Edinburgh

iwilldoit

Hi All

Anyone know of any trail centres around the Edinburgh area that you can ride and hire a bike as well, going up that way for a family holiday and fancy a ride while I'm up there but no room to take the bikes up with us.

benpinnick

Glentress is your best bet - great trails, massive hire fleet at Alpine bikes.

iwilldoit

benpinnick wrote:

Glentress is your best bet - great trails, massive hire fleet at Alpine bikes.

Thank you very much for the info.

Monty Dog

Or Innerleithin 10 minutes further on. I'm here at the moment - awesome riding

peter413

Monty Dog wrote:

Or Innerleithin 10 minutes further on. I'm here at the moment - awesome riding

Not as convenient as Glentress for bike hire though and isn't very family oriented depending on how old the family is. Red trail is the easiest, it's easier to get lost and the climbs are a lot tougher and require a much higher fitness level. Whereas Glentress has trails from green to black, is well sign posted for all the different trails, has much easier climbs and a much more thought out trail network.

That's not mentioning the facilities at Glentress. Bike shop with bike hire, nice cafe with nice food, camp site, showers etc are all on site. Innerleithen doesn't even have a toilet, everything is in the town.

iwilldoit

peter413 wrote:

Monty Dog wrote:

Or Innerleithin 10 minutes further on. I'm here at the moment - awesome riding

Not as convenient as Glentress for bike hire though and isn't very family oriented depending on how old the family is. Red trail is the easiest, it's easier to get lost and the climbs are a lot tougher and require a much higher fitness level. Whereas Glentress has trails from green to black, is well sign posted for all the different trails, has much easier climbs and a much more thought out trail network.

That's not mentioning the facilities at Glentress. Bike shop with bike hire, nice cafe with nice food, camp site, showers etc are all on site. Innerleithen doesn't even have a toilet, everything is in the town.

Spot on info thank you, Been talking to Alpine Bikes at Glentress about bike hire seem really friendly, it will be my brother in law, my son 9 and me, brother in law done quite a lot and my son is quite good for 9 ( even though he doesn't think so ) done reds and bits of black routes.

Getting quite excited now, I want to buy a full susser so I can have a play and see if I like them over my hard tail.

Do you ride there a lot Peter413 ?

peter413

Glentress and Innerleithen are my local trails. Well, I live 45 minutes and 30 minutes from each but I normally ride there a few times week. Haven't been quite so regularly recently though unfortunately.

At 9 I'd definitely pick Glentress over Innerleithen, much more suited for someone that age.

Monty Dog

Just ridden all the reds, blues and a few black bits at Glentress this afternoon on my CX bike - fantastic. Spooky Woods descent was such a hoot had to go back around again.

IDave

Monty Dog wrote:

Just ridden all the reds, blues and a few black bits at Glentress this afternoon on my CX bike - fantastic. Spooky Woods descent was such a hoot had to go back around again.

You rode the red route on a cyclocross bike?!

peter413

IDave wrote:

Monty Dog wrote:

Just ridden all the reds, blues and a few black bits at Glentress this afternoon on my CX bike - fantastic. Spooky Woods descent was such a hoot had to go back around again.

You rode the red route on a cyclocross bike?!

It's perfectly doable. Here's a video with Northwind doing it: http://m.pinkbike.com/video/275621/

Monty Dog

IDave wrote:

Monty Dog wrote:

Just ridden all the reds, blues and a few black bits at Glentress this afternoon on my CX bike - fantastic. Spooky Woods descent was such a hoot had to go back around again.

You rode the red route on a cyclocross bike?!

Yes, got a few funny looks but really only some of the black stuff had me worried, mainly because of the thought of landing on the rocks if I got it wrong 8). Might even give the full black route a bash on Thursday. Quite straight-forward in comparison to the ride the other evening where I rode up from Drumelzier into the hills, 500m of ascent up some scree run of a track and then across the Thief's Road and down across the heather and peat bog because there wasn't even a trail to follow! OTB a few times hitting unexpected divots in the heather.

iwilldoit

That looks spot on, it does look wider and smoother than what were used to normally ( mind the camera can make it look that way ) I'm really excited now can't wait hope we have some tidy weather

snowrider

Monty Dog wrote:

IDave wrote:

Monty Dog wrote:

Just ridden all the reds, blues and a few black bits at Glentress this afternoon on my CX bike - fantastic. Spooky Woods descent was such a hoot had to go back around again.

You rode the red route on a cyclocross bike?!

Yes, got a few funny looks but really only some of the black stuff had me worried, mainly because of the thought of landing on the rocks if I got it wrong 8). Might even give the full black route a bash on Thursday. Quite straight-forward in comparison to the ride the other evening where I rode up from Drumelzier into the hills, 500m of ascent up some scree run of a track and then across the Thief's Road and down across the heather and peat bog because there wasn't even a trail to follow! OTB a few times hitting unexpected divots in the heather.

I must have been one of the ones giving funny looks. Certainly someone passed me on the Spooky Wood Climb on a Cyclocross bike yesterday afternoon.

Monty Dog

Rode Innerleithin today - a lot more technical than Glentress and the consequences of mistakes more painful as you'll likely come off on rocks, and I'm glad it was dry coming down Caddon Bank on skinny tyres. That said, it was a lot more 'natural' and only saw one other rider all the way round. I'm going to have to come back and ride it on my rigid 29er plus which will simply monster the technical stuff

iwilldoit

Firstly Thanks to everyone for all the help and advise.

Monty Dog your off your head riding a CX bike :shock: Your the man fair do's

Well we went today and had a fantastic time, we hired a couple of full suss bikes to see how we would get on with them, to be fair the people at Alpine Bikes were very helpful indeed.

We rode the red had some food and then did half the blue, great day out.