NEED TO KNOW WHEN TO GO The trails at Glentress are open all year round, while The Hub facilities are open at certain times on weekdays and weekends. It’s best to book a bike in advance (and it’s £2 cheaper at £20 a day). GETTING THERE The best way to get to Glentress is to hire a car in Edinburgh and drive, which takes less than an hour. For 5 per cent off car hire check out easycar. com/tntmagazine. GOING OUT There’s a café on site that does excellent food. Nearby Peebles is a popular Scottish Borders market town with a good range of pubs. ACCOMMODATION The Tontine Hotel in Peebles (tontinehotel.com) and The Macdonald Hotel Cardrona (macdonaldhotels.co.uk/ cardrona) in Peebles offer bike packages. Day trips from Edinburgh are possible. SEE thehubintheforest.co.uk, and visitscotland.com/ perfectbiking.
tntonline For a full destination guide on visiting Scotland go to tntonline.co.uk/travel
The route starts “ with an epic uphill through the forest ” can warm up on the Skills Loop. For serious bikers the Free Ride Park comes with a warning: “body armour is seriously recommended”. The red route starts with an epic haul uphill through the forest, but the effort is worth it as the views open up. Pennel’s Vennel is the first stretch of single-track downhill, loose and rocky, but it’s just a warm-up for the challenges of Spooky Wood, which kick off with three mighty drop-offs and push on into a dozen 180-degree bends, 18 jumps and 17 tabletops. Like many routes in Scotland, the red at Glentress has a number of options so you can pedal around the toughest sections and duck out of some of the climbs. My journey takes me flashing through tight single-track woodland where wet roots across the track and narrow gaps between the trees have my head spinning, and also across a tricky raised wooden section. Then there are the hulking rocks that have to be banged over, leapt across or avoided at all costs. Just under two hours after I left The Hub’s café I am back, a sweaty, adrenaline-pumping mess of dirt and smiles. The red route here
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offers seriously testing mountain biking, and after a morning slapping down it the afternoon awaits with the choice of tackling that black route or one of the relatively easier routes.
THE BIKING OF SCOTLAND Glentress is typical of the experience on offer at the mountain biking centres now springing up all over a country made for mountain biking, with its phalanx of unspoilt mountain landscapes. It is one of the Seven Stanes – a network set up by the Forestry Commission. Indeed Scotland recently usurped Canada as the world’s number one mountain biking destination, according to an International Mountain Bike Association people’s poll. Since 2002 Fort William in the Highlands has been holding rounds of the Mountain Bike World Cup and it has also hosted the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup series, the most prestigious and extreme competition in the mountain biking calendar. Scotland is certainly not resting on its mountain biking laurels, though, with centres constantly upgrading their facilities and new
John McFarlane, Robin McKelvie
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Enjoy stunning views at Glentress