Innerleithen’s trailcentre is lacklustre but the downhill is excellent and the offpiste nigh godly. And, reasonably easy to navigate- it’s mostly built off hubs and main fire road links and though “secret” it’s not very. If you can find a local, definitely do that, but Steve at icycles is usually happy to draw on maps too.
(the downhill is actually pretty hard to follow the official lines, with race lines, local’s trails, etc all over the place)
So I reckon, head to the Tweed Valley, you could easily spend 2 days at innerleithen, one on the uplift and one on the “enduro”, I would personally recommend not doing the trailcentre at all except to get up the hill, it’s worth doing but it’s lower down the pecking order . And throw in a lap of glentress red if you fancy a trailcentre blast, it’s not technical but it’s fast and approachable, you can hit it fast first time. And it’s kinda iconic too so a good one to “do”.
The western stanes are great too but they are very trailcentrey. Trekster was kind enough to show us some class offpiste stuff at Dalbeattie once and I bet there is similiar elsewhere but imo it’s not as accessible as innerleithen. (Is Dalbeattie still affected by closures?) I love Mabie but it doesn’t really seem to fit your bill to me?
