suitable for them.
Last point - Halfway down the trail splits so you can join Top Cheif. I wonder how many folk will take a wrong turn and end up on the black. My son didn’t see the signs and headed onto the black. I’m glad I was just behind him and noticed it otherwise things might’ve been different.
Up in Fort William for the week and took a trip up to Nevis Range today. Was with the missus and the dog so didn't get a full day on the uplift but did some pedalling then grabbed a single lift ticket for a first look at Blue Doon.
The top 1/3 is pretty lethal. So many corners where you're on a line round then the berm/support just disappears. I'm also not sure what the trail surface was like when it first opened but it's rough as hell now, so going slow isn't an option as your hands get pummeled but going fast into really bizarre corners isn't much fun.
The last 2/3 are really fun though and flow much better. The Blue Steel bit in particular is a right good bit of trail.
Just got back, thought it was shit! (For all the reasons mentioned)
The lower blue / red trails are much better built and more fun. A real missed opportunity imo.
Sad to hear it hasn’t been fixed or improved much after a year’s maturing. Unfortunately, like others who rode it when it opened, I called it.
The older Blue Steel section is brilliant. The Doon is a mess. Shame.
Ah yeah I never followed up after I went and rode it! Aaand, it was exactly as people described it- roughly/poorly/scrappily built, a few really bad sections that guide the rider into bad situations (combinations of trail shape and vision), and totally unneccesary and IMO unacceptable fall hazards in really obviously bad places.
I'm not a good trailbuilder, though I've done quite a lot of it- I dig oles where I'm told and i let other people make most of the decisions about overall planning. But compare it with work we've done on glentress's blues and reds and there's absolutely no way some of this stuff would have been opened. It'd not be an impractical amount of work to sort the biggest hazards and it ought to have been done before opening day even if it meant having incomplete trail or bypasses elsewhere. It is just wrong. TBF it's a brave or reckless manager that opens a trail like this. Time constraints have played a part but it's not all explainable like that
OTOH a lot of it's more pragmatic and forgivable. The surface has definitely been chosen as "build it, then fix it where it fails" which isn't inappropriate, especially where it is, weather will be brutal on it so indestructibility isn't really an option. The dh is actually the same in a lot of it, it's just not so obvious because most of it's been sorted over the years and these days you're seeing more of the end product. There'd already been some rework but they seemed overwhelmed by it. And similarly, some things like corners that lead lots of riders into the wrong place just aren't automatically obvious til you test ride it, and that's OK as long as you fix it. Quite a lot of our trailfairying is like this, a specific hazard or issue arises and we go and fix it. Sometimes when we do that, it creates another one! But again they didn't rush to fix things (there were crap fixes in some places that I'd say were making it worse). I'd hoped by now they'd have done a second pass over it and rebuilt a bunch, but nope. Maybe the worlds is putting all the attention onto the dh, maybe there was enough winter repairs that that's all they've been able to do?
Overall they made an overcomplex and fiddly trail that's going to suck up builder time and effort for a long time to come. There's some really odd decisions- massively wide sections where it doesn't have to be, skinny bits where it should have been wider, at least one big uphill berm right close to an undersized fast one, and some poor decisions on gradient mean that some sections are hard work while others are brakey. Mostly in the earlier part before the climb. A lot of this seemed obvious from the pics and turned out to be exactly like it looked. Everywhere that it looks really packed in, it'd have benefited from just relaxing a bit.
I really like the final descent, it's a bit tight with the fences at times for a blue (and man that's a LOT of fences) but I really enjoyed it, I got to the point where I was getting 4/5ths of all the grins on the bit down into the wood, and treating quite a lot of the first section as just the commute. It's generally better built, better planned. And then the older blue after, is it blue steel? Is absolutely superb.
So it's a disappointment, sure, and it's all avoidable stuff, just bad decision making and sorry, a lack of competence. Some bad decisions at a command level, some right down to the guys with shovels.
BUT- I also spoke to a load of people, rather than just being Mr Big Enduro Bike Rider, and most people were having a great time. There's a specific group that it seems to cater really well to, the "just sort of trundle down it and see what happens", and I spoke to families that had done 2 or 3 runs and called it a day but importantly were really happy with that because each run was the equivelant of a normal day out on bikes. I spoke to one group that looked like they were just barely hanging on but again, having a good time. It'd be easy to assume as a more experienced rider that these guys would be having a bad time but I think I only spoke to 2 people all day that were. There were all ages, all shapes and sizes. So that was working.
