Dumyat Ride Report (Sunday 10th June)

A couple of Sunday’s ago a group of us headed to Stirling for a play on Dumyat & surroundings, here’s what happened…..

After a confused rendezvous (which car park?  which Stirling Uni campus?  no. we’re not in the triathlon event!) 6 of us (Simon, Jacqui, Sam, Gav, Nigel & myself) set off up the wee hillock that is Dumyat.

Interesting Factoid #1:  I was the only person who had ridden the route before – so the steepness and degree of pushing up was an unknown pleasure awaiting my fellow riders.  It wasn’t long before my name was mud for the full frontal assault up the crags behind Stirling Uni – hey ho, you get a good view quickly!

Riding out of the trees and on to the hill proper the cold, brisk wind meant we had to keep moving – it would be chilly at the top – good job then that Simon had packed a down jacket in the panniers on his rigid, V-braked, touring-esque, slick-tyred MTB!!  Old skool.

Once at the top, we hunkered down for some shelter from the biting wind and a few munchies before dropping the saddles and starting the always-too-short downhill run back to the Dumyat car park.  The trails were pretty much bone dry and riding really fast which made the descent a swoopy joy of multiple line choices and (miraculously!) were mainly free of walkers.

We headed off into the locally built trails near Dumyat.  Interesting Factoid #2:  those local trails  are trashed following the winter storms; a real shame as Stirling Bike Club had done a great job.  So it was back onto the hill to ride the lower tourist path back down to the uni via some of those swoopy trails (which were thankfully clear to ride!).  The descent is pretty steep in places and almost saw Gav take a header off the trail into a burn!  But judging by his whoops coming down a narrow, techy piece of trail it seemed like he was enjoying himself.

Having returned to the relative warmth of the car park all thoughts turned to where to head for post-ride refuelling.  Corrieri’s at Causewayhead being about the closest and the lure of italian ice cream was strong!  It wasn’t a particularly long ride, or fast, or a great distance but it had a variety of trails which were dry and fast and some great views despite the chill and it wa all accompanied with the usual quality banter.

Dumyat Ascent

A few more pics here.

Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.