UK MTB Tour

In early May 2018 I went on a very special holiday with two good friends. We had a long ‘lads only’ weekend touring the wilder bits of England and Scotland to ride stunning trail centres on our mountain bikes. Weather and vibes were awesome, and the riding was unreal. This is the story of our UK MTB Tour.

My brother kindly lent me his spare bike as my cross country mountain bike needed repairing, and wasn’t best suited to the mountainous down hill riding we were going to encounter in Scotland. The bike was a few years old but had a few gadgets that were new to me – a dropper post to get the saddle out of the way when going downhill fast, and longer travel suspension for absorbing the hits of bumpy rocky terrain. It felt awesome – I was ready to test it out!

Thursday
Packing and prep was an epic faff – I was up till 1am.

Friday
I had a 5am start to leave Warwick and get to my pal Jim’s house in Birmingham for a 7.30 departure. We were joined by two others – bike shredder Maruisz and Bach the white sheep dog. We were travelling in style in Jim’s huge camper van – complete with shower, garage for bikes and plenty of room for food and gear.

We hit our first stop on the tour at 11am – Grizedale Forest trail centre in the Lake District. We were hyper after hours in van and with the sun shining we jumped on our bikes and hit the trail.

We rode short but tricky trails with technical climbs and descents plus stunning views of Coniston water in the sunshine.

However my terrible mechanic skills meant the trek crank thread had been stripped by putting the pedals in and became loose. The day (and trip) was saved by the super friendly Grizedale bike shop who had a (now rare) Shimano three ring crank set I could afford. Mariusz worked in a bike shop for many years so fitted it in 5 minutes (and taught me how to pedals in correctly – I will never make that mistake again!)

We decided to shoot up the M6 to Scotland while we could get ahead of the bank holiday traffic. We drove through stunning weather and views of Ambleside, Windermere and Kendal.

Hitting the Scottish border at Gretna Green the temperature dropped to 11 degrees and we headed west to the Forest of Ae. We arrived in mist and drizzle, joking we had left the sunniest day in the lakes for this.

We had a few snacks and hit the trails again.

The Forest of Ae had a great loop with steep trails (up and down) and beautiful woods with sculptures and windmills looming out of the mist.

The final kilometre was a downhill track with beginners areas to build up confidence.

We got back to the campervan for half seven and got cleaned up.

There was much giggling from our van

There were other touring bikers in vans – including some Germans who got naked and used the bike wash tap and hose to have a wash. We had an excellent vegan dinner prepared by Jim’s amazing wife Jo, and enjoyed some zero alcohol beers (!?) while using the van’s satelitte dish to watch TV – bizzarely Michael Portillo exploring the history of UK prisons.

Friday
In the morning we couldn’t start the van due the two batteries getting confused and draining each other. Thanks to a jumpstart we got it going but then we couldn’t put the van in gear as the automatic gearbox and other electric systems was confused. I’ve concluded on this trip that campervans are as much a hobby as a possession because you need to know how to fix every part of both a house and lorry while on a layby in the middle of nowhere. We feared the trip was going to end on the back of a recovery lorry, but as a last gasp option Mariusz suggested turning everything off (unplugging batteries) to reset it. Amazingly it worked! Every system then needed configuring again from the reset – starting with Satnav to get us back on the road.

We travelled North to the beautiful Loch Lomond, where we had an ambitious plan to hike up to the top of Ben Lomond and ride back down. We got on the trail at 3pm and pushed or carried our bikes for three hours until we hit the snow line at 800 metres.

We had been in cloud for the last hour and the wind was gusting hard enough to push us over. Jim was getting seriously cold without any winter gear so we gave up on the summit attempt and started our descent. It started so well, amazing raw trails down bare rock with tight corners. However the rocks were so jagged we had 5 punctures in the first 200 metres.

Only Mariusz’s bushcraft mechanic skills saved the day – cutting patches with a sharp stone and filling holes with rubber band knots.

Soon the spare tubes and patches run out and Tom ended up pushing his bike back down the mountain, the views made it more bearable!

We were exhausted, frustrated and hungry when we got back to the van so headed straight to the Clansman pub on the lake side. We devoured pints of real beer, bean burgers and bloody mary style mussels, while both hen and stag groups arriving by boat on their pub crawl around the huge loch. We returned to the campervan parked on a stunning beach.

Sunday
On our last day we were heading North to Fort William – the mecca of Downhill biking in the UK. We made an early start and it took an hour just to drive the perimeter of the loch. From there were in the highlands passing epic wilderness around Glen Coe.

Again we had left the sun behind us in the South, as it was cloudy with drizzle when we arrived at the bike centre at the foot of the Ben Nevis range. Got got ourselves ready and bought an all day lift pass for the gondalo from the car park to the peaks. Everything was new to me and super exciting. From the gondola we watched riders below us hitting huge jumps on the ‘motorway’ section of the world cup down hill track. As we climbed the mountain we suddenly broke through the cloud to an incredible sunny summit with snow still in deep drifts around us.

I had serious butterflies as we started our descent on the less extreme ‘black’ downhill run which I muddled my way down without incident taking in the fab views.

We got back on the uplift for our second run and Jim had two nasty tumbles. On our way down we found a ‘beginners’ orange downhill run with little jumps and drops to hop over.
Mariusz strapped my GoPro to  his chest for our third and final run – which was epic as we knew the course and had some flow (bike confidence).

My confidence grew hugely – allowing me to trust the long travel of the bike to get me down 95% of the track with only one serious tumble.

It was easily the best day of riding I’ve ever had

It was amazing to see so many other riders of all abilities, size, age and gender and be in a place with such heritage. A few weeks later the Olympics of downhill racing (World Cup) was at the course, and I watched it live on Red Bull TV imagining how intense the atmosphere must be. Finally we called it a day and headed to Glen Nevis campsite with unreal views all around us.

We spent our last night in the excellent campsite pub enjoying battered Hagis croquettes and pints of local ale before going back to van to watch the surprisingly good go pro footage from our day. Jim was very sore and we were all tired, but elated.

All that was left was an 8 hour drive back home on Monday through more typical Scottish weather, returning to the flat and tame reality of the south.