Dunkeld Gnarrdventure

Angus, RichHB, Elizabeth, Euan and myself headed up to Dunkeld in search of the various enduro trails.  Armed with vague knowledge from previous events, Strava and GoPro “edits” we headed into the hills behind Dunkeld and started to piece together the different routes.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/glasgowmountainbikeclub/albums/72157664846929821

There seemed to be trails all over the place with varying degrees of steepness & muddiness.  The first few set the scene for the day; scope out the first few corners then ride it with varying degrees of riding, walking & terror.  To be fair, once you’d ridden a trail a couple of times you started to get the hang of it so it’s definitely a case of practice makes perfect less crashes.

After messing about near Dunkeld we headed over to the Birnam Hill side of the A9 and continued the hunt using such tools as guesswork, assumption and fuzzy Strava maps.  Again, there were trails popping out all over the place and with limited time we climbed up on the fireroads and followed another muddy chute down to a muddy, rooty traverse before heading back towards a trail we’d spotted earlier.  The fact there was a group of kids getting coaching on that trail as we rode up to the start filled me with hope that I might actually be able to ride this one – and so it was the case when we all reached the bottom and Elizabeth let out a cheer that she’d been able to ride a trail from top to bottom.  Fists were bumped and we were all stoked!  Cue a 2nd ride up to repeat that buzz.

By the time we were back in Birnam and the art centre cafe we’d done 28.8km and 1180m of climbing/descending.  Fortunately my Garmin doesn’t record how much
http://halifaxartfestival.com/tramadol descending was done on foot!  My excuse is that I have the wrong sized wheels for these trails, next time I’ll use a 650B bike with a loud paint scheme 😉

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