Enjoying the views - Glentrool

Another sunny morning in Dumfries and Galloway surrounded me as I loaded the bike on to the back of my car for the third time that week.  The 7 stanes centre at Glentrool was my destination for the day and it was only a short, and very scenic, drive away from where we were staying.

Once you're nearby, the 7 stanes centres are well signed so I was able to find the car park easily.  Because we were staying nearby and I like early starts, I was the first car to park up that day and the midges were very excited by this fact!  The trail head is just over a small bridge and so a combination of the nearby river and hot summer days meant I was eaten alive by insects while getting ready to ride!  A small bird examined me quizzically through my car window as I pulled up too; he didn't seem used to having visitors at that time of the morning.

One unique feature of Glentrool is an epic 58k route which takes in, as far as I can tell, a loop of a huge portion of the forest.  I've heard and read that the scenery is great, but is a fire road / road style affair so I was content to give it a miss on my full-sus rig.

The 9k blue trail, confusingly called The Green Torr, winds slowly out of the car park and begins a pretty straight forward climb up the hill through the woods.  The very beginning is on a well established path which becomes fire road after not too long.  The blue is not the longest trail in the world, and more or less features an initial climb with one or two sections of flowing singletrack which are not too technical at all, including some more climbing, before a major purpose built descent which takes up maybe 1/3 of the total trail length and plants you back in the car park.  Total singletrack, 65%

Once I'd gained most of the height the first section of singletrack proper was a pleasant surprise and shows that whoever designed the trail knows how to build a track that flows.  It left me wanting more of the same and there was a little, but most is reserved for the final section.

After a further singletrack climb, I was spat out onto some more fireroad which had amazing views out across the hills of the Galloway Forest Park.  I literally had to stop to take photos every 50 meters or so as the view gradually got better and better as more of the view down the valley towards Loch Trool and Loch Dee was revealed.

More singletrack led to the start of the last descent.  The whole final section was well surfaced and was 2-3 feet wide, like a machine-made trail.  Undulating and with large easy to ride berms before a darker section in the depths of the woods, this last section can be ridden flat out aside from a couple of flatter corners towards the end.  Grin-inducing and worth a second lap.

Returning to our lodge, I picked up my girlfriend and her bike for a stab at the Palgowan green route in the afternoon.  This was a 14k circuit that shares the intial climb with the blue route but only has a very small amount of singletrack, the overwhelming majority being on fire roads, and a very short section on adopted road.  The route takes you out further from the trail head than The Green Torr does so we took it easy and enjoyed the sunshine and the excellent views across the hills of Galloway Forest Park.

The final descent is another long one, this time on a wide, straight fire road. I tucked in aero-stylee and shot down the slope at terminal velocity, glad of the stability from my big raked out forks; not normally the bike I'd choose for a mellow trail!

It was a thumbs up all round for the Glentrool centre, although with the proviso that there is little here for the experienced mountain biker looking for a technical challenge.  More beer and "self-catering" (read takeaway) was to follow that night!