Thursday. Leave work drive completely the opposite way to home back to a place you haven’t been for 13 years. Find the same place to stay and the same place to eat. Welcome back to the Tweed Valley, Glentress and Peebles.
Friday day off work and riding to be done. Glentress Red Route (I had completely forgotten what this trail was like) kicks things off. The trail head is completely unrecognisable. Bike park is new. Quick loop around and back for a coffee. Refreshed out to do the black, ah this is more like it. Those trails that Wee Ben and I did in the snow. The ones I rode with other friends over the years. Still a bugger of a climb. Body armour on for the descent. Deliverance feels slow today, bit over grown. Redemption, still that cramp inducing grind back to the fireroad. Yes I still hate you climb. Spooky woods and the rest and back to the trail centre for lunch.
Refueled, it’s time to head off to Innerleithen. Jon Woodhouse and I rode this not long after it opened. We got lost. It was miserable. The downhill run on the insane course we did was far more memorable. Still today I’ll be remembering that climb to the trig point. That goes on. And on. Then the false summits. It eventually ends and I’m on top of what feel like a mountain with a cracking view. This is why.
R O T H A R . C O M 