I’m heading up to Scotland with a group of mates, staying in Dalbeattie for 3 nights. None of us have done anything that direction before, so based on trail descriptions and reviews I’ve come up with the following, anywhere I’ve missed? any local knowledge to expand on the usual bike rag descriptions?

Day 1 – driving up from Liverpool, riding Gisburn on the way
Day 2 – Kirroughtree
Day 3 – Glentress
Day 4 – Mabie and Dalbeattie

We’ve got a mix of riders; a couple of enduro boys, a few decent XC riders, and some relative newbies. We’re after places for a decent amount of riding, ideally with some good singletrack and downhill sections providing it’s not massive jumps and drops.

I know the usual response is “why all trail centres and no natural trails”, but we’ve got a massive variety of ability in the group. The better riders ride natural all the time so a weekend of centres is a nice change, and the less regular riders find a decent blue enough of a challenge.

Sounds a good itinery, I’m not sure I’d detour to do Gisburn when there’s more vaiety in the area your going to.Drumlanrig is fun-lots of rooty treeness .There’s Ae forest as well and natural stuff to explore.I’d either leave Gisburn for now or tie it in with a visit to Lee and Crag Quarries .

I would swap Gisburn for Whinlatter, personally, both for convenience (M6 proximity) and a better mix of riding. IMO The blue at Whinlatter is much better for occasional riders, and the red there has longer, funner descents.

I’d second Mr Spudface and head straight on up and get Ae and/or Drumlanrig in there

as above, gisburn’s a fair way out of the way – Mabie, Dalbeattie, Ae and Drumlanmrig are all in the same are that’s close to your route. From Liverpool, you could be at Dalbeattie in 3 hours easily.

Not sure whey you’re going all the way over to kirroughtree then all the way back over to glentress – my advice would be to drive up to glentress and do a route there on Day one – maybe the blue route, maybe the innerleithen XC route. Day 2, couple of laps of thr red / black at Glentress.

Day 3, head over to the west and do Kirroughtree. It’s a fair old drive from Glentress to Kirroughtree mind you. Day 4, dalbeattie and /or mabie and home

How is Drumlanrig at the moment? I heard it got pretty hammered over the winter but I’ve not been back since.

That looks a good weekend to me tbh, I’d usually say to throw in innerleithen but not the trail centre, get out and do some ENDUROGNAR as none of the best riding at inners is on the maps…

But that doesn’t seem like what you’re after and I’d definitely choose GT red over inners. Especially since GT is as big or as small a ride as you want, you can keep adding bits or looping bits or doing jumps or get hints for offmap stuff etc.

(this place can be a bit snooty about Glentress I think but for me, innerleithen red is basically 2 dimensional and repetitive and over far too fast, I can’t remember the last time I did it. The black adds some much needed variety and is basically a diversion on the red)

The Drum is up and running (Red that is)… trails pretty much undamaged and running dry and fast just now. Black extensions were still closed a couple weeks ago so do couple laps of the Red.

Thanks. I never thought of Whinlatter. I had looked for places en route and only came up with Grizedale, but it sounded a bit tame.

What’s Gisburn like then? I was under the impression it was a decent loop with some fun descents.

glentres,Ae,mabie, in that order

Gisburn is quite nice, but I’d either do an extra ride in tweed valley as suggested or the lakes, perhaps a natural ride?

Kirri Black is still closed according to the website. Red was still ok, but the descent from the other side of the road (largs hill?) was awesome, totally made up for the fact that the first half of the black was crap (IMO)

I’d do glentress AND Innerleithen

Loop of red and blue at GT, easy to spot shortcuts on the trail map if you want to keep the distance down without missing fun stuff.

Innerleithen is basically one climb and one (split) descent. Really really good fun!

I’ve never done ae, wasn’t impressed with mabie. Dalbeattie and kirroughtree were both good in very different ways. Dalbeattie is a series of tech ish moves joined by some ok singletrack and fire road. Kirroughtree has more flow and mcmoab.

Did a similar trip from Liverpool last week 🙂

Dont waste time at gisburn, you can go there anytime!

Day 1 – driving up from Liverpool, riding Mabie on the way
Day 2 – Kirroughtree (large section shut for logging still)
Day 3 – Glentress Red & Inners Red (Big Day)
Day 4 – Dalbeattie

Id say that be a better bet all things considered! Kirroughtree closures mean its not that physical of a ride at the moment, Pace your selves & enjoy something new each day

We stayed at Dalbeattie ourselves a few weeks ago and did a similar sort of thing. Would totally agree with previous suggestions and sack off the idea of going to Gisburn.Gisburn does have good bits but overall is hard work.

I would also concentrate your efforts on the Dumfries and Galloway area. Forget Glentress this time but go back and combine with Innerleithen. Assuming that you will be partaking in a few beers in the evenings then the trek from Dalbeattie to Glentress is a bit much.

I also wouldnt look to do more than 1 centre per day.

Day 1 – drive to Mabie and then on to your digs
Day 2 – Kirroughtree
Day 3 – Dalbeattie
Day 4 – Ae and home

If you did want to add more then there are other trails fairly local such as Drumlanrig.

Have a good time – im sure that you wont fail! Oh, and remember to take spare mech hangers – its pretty unforgiving up there!

I’d either leave Gisburn for now or tie it in with a visit to Lee and Crag Quarries .

How easy is this to do in a day? How long would a loop of each take? Google maps says an hour from Gisburn to Lee Quarry, is this about right?

Mark88 id personally leave both Gisburn & Lee Quary & Do a nice Big Lakes ride instead, take same amount of travelling time & be a far better ride

It probably would be a bit less than an hour but not by a great deal. If you go to Lee Quarry and have a good play and then ride over to Cragg and do a circuit of that, then you could easily spend 4 hours riding. From memory a full circuit at Gisburn would be a 3 hour ride so all in all in a packed days riding.

I know that from a personal point of view that would be too much in one day but then im just a big girl…

Thanks for the help.
The plan now is to head straight up and ride Dalbeattie on day 1.
Kirroughtree day 2 with the possibility of Ae after if we get it done in decent time because of the closures.
Day 3 Glentress and hopefully some of Inners
Day 4 See how we’re feeling and if there’s anything we still want to ride at the Stanes.

If its a weekend then worth asking around at Kirroughtree about the closures. I inadvertently rode the ‘closed’ loop a couple weekends ago as I came in from Black Loch (no signs) and trail was untouched and all rideable. I could see that work was had been happening to build up the forest roads for the lorries but none of the machinery was operating and no sections of hung up trees, etc.

Thread HiJack alert! (sorry)

Going up to Newton Stewart for a week next week. I’ve done Kirry, a couple of times, and was really looking forward to doing it again (what’s closed by the way?), as was my lad. We’ve done Mabie red and blue, and though we really enjoyed parts of the red (Descender bender is great!) , the blue is pretty dull.

We’ve done the Ae line, although we weren’t very good back then, we are going to give it another try. A lack of fluids on a scorching day meant we had to bail before Omega Man which was a shame.

I once did Dalbeattie red when I was an absolute beginner and enjoyed it despite struggling, and want to go back and do that properly, and I’ve done Dalbeattie red/blue a couple of times as a family ride.

So, the question is this. My lad and I will happily take on any Scottish red, with some black options but my daughter is more limited in what she can and will ride. Which of the blues is best for the days she comes with us? She coped with the stuff Dalbeattie blue/red threw at her, and is perfectly happy on stuff like Sherwood Pines, but much more technical and she’ll struggle. The dull fire road stuff on Mabie Blue is a waste of everybody’s time. What would folk recommend?

One possible option is at Ae… start on the Red single track climb then follow blue (bit of fireroad) onto the newish blue bermy descent then stay on blue back to car park…ends up flat but flowy singletrack along river. No techy stuff but some flowy fun.

Drumlanrig may also be fair option.. grab the map and mix red/blue sections

For a blue route, if you are near Kirroughtree then pop over to Glentrool – the latter sections are reasonably fun for everybody…

Thanks all!

Kirrie Black is definitely shut ; I drove past the Black Craig section yesterday and was very unhappy to see my favourite section , the run down to the main road crossing being heavy logged…….:-)

mark88 – Member
I’m heading up to Scotland with a group of mates, staying in Dalbeattie for 3 nights. None of us have done anything that direction before, so based on trail descriptions and reviews I’ve come up with the following, anywhere I’ve missed? any local knowledge to expand on the usual bike rag descriptions?

Dumfries local 🙂
Takes an hour to get to Kirry.
Takes about 2hrs to get to GT from Dalbeattie area.

Various local group rides at Ae, Mabie, Dalbeattie and Kirry, some on off-piste trails or natural stuff.

Drumlanrig and Ae on the same day, coffee and cake in Tomas Tosh, Thornhill 😆

If you can read a map OS79 has a few good trails probably being used on this weekends mtb marathon series ride.
http://www.mtb-marathon.co.uk/events/3rd-august-2014-drumlanrig-castle-scottish-borders.html

There is enough riding without wasting time going all the way over to GT/Inners, save that for another trip.

Whinlatter is better than Gisburn(done once). There is also; http://fattyres.co.uk/routes/borrowdale-bash Map can be got from local bike shop Keswick Mountain Bikes or various web sites for details.

Hey there I did Dalbeattie on sat and Monday also did mabie wed also doing it tomorrow mabie is by far the better of the 2 trails