3 July 2009 - Day 1: Glentress

It all started very badly! The good news was that Ed's roofrack fitted Nev's car, so with the towbar rack we were able to get 4 bikes and 4 people comfortably in. The bad news was that thanks to some shocking M6 traffic, the journey was going to take 8 hours, getting us into Innerleithen at 10:45pm and wiping out any prospect of a quick evening ride to get things going. Instead, we headed straight for the local pub/hotel/restaurant/chinese takeaway for a couple of quick beers.
The weather on Friday morning was stunning, making an early start easy. We headed straight to the Glentress trailhead and were away and riding by 9am. The first climb passed easily enough and we found ourselves at the Freeride Park for some playtime!

Colgie in his new kit - a vision in green!

Freeride Park Gump from Hedd Roberts on Vimeo.

Freeride Park Stu from Hedd Roberts on Vimeo.

Ed having some fun at the Glentress freeride park

After getting some confidence, we were off to tackle the climb up to Spooky Woods. This involves a bit of fireroad, followed by a singletrack climb with a few reasonably steep switchbacks to keep it interesting.

Ed and Nev emerging from the Spooky Wood climb

The Spooky Wood descent was absolutely fantastic, with Hedd performing particularly well on his new bike, even keeping up with Ed for a while!

From the bottom of the first section of the Spooky Wood descent, we detoured off to the blue route to descend Betty Blue. This was fun, but lacked the trail obstacles we'd been enjoying on the red descents. This allowed us to pick up the black route for the first time and descend Deliverance, which was awesome. Some tight switchbacks at the top gave way to some rockier sections, all taken at great pace.

The bad news was that we now had the Redemption Hill climb ahead of us. This proved to be pretty tough, and after punctures for "tubeless" Hedd and Ed earlier, Colgie now had a problem with his spd - the clip had slipped on his shoe making it difficult to disengage.

Ed on the long Redemption Hill climb

Colgie had to detour back to the bikeshop to get his spd fixed, so we took a shortcut and headed back to the red run to tackle the Hit Squad Hill descent. To avoid Colgie having to wait too long, we then headed for the Pie Run short-cut. This was good fun, but we hit further trouble as Ed's rear brake pad fell out! After some searching, we found it and were away, but he too had to detour back to the shop leaving just Hedd and Nev to complete the ride.

Hedd getting air on the final downhill of the morning - Falla Brae

After some great help from the bikeshop http://www.thehubintheforest.co.uk/Bike/index.html(new tyres for Hedd, Ed's brake and Stu's shoe fixed without charge) we headed to the hub cafe for some excellent lunch.

It was during lunch that the rain started and we were to be introduced to a new concept in mountain biking - the hub rat! This is someone that had all the gear but just appeared to spend all weekend at the cafe (with very brief interludes out onto the blue route).

After a long lunch break during which Hedd mastered his new tubeless tyres, we were ready to head out again, this time in the rain. Hedd's new bike had been an absolute revelation during the morning both up and downhill, although the fact that the hire centre had a fleet of them did mean they were "as common as a ford focus".

How hard can it be? Hedd with his first new bike upgrade - decent tyres!

The afternoon involved a repeat of the red run (no black or blue options this time) and by now we were starting to find our mojo despite the rain, especially Ed who flew down Spooky Woods in 3 mins 20secs this time. The rather surprising highlight of this run was being passed by a load of Scottish lads that had hired bikes for the day. They were heading down the fireroad climb to Spooky Woods and one of them pulled a rubbish bunnyhop as we rested by the side of the trail - rad!

We were back at the flat (http://www.mountainbikeapartments.com/) in no time and heading to the traquair hotel (http://www.traquairarmshotel.co.uk/) for an excellent meal, a few stories and a few pints of "The Stuart". We bumped into the hub rat again - he'd found a new home!

Residential trips of the past have always featured a guest drink or "a little bottle of something cheeky" and this was no exception! We managed to find a bottle of demarara rum in the supermarket. This led to a bit of drunken tension as Colgie struggled with the tv on/off switch and Ed made his dislike of Nev's Rippling Yarns dvd perfectly clear!