There have been a few glowing reports about coaching options down south, but nor much written about the options for those of us (well) north of the border. So, I thought I’d give a review of the skills course I’ve just done at Glenmore lodge.

Glenmore lodge is an outdoor training centre located near Aviemore in the Cairngorm National Park. They’ve been running mountain skills courses (Navigation, climbing, winter skills etc) for many years and now offer a range of Mountain Bike Skills Courses. These are based around the lodge, which provides a relaxed and friendly base. Unlike a lot of mountain bike coaching these are multi-day courses (2 day weekend courses, as I did, or five day week courses). The price includes accommodation and lots and lots of food. The menu is designed to give 4000 calories a day for people doing big mountain days out. You don’t have to eat it all of course, but you wont go hungry and the 4:30 cakes are not to be missed.

There was a bit of a mix up with course titles and descriptions when the courses were first listed on the web site (now fixed) but that was soon resolved and I (with one other student) basically did the shifting gear two day course.

I should point out that I was a bit of a sceptic when it comes to skills courses. Not that I really doubted their value, but I just wasn’t sure they’d be for me. We all have our own learning style and mine tends toward synthesising information from lots of sources (rather than just relying on one) and trying things out somewhere quiet on my own rather than being watched.

The course started with a bit of a get to know you session, where we met with out instructor (Neil), talked about what riding we’d done and what we hoped to get from the course (which was basically the stuff in the course description really). We then spent a bit of time going through basic safety checks and setup tips on the bike. This is where the advantage of a multi-day course comes in. If I only had a half-day I’d probably have been getting frustrated at this point, but as it was we had plenty of time to chat about bikes and setup and still leave plenty of time for riding. I ended both days pretty knackered and couldn’t have ridden much more.

We then went out to the purpose built “training circuit” around the lodge for a quick warmup, which was clearly also designed to make sure we were happy riding the stuff we’d said we could do, before moving through some steep hill climbs and onto the berms section. We spent a while learning how to ride these properly (line choice, body position etc) and were soon going round them much faster than our first attempts.

We then moved onto the grass to start practising power assisted front wheel lifts (or wheelies to you and I). This gave me the first clear example of the advantages of a good teacher. I knew how to to a wheelie in theory and had been practising on and off for months, but never really got the wheel more than a few inches off the ground. After a few minutes with Neil I’d flipped the bike right over and was sitting on my rear on the (thankfully soft) grass. It was a real revelation as he hadn’t really told me anything I didn’t know, but a bit of time watching him and a few small changes to body position and it suddenly felt easy to get that wheel up as high as I wanted (and often higher). I even managed to flip the bike up, jump of and end up standing behind it, which was quite fun.

After lunch we moved on to manuals. Again this is something that I’ve tried to work on for ages with no real success and again, within a few minutes I was laying on my back on the grass !

After a quick play with some little drops we then went for a ride on the local trails where we also learnt how to lift the rear wheel and started trying to link things together by messing around jumping twigs etc. There was also a bit of just hooning around in the woods to keep things fun and keep our confidence levels high.

Neil was a very patient and positive teacher. He clearly believes that anybody can learn this stuff and if one method isn’t working for somebody he’ll switch to another and keep going until they get it. I guess this could be a problem if you had a larger group and one person not getting something as I’m not sure he’d ever give up. but with just the two of us it worked really well as you got lots of tips for the things you needed to work on and lots of time to practice while he was working with somebody else.

The second day we started to work on manualling off drop-offs. I found this pretty tricky but again Neil wouldn’t give up and before long I’d managed to land both wheels together rather than front wheel first like a sack of spuds.

We then went up to Laggan Wolftrax to try and put all this into practice. We did a few circuits taking in red, a bit of black and some of the orange routes. Neil was keen to get us to use all the features on the edge of the red routes that people seem to ride round. He kept pointing out that this was how the course was designed and just because a big track had been worn by people going round an obstacle didn’t mean we shouldn’t go over it.

It look a bit of time to put things into practice out on the trail, but again Neil was very patient, getting us to session sections over again until we got it and stopping before features to walk us through them and show us the various options for line choices. By the end of the day I was even managing to launch off a few drop-offs to the side of the track with confidence and actually staying in the air for a while. Something I didn’t think I could do, but which became rather addictive!

So, I came in a bit of a sceptic but, as you can probably tell. came out something of a convert. As well as some great memories of nailing stuff that I would have been scared to attempt before I’ve also got a nice list of things to work on and a much clearer idea of why things go wrong.

All in all, highly recommended.

Thanks for the write-up, Andy. It sounds good! I found my absolute beginners session last week very helpful (not at Glenmore Lodge, but in the same vicinity) – I just need a bike to be able to put it all into practice! Did the weekend change your ideas about what your next bike is likely to be?

Thanks,

We had some interesting chats about bikes, especially as Neil had just bought a 29er but clearly wasn’t convinced, but no, if anything I’m more confused about “the next bike” than I was before the course.

Partly because, as expected, the course reinforced what I already knew; that the bike is a lot less important than the rider. It was certainly quite amusing watching some of the folk at Laggan struggling (and often pushing) big sleds uphill just to ride what are basically XC trails. Especially as, with a bit of coaching, one of our group was riding her short steep hardtail (with cantilever brakes) over lines that some of the guys on sleds were riding round!

But the course also left me less sure about the type of riding I want to do. Going into the course I would have said I was definitely a wheels on the ground trail rider. Far too old and timid for all the aerial stuff. But, as I said above, once you’ve been shown how to come off a small drop properly with a bit of air it gets rather addictive. Am I now going to start looking for bigger and bigger features, or will the new found confidence melt away now the course is over (maybe helped by a few crashes) and persuade me once again of the merits of sticking to the ground? I just don’t know.

Despite all that (waffle) the conclusion is still basically the same as was when last we spoke. If somebody popped up tomorrow and said they wanted to buy my Trance (and we could agree a price) I’d probably sell it. No idea what I’d replace it with, but buying bikes is always fun. But in the absence of that unlikely event I’m happy to keep riding it until I either make up my mind (which could take a while) or break it (or myself).

Great report, sounds like a weekend well spent. Looks good value too.

Was up at Glenmore for a scrambling course at the weekend. While I can’t vouch for the mountain biking course I can add a +1 for the cake, food, accommodation, beer and especially the standard of tuition. All very good indeed.

Yes, I guess it’s the old cost vs value argument. I’m sure that you can get a few hours coaching for a lot less than the cost of one of these courses and no doubt a good coach can give you enough tips in a few hours to keep you going for quite a while, but there is something to be said for these longer courses. Not just because of the “holiday” feel of getting away from everything in beautiful surroundings and thinking about nothing but riding for a few days, but some of us are just slow learners.

My Eureka moment came on the second afternoon. At lunchtime that day I was thinking that the course had been fun and I’d learnt some tricks that would no doubt come in handy, but I wasn’t really any more confident on the tricky stuff. Then on that final afternoon it just clicked. It was nothing new, we’d been discussing what I was doing wrong all weekend, but it just took that long to finally “get it”.

@debaser: Small world. We must have been in the bar etc at the same time!