St Mary's Loch
See route here
Summer has to end sometime and Innerleithen was part of it today. Eight (Gavin, Willie, Julie, Ian A, Ian S, Dave, Arthur and Mark) rolled out not knowing what to wear or expect of the border hills, glens and lochs ... but YES ! we were riding in God's country again. Actually layers were quickly stripped off as we hit the first major lump of Fethan Hill on the fine grassy tracks of the Southern Upland Way and Blake Muir and without too much drama, except for the usual suspects we peaked at 467m and could almost see our watery destination. A quick re-group and the track plummeted down the side of the Craighope Burn through forest on an entertainingly wet grassy, cold and secretly rutted trail. The drop of 176m saw some soaked, muddied, bruised and frozen, others faired okay with mudguards and keen eyes doing their job. 10/10 to Ian A for performing his trademark triple salko into a ditch, no body armour required this time as wet long grass was his saviour.
Blackhouse settlement was like Clampitville and the ruined bastle spoke volumes of bloodier times, happily as we left all we were worried about was getting a spurt on to warm up our extremities again. A rolling grassy trail got the warmth back into the bones, and after crossing a couple of burns it brought us a out at a cleft in a glen with a fantastic view down to the Loch over another ruined Tower. Not hanging around incase of loosing hard earned warmth riders tear ar$ed it down the Loch at Dryhope and on to the rolling trail alongside the Loch, which is superb, and contrasts nicely with the high moor and hill on the rest of the ride, even better when it's the home run to nearly half way and the head of the cafe, resplendent with sofas, fires and lashings of tea, crumpet and homemade soup.
Suitably refreshed we backtracked along the water to Clampitville and started on the 13 mile high drove road to Peebles, well way marked by the Scottish Rights of Way Society. The initial climb twixt Bught and Brakehope Rigs was on good forest road but turned rougher and "walking with bikes" commenced. Some delicate souls were getting flakey now, but tales of 20 mile down hillers over the ridge got them moving again. Emerging from the forest didn't improve the riding much even though we were going down hill for a short spell, tussock, heathery city was spoiling the fun and heads were going down and a mutiny was on the cards. Fortunately the heather gave up and the trail improved vastly and after a short spell hugging the contours we started the last major climb peak of the day, to the lofty Birkscairn Hill and at 661m /2168ft with more views than you shake a stick at, knackered but elated we chilled on top for a while before ... bracing ourselves .... we finally started the famous downhill.
DOH !!! ..... Halfway down the plan was changed by consensus in order to admittedly miss out the tedious end tarmac section and luckily a new way marked bike "Tweed Trail" was discovered which dropped us nicely into The Glen and the Quair Water cutting off a big corner but missing out the delights of Glen Sax / Gypsy's Glen. The roll into Innerleithen was fast, cause it was down hill and we peaked at our destination 32 miles 5 short of the full route. Time was 5.30'ish and legs were tired, but the weather had cheered up and no rain of any consequence had fallen ..... what a lucky bunch of bar stewards we are !!! .... excellent Scottish border riding again, big thanks everyone for coming. ~ Gavin.
THE MUDDY BUMS (aka "the Clarty Ars#ses")
MOUNTAIN BIKING IN NORTHUMBERLAND AND BEYOND
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