Glentress

Is the Buzzards Nest car park open or do all bikers park at the visitor centre?

It no longer exists, neither does the ‘freeride’ area.  Park at the bottom.

(Unless there’s been a massive change since I was last there about a month ago)

Long gone…enjoy the wee climb to the top…as much as I’m far from quick, the singletrack climb is far more pleasant (but not as quick) as the fireroad…the fireroad is just steep enough to make sure I’m not finding it comfortable!

Gone and now the bottom car park is stuffed with folks looking for some easy /fun stuff which now involves a climb. I must stop moaning about how bad it’s all become but my kids now hate the place!

Another opinion. I was there two weeks ago.

We rode the new taster stuff (Blue, Red and Black), new trails (mostly red & black) and then fireroad climbed to bottom of spooky wood climb and descended from there.

We had a blast. Then managed to drive to Golfie and squeeze NYNY and Lower Wardell Way out of my poor legs.

Ice cream and beer to finish. Great day.

Gone and now the bottom car park is stuffed with folks looking for some easy /fun stuff which now involves a climb.

But, there’s fun stuff right from the car park barely any distance up the hill. Taster trails all open and within a few hundred metres. Short of a lift, how much easier to access can it be?

Got to go up to go down, no?

My kids are grown up now but when they were smaller we would go to Glentress as a family.

We’d park at Buzzards Nest ride Blue Velvet, Berm Baby Berm then red/blue back to the cafe, I’d then ride back up for the car. The kids loved it, in my experience most kids don’t like pedaling uphill.

I do miss being able to park in the middle, and I know a lot of people basically shuttled so that kids could do the blue without any real climbing. But the tradeoff to that is much more easily accessible trails. The blue and red tasters are about as good a climb to reward rate as you get anywhere, the bigger blue is a wee bit of a trudge for kids up that fireroad though but the descent makes really good use of it. Like, the red “twitcher” is super fast and really throws off all that gradient for jumps and a couple of steepish turns, which is fair enough, but the blue hits a pretty excellent balance between gradient and pedal for the most part and packs a ridiculous amount into it.

(I think that like some of the older stanes XC sections it’d be better with a couple of breaks in tbh, a shelter or two just to give an obvious stop point instead of encouraging people to do it all in one. I think the lay of the land made it impractical to do it in 2 parts with a fireroad to the middle, like say coed y brenin minortaur, but it’d definitely be better if you could do that and make a smaller or larger trail of it as you choose)

Thanks everyone.

Not been for 12 years (not biking but have walked and been to cafe) and I think we used park at the visitor centre and bike up anyway. From memory its a long climb but not too strenuous, albeit quite long?

I agree the red route does have a very long downhill section which would be better if there was a rest place or two.

Got 2 weeks in Peebles in August and have “permission” to bike as much as you like from the current Mrs Gooner666!

We’re here at the moment and have been all week. The lower tasters and new blue red and black are excellent additions for a quick blast and skills practice. The lack of buzzards nest isn’t a problem and the climb up is pleasant enough. There seem to be a lot of people towing kids up (on some cases teenagers). The Twitcher (new red) and Turn and Burm (new blue) are easy to access on the fire road. There’s a few diversions in place around buzzards nest mainly for the black. My daughter and wife have thoroughly enjoyed it, some grumbling about the climbs from the littlun but massively appreciated the descents so happy to put in the effort.

The red descent is broken up into sections to rest although I did it all in one hit on Wednesday!

I maintain that the red descent is best in one hit right from top to bottom. Yes it’s long but just blasting through is great. If you can give it a go

The climb up to the old buzzards nest is a great climb IMO, not quite as easy going as the Tarland one, but definitely better than most, or even the upper climbs at Glentresa.

The new climbs up the taster loops are good too, the climb up to the top of the new red is hard going but not too steep, just long. I recommend tying in the new red descent into the old red xc loop, you can ride the Pie Run, Mushroom Pie and then climb a bit up to the new red. That section of the hill, has quite a few trails so could do little loops just around there.