MTB ride with varying levels of ride available. Man-made routes that are well worth a trip to, excellent variety and a load of testing terrain. The trails are rideable all year round and are continually getting improved or added to. There are now 3 different runs - the Blue (easiest), the Red and the Black (the longest and hardest).

A lot of variety can be found in this forest, some technically demanding and super fast sections are available on the Red Route and there are some routes for beginners as well.
There is also a section for freeriding which is meant to be good but we didn't get a chance to check out.
The Black Route is the longest and contains the most variety of terrain. The climbing is done on a mix of fireroad and singletrack (the singletrack is excellent) and the descending is perhaps a 90%/10% split between singletrack and fireroad. The whole ride is superb but make sure you take plenty of supplies as when we were there the weather was definitely not as good as it could have been and we took longer than expected to complete the ride.

Early morning as by lunchtime the car park was filling up very quickly.
We spoke to one woman who had cycled from Edinburgh to ride the Red Route and then ride home again, but we suspect a lot of the locals drove to the car park, paid 50p to park and started from there.

Car Park costs 50p, there are loads of spaces available.
Maps are available which clearly mark the routes for you to follow.
Forest doesn't just have the marked routes - there are miles of tracks just waiting to be ridden.

A map of the area can be viewed here. This map was taken from the SCU website and can be printed out (in colour preferably) and used as a guide, it is very accurate and also includes some notes on some sections of the rides.

Related Links

Club Ride on 30th December 2001 - Report
Club Ride on 30th December 2001 - Picture Gallery

Route Map of Glentress (680Kb)