10 things left to ride in Scotland

Here are my top 10 features on Scotland’s MTB trails that I’ve tried to ride and failed. (the list of things that I know about but haven’t dared to try yet is about the same size, but not as interesting.)

  1. The diabolical cunning of Rik Allsop gives us the skinny bridge at Drumlanrig Castle. A 4 inch wide plank covered in slippery moss that crosses a large ditch, cunningly positioned after a sharp bend at the top of a long climb. I haven’t even managed to approach it on the right line yet, let alone cross it.donezor’d!
  2. The amusingly named “Back, Crack and Sack Attack” at Laggan. The Crack Attack section tipped me over the bars and ripped a hole in my brand new back tyre. Lord knows what Sack Attack would have ripped a hole in, if I’d got that far :-OWent back, attacked, sack intact.
  3. The McMoab rocks in Kirroughtree Forest. They’re too lumpy and go on for too long, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
  4. The wall ride in Glentress bike park. I still have scars from the last two times I’ve tried it. Should have ridden more BMX back in the 80s.
  5. The Slab at Dalbeattie. I believe this 30 foot long, 45 degree rock slab with a poor runout is made of gritstone and is exceedingly grippy in all weathers, but it still looks scary when you’re peering down from the top on a damp day.dealt with!
  6. The qualifier for the Slab.
  7. The Matador downhill run at Innerleithen.
  8. Glentress’s Ewok Village. I always end up falling off the skinny bits. I swear when I fall off, so maybe it’s North Shore Tourette’s. (Ewok Village rotted and was demolished)
  9. Any steep climb with wet roots near the top.
  10. The 4X course at Fort William. This was embarrassing, I had to get off and walk part of it with people watching. Do not pass go or collect 100 Rad Points.

I’ve not really noticed any trends except that if I wear tights I always end up having a really bad day. I think I need baggy shorts and kneepads to get Frankenstinky’s respect. Also, Continental Gravity tyres are crap. If you inflate them hard enough to stop pinch flats, they don’t grip any more, and I have a big hole in the knee of my new baggies to prove it. Go for the Panaracer Cinder 2.3 or the Maxxis Minion instead, folks.who disabled=

Hone Schmone

I enjoyed myself so much at Innerleithen that I decided to go back on the uplift day. This is a service that hauls riders to the top of the mountain in a bus, and their bikes in a cattle truck. It’s popular enough that they ran two 50-seater buses and two 10-ton trucks all day. Grinding up a dirt road in a bus packed full of 49 middle-aged guys in Robocop-like body armour is a weird experience.

It was all going great until I crashed on my third or fourth run of the day. I took the wrong line over one of the drop-offs on Cadon Bank, landed in some loose rocks to the side of the trail, and wiped out completely. I wasn’t too badly hurt, and I carried on riding for the rest of the day. I even went down Matador and took a look at the big drop-offs. (That was all I did though: look at them. These guys make the 8-foot drop look easy.)

But then on my ride home one of my pedals just dropped off! The thread in the arm of my brand new Shimano Hone crank was totally gone. I thought maybe I’d wrecked it when I crashed, but if that was the case, why didn’t it break there and then? I’ve heard Internet rumours of other people stripping the threads in Hones and having the steel inserts come out of Saints, but I assumed it would never happen to me! 🙁 Maybe Shimano’s Hollowtech system is based on an Easter egg, with cranks made out of high-tensile chocolate.

The shop where I got them said they’d try to submit it as a warranty claim. But now I’m without my bike while they sort that out, and what if I don’t want another chocolate crankset?! Oh well, commuting on a 38lb freeride bike was getting old anyway, and my Genesis Skyline just arrived. All I need is a pair of my sister’s jeans and I’m good to go.