22 April 2007 Blairadam Forest

I visited Blairadam about a year ago and although it was fun enough a) I knew I'd hardly found any of the half-secret singletrack and b) I wasn't sure just how much there was that was rideable.

So, interested in heading off from home in a new direction, I took the car and parked at Lochore Meadows country park. Over time I hope I can find some tracks and paths that might let me ride most of this off road.

From there I rode across to Kelty and on to Blairadam. I did stick mainly to the tracks and paths but spotted so many side tracks that I'm sure there is tons of stff to do there in future. With this and the link to Lochore it all added up to about 30km; not a lot for me these days but almost all off road except for the big long climb through Kelty.

Blairadam is a bit of a funny place. On one hand it has the potential to be a really great MTB centre in Fife, right beside the North-South motorway. It's big enough, has the right kind of terrain and there has been a lot of good work done already. But it seems to have status that is kinda official, kinda not - yes, the trail building that's going on seems to have Forestry Commission blessing and even support, but there are no waymarkers, no maps etc. They guys who have been building it advertise regular guided rides to ind out what's there - but that isn't ideal for many people.

... and to be honest, it's likely always to have a bit of a problem because it is so close to population.

The path into the forest that is closest to Kelty is a mess - in the tradition of naming MTB trail sections this would have to be either "shit parade" thanks to the vast amount of doggy doo-doo on the path; or "shooting gallery" judging by the number of improvised targets stuck on the branches.

However, the impact of this kind of thing reduces quickly as you get into the forest, and there's a lot of space to expand the MTB trails into in that direction. It's certainly somewhere I will be returning to for longer off road training sessions.