Biking in the Borders

A few months back for my birthday William, Brian and I headed down to the borders for a birthday ride. Rocking up a Glentress at half ten, we went to hire them some bikes for the day. This was to be their introduction to mountain biking, with a few blues then reds to get the hang of handling a bike as it's relatively new to them. Unfortunately they were out of hire bikes for the day, so thinking on my feet we got them to ring to Innerleithern to see if they had some available. Thankfully they did so we bombed down the road, picked up the bikes then set off on the Inners red run.

Having not rode here before I thought that it would be similar to the Tress down the road but how wrong I was! Turns out the first 10k of the loop are mainly uphill. Fine for me, in fact something I enjoy, but looking back after two corners to the lads I started to wonder what I was putting them through. Brian was slogging away and William was pushing. Turns out they didn't know how to use gears properly!!! This was to be a steep learning curve!

Sitting behind them and shouting shift gear left hand down, right hand up we were getting the hang of it. Brian seemingly getting the better of William. Shuttling between them and a lot of banter/waiting later we were soon at the summit of the hill and ready for the down hill. William was a broken man, eating all the food he brought and a bit of mine too! Power poses later we were ready to ride the downhill.


Having never actually rode a MTB properly this was to be as equally eventful as the uphill. I set off first stopping at the more dangerous bit to give pointers on technique and body position on the first few then waiting at the fire roads for them. Somehow Brian didn't fall off but William did a fair few times which was funny...until he didn't appear for 5 mins at the fire road and I started running up to see where he was at! Turns out he was fine just in a heap with the bike!

The day ended, with the route seemingly continuing to Williams dismay and the weather turning into a thunderstorm and buckets of rain. I had to swap for his hire bike and bomb the last bit with Brian back to get them back in time. Cake bought and dried off we went to find William and feed him up again. Never have I seen anyone so broken.

We've been down a few times since, much to the same theme...crashes fast uphills/pushing. Great stuff. I'm sure it will continue into the winter months. Plus I'll be super fit with the new 36 mile commute I now have!