Glentress: Scotland’s Mountainboarding Heaven

Glentress: Scotland’s Mountainboarding Heaven
Glentress: Scotland’s Mountainboarding Heaven

I’ve been exploring the mountain bike tracks at Glentress and found loads of cool tracks that are rideable on a board, including built tracks, northshore drops, footpaths, and tarmac roads. And I’m sure there are loads more out there. Think I need another roadtrip to Scotland next summer.

First Scottish Sweet Spot

Sweet Spot - Scotland

Found a sweet spot to camp and have my first mountainboard ride in Scotland. Nice mix of grass, rocks, trees, roots, and mud.

Hell on wheels

Mountainboarding down Helvellyn
Mountainboarding down Helvellyn

Mountainboarding down Helvellyn, the third highest mountain in England at 950m, was ok. Not great, but ok. Not great fun, but ok fun. I hiked up to the top, just me, my board and a hundred or so hikers. I padded up and strapped in to the usual puzzled looks and chortles about being crazy, and then I set off. The top half was a bit boring, just a mellow stony track. And the bottom half was hard work with big rocks everywhere. Most of it was rideable but there is quite a bit of walking to be done too. It was worth doing but Skiddaw is still the best mountain descent in England.

Mountainboarding in the animal kingdom

Mountainboarding in the animal kingdom

Went looking for a bit of poaching that was hinted at a while ago and found something so much better. I don’t know what it’s called so I named it Animal Kingdom as it seems to have a wooden animal at the top of each run. The runs are pretty chilled footpaths with all kinds of stony corners, rock drops, logs to jump, roots to ride over, and trees to hug.

New runs on a new set-up

New set-up nosno mountainboard

Just been on a Remolition freeride exploring new runs in Wendover Woods on my newly set-up noSno with eights on backwards flexi-axles and snowboard boots. Loving the flexis, but my calves aren’t loving the boots. More getting used to, I think.

Mountainboarding on May Hill

Really cool night time session on May Hill, which I’ve known about for years but never ridden. Old stomping ground of NASA but I bet it hasn’t seen four wheels in a few years. It’s a pretty nice spot with some long runs. I forgot my GPS which means I didn’t record any of the runs for the map.

I rode my noSno, which I’m getting back into more and more, especially now I’ve got T1’s on the back and T2’s on the front so I can slide it around. Will definitely have to have another ride there in the autumn, and maybe a proper on-foot scouting mission to get all the runs marked out.

Weekend in Scotland

Drove 872 miles, listened to S Club 7, watched some awesome mountainboarding, ate a massive naan, called an ambulance, analysed a pump track, thought about turbulated surfaces and vortices, and scratched my head.