The Ride Report - First Ride of 2025, Glentress

Traditionally my riding in January and most of February is indoors, but I was determined to start this year on a different path.  The first ride of the year comes on the 3rd of January, at the same location as the last ride of 2024, Glentress.

Location: Glentress, Peebles, Tweed Valley

Bike: Orange Stage 6 Evo

Camera: iPhone 13 mini

Discipline: Mountain Biking 

Distance: 16km

Elevation: 350m

Strava: Link 

Parking: £4-£6 Forestry Commission Car Park

The morning started at 8am, getting the car ready, bike on the roof, and defrosting the car and the bike rack first.  By 8:40 I was on the road.  The closer I got to Glentress the more the ground covering turned white and the lower the temperature gauge got.

The car park at Glentress was fairly quiet, considering this was a weekday and one of the coldest days in a while, that's no surprise. I started my route by heading toward the taster trails and from there following a blue/red.

It wasn't long into the ride that I could really start to feel the cold, despite the multiple layers I had on, the feet are the bit that hinders me the most, I had two socks on and even now hours later they still haven't start to heat up.  As I started the trail proper the snow started to become deeper and the trail iceier, early on I decided that today wasn't going to be a long one, or a fast-paced one.  

With Blue skies and picturesque snow, this really was the most beautiful I had seen Glentress, I recently bought a new camera but didn't take it as I wasn't sure how it would handle getting flung about on decent.  I need not have worded as the ice ensured that any decent I went near was taken gently and very slowly.  I had my phone with me, I think the shots I took turned out pretty nice.

Hopefully, the rest of winter is short and the trails heal up nicely in time for spring