Dalbeattie - 3 Stanes Day One

The 3 Stanes trip - Day One.

Dalbeattie

Mountain Bike Ride.

The Ginger One, Tony, Rod.

21st April Red Route and Skills Loop

In the cosmic lottery of British weather, all the numbers plus the bonus ball came up for this trip to Southern Scotland, Dalbeattie to be exact, a compact, grey granite town just North of the Solway Firth, our home for the next two nights. Also home to Dalbeattie Forest, one of the Seven Stanes trail centres, for us venue one of three trail centres we intended to visit. Expecting something like Glentress with cafe, showers, bike shop and related facilities we were a little underwhelmed to find the car park held nothing but pay and display machines and the advertised bike wash - a hosepipe connected to a standpipe. A mere four Terra Trailblazers were able to attend this trip, the remainder constrained by employment, convalescence or marital demands. While they probably were gazing wistfully through their respective windows at the weather, our only regret was a lack of short sleeved tops.

Bikes were hastily assembled, I have no idea why we were being hasty, with nothing to rush for, nothing but riding on the agenda until pub time tonight; after a three hour drive, I guess we were keen for legs to be spinning, hearts to be pumping and lungs to be filling with clean Scottish air. We set off on the red route, hearts pumping dangerously fast,legs spinning like windmills, lungs straining to fill with any air available, trying to keep up with Tony’s race pace, although I’m sure he thought he was ambling along in a sociable fashion as we climbed a gentle gradient. The tracks were mainly gravelled with outcrops of granite bedrock sticking through, which made for a bumpy ride, the majority being singletrack, which made a pleasant change from the fire road drags of our usual North Yorkshire forests. Things continued in this fashion for around five miles until we came to The Slab, that much photographed and videoed black graded excursion off the Dalbeattie Red Route. Slightly less well known is the gateway and guardian to The Slab - The Qualifier, a vertical pile of rocks, three or four metres high which after close perusal, was declared beyond our technical ability or level of bravery and eschewed. Moving on, unqualified, to The Slab, we descended this testpiece, not without some prevarication at first but then more competently as we realised this granite rugosity was not as daunting as first appearance suggested, although the banging and clattering from protesting bikes as they bounced down the unyielding rock for the second and third goes left us in no doubt The Slab would win eventually.

Moving on, we rode more rocky singletrack, inevitably stopping to session the black excursions - sessioning, really getting down with the kids there you see, riding skinny planks or rocky drops, or not in some cases, mainly mine. Notable sectors are Log On, Log Off and Threading The Needle where we played sessioned until it hurt. Arriving quite unexpectedly back at the car park, we realised it was still relatively early, so after raiding our three day supply of junk food in lieu of lunch, we set off again to do the the skills loop, despite our apparent lack of skills, we spent the next half hour or so throwing ourselves down more vertical faces, balancing along rocky spines and risking emasculation on skinny planks high above the ground - well, a metre high at least.

Back at the car park, 18 rocky miles and a couple of thousand feet of climbing clocked up, we called it a day and moved on to our accommodation, a mere 500m down the road. Gorsebank Farm was to be our home for the next couple of nights, we stayed in the camping wigwams which are much the same as the ones at Glentress except they have a microwave in addition to the fridge, kettle and heater. They were better kitted out than The Ginger One who was woefully underprepared and had to venture into town to buy a sleeping bag and other essentials before he could join us in the brew, beer and banter prior to venturing into the metropolis of Dalbeattie for our evening meal.