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Hi, need some help, I've got limted time tomorrow to have a ride in Glentress, have not ridden there in a while apart from the National XC round this year. The plan is to have a ride with my wife and son tomorrow morning, probably 3 hours saddle time, both capable riders (son more capable than me...) but my wife will get off if there's gaps or drops (not a problem for her to do this as long as not too many).
So, the question is, is there more fun to be had by doing the red route a couple of times (easy riding from previous experience) or the black route once (not done it before)?
I'd love to go off piste but not confident in the time allowed to go exploring!
Thanks,
Iain.
Red and Blue for most fun.
I rode the black last year, having ridden the main stuff at glen tress quite often. In all honesty wouldnt do it again.  The red is a lot more interesting. Black just seems longer with longer climbs.
Not done the off piste stuff but keen to do it. Back in the country in a few weeks if anyone is able to show me about a bit!!
Black has a lot more and slightly more challenging climbs.
The descents on both are a lot of fun and fast. rougher and more natural feeling on the black
The blue descents are fun but need far too much pedalling to ride flat out if you're a good rider.
Had my first visit for a long time, take trail forks 🙂 Red up then on to the mast form there you have lots of options
Red plus bits of blue. I tend to have a couple of laps of berm baby berm and blue velvet on the way up to get me back into trail centres, miss out the bit of red that is a bit further away( Lombard street?) then a couple of laps of magic mushroom, pie run
As above, red & blue mix would probably be most fun in the time you have available. Three hours isn't an enormous amount of time to take on the black. You could probably do it in that, but it would be pretty tight. While the off piste stuff is generally fairly easy to find it can be a bit of a pain to plan a route because of where some of the trails end. I'd definitely recommend it when you have a bit more time though.
I did the black and red last week in a day, red was far more fun, the black is essentially a big uphill slog for the first hour.
That's great, thanks guys, it's kind of what I thought. It's even convinced my eldest to come out for a ride with us tomorrow which he's not done for a few years.
If anyone sees us, we will be the odd family group on a bunch of Trek bikes (red Slash for me) so please say hello!
I rode the black last year, having ridden the main stuff at glen tress quite often. In all honesty wouldnt do it again.  The red is a lot more interesting. Black just seems longer with longer climbs.
Probably about 8 or 9 years since I rode GT. Sounds like it hasn't changed much!
Probably about 8 or 9 years since I rode GT. Sounds like it hasn’t changed much!
The black probably hasn't the rest of the place has! Last few times I've been there has been a mash up of of the red/black and off piste stuff, lots of linking trails in there now to get between things
I like 'em all tbh, though it's not that often that I'll ride one of the specific routes, there's so much better in the forest that you can link up easily (the waymarked trails haven't changed much but the official "offpiste" has added so much more)
If you just want to ride a loop, then the red.
If you want a better ride with a bit more challenge and peril, then there's so much choice.
Hi Northwind, you don't happen to have GPS or strava link you could send me for some off-piste stuff?
The black is great to do when ground wet conditions mean the off-piste stuff in the valley is minging. On a modern bike there are few downhill challenges on it but you do get a good workout uphill!
You don't really need anything like that at glentress- the main ones are really easy to find and navigate, we build them to link into the network. Some good names to look for are Five Year Plan, Broon Troot, Mild Peril, the Fort, Zoom or Bust, Ponduro. These all link easily into the trail centre. Mild Peril even has a sign.
(B Side is very good too but doesn't fit into a lap quite as nicely, there's others like that which I'll often ride but I wouldn't take someone to ride if they didn't get to ride GT often)
Thanks, looks like a good day out!