I am going up with a few lads from N.Wales in a couple of weeks for a Friday-Sunday at Inners and GT, travelling up on Friday morning and wanting to do a trail centre on the way up, geographically AE or Mabie make sense, having never been befreo which would you recommend doing en-route ? We are all pretty experienced riders on natural and trail centre riding (coming from North Wales helps 🙂 and all are of decent fitness. Thanks for best advice

not ridden either in a while

but Mabie and take a detour to do the darkside as well

There nothing in it from a time and distance perspective if you are driving up from Wales.

Mabie is a shorter trail
Ae is longer but has more fireroad

Why not go to Drumlanrig instead? Nicest trail on the way to Glentress by a big margin

I’ve been to Are once. I found it shit.

I’ve been to Mabie many times, its far better.

The darkside is basically just loads of skinnys off the ground, very tricky on the Pitch. I’d say a small HT would be best for it.

Ae – Start with the Shredder or Downhill, do the XC and then finish with the Shredder/DH doing the opposite one to the one you did at the start.

Neither are great, but if you just want an easy canape before the Tweed stuff then prob Mabie. Smooth track in some nice woodland – good fun as a fast track. Ae is a bit tedious IME.

If you want something more involved then the Lakes is the better bet – some serious stuff in easy reach of the M6.

Dalbeattie is a nice trail – be a good laugh with some mates seeing who’s got the bottle for the slab, terrible twins etc.

Easy, Ae has the more technical riding both up and down and the new section is flat out 4X style jumps and berms.

Have a look at Drumlanrig. Great set of trails, very twisty and rooty. It would be completely different from what you’ll be riding at Inners / GT so a nice compliment to your weekend.

Neither – Drumlarig, it’s great real natural feeling very rooty and lots of fun, Rik at the bike shed is a top bloke too if you need advise on other trials in the area

Darkside etc.. are closed at the moment because of tree felling operations..

Drumlanrig is good and has a good cafe.

AE, as mentioned it long and alot of fireroad between the trail sections but it is fun! the shredder is the shit! best single trail section i have ridden just flows so well and so much fun!

Ae fire roads , all 2 of them, are only the climbs, the last climb has now been converted to new gravel trail. Ae is harder than Mabie (dark side not included) but is only 15ish mins from the Beattock junction which would sway it for me

Definitely Mabie! 🙂 It has a nice flow to it & u can breeze 2 reds in 4 hrs.

Ae is a bit of a drag, but the last downhill ‘Omega Man’ is very good indeed!

Enjoy.

Why not do both? Mabie first, then Ae is only up the road on the way to GT. Ae is the better of the two, both a nice entree for GT/Inners.