What do i need to know?
Doing Kirroughtree on the friday saturday is Forest of Ae and Mabie and sunday Dalbeattie.
so tips, advice?
So far ive packed a bike and beer. Do i need anything else?
There's a hotel at Mabie, good food and beer afterwards and a café at Dalbeattie (just off the car park).
We normally do Mabie and Dalbeattie in a day, didn't like Ae the first time I did it so not been back.
What bike are you riding? If it's a hardtail I'd probably skip Ae and got to Drumlanrig instead.
Actually, I'd probably skip Ae and go to Drumlanrig regardless
Yeah, I'd third that, Drumlanrig's great and Ae trailcentre isn't. (Ae does has great offpiste and dh though if you're up for that, and it's a lovely forest in places)
Hmm advice. Kirroughtree's great but takes longer than you'd expect, McMoab followed by the hill of death slows me down to a crawl, and it's fairly pedally (not in a bad way) Mabie can get a bit sloppy in the wet, Dalbeattie's more weatherproof so you might want to rotate those if the weather turns on you...
I much prefer Drumlanrig to Ae (and to most of the Stanes)......but.....not in the wet.....
Well, I like Ae so I'd suggest doing Ae Saturday morning, spot of lunch in the Cafe then Drumlanrig in the afternoon and skip Mabie.
Whaaaat! 😆
Mabie is my favourite of the lot. I rode Ae on a fairly cheap hardtail, it was hell. Im tempted to go back on my new bike as the fork is waaay better and I reckon it would be quite fun on a decent susser.
Im off with a group so its not really up for changing. Just wondering what im letting myself in for. ie is anything thats particularly hard? or hard on bikes (for spares?)
Looking forward to it tbh.
Ae is uncomfortable but other than that they're just normal trail centres. Some of the features need bigger balls than I have (slab at Dalbeattie for one) but other than that nothing massively taxing or hard on bikes.
I've never taken any spare other than pads and cables, and there's bikes shops about.
winner cheers.
Ae is ace, as Northy says, get off the beaten track and ride the good stuff.
Had a wicked time btw. I missed ae but the rest were top notch.
Good stuff.
Dalbeattie is fairly rocky, but while the slab looks scary it's just a roll. The Evil Twins is much harder, two smaller rock slabs that have a different camber with a tiny transition in between. Kirroughtree is my fave, basically one big up and then down, worth doing the red and black because once you get to the top it's just a long ace flowy switchbacky track with some tricky rock gardens. Mabie is a bit meh in an xc sort of way and I wouldn't bother with Ae