Today's club ride was an exploration of the new red route at Ae forest. Every time I ride a new 7stanes track for the first time, I'm yet more impressed by the skills of the Forestry Commission's 7stanes team. Ae is their latest. I'm not going to call it their best; I still think Kirroughtrie (despite the fact that it is technically too difficult for me) is possibly their best. But it's an example of the mature flowering of their art; the experience gained at all the other centres shows here.

One thing that is certain is that there are no Romans in the 7stanes crew. Nothing here is straight. Where the Dalbeattie Red Route is flowing and the Kirroughtrie trails are sinuous, the Ae trail is positively calligraphic, even arabesque in its flourishing twists through the woods. Bends of 180 degrees are the norm; hairpinning climbs zigzagging across the face of the hills; twists and jinks just for the fun of it on the rare flattish sections; and amazing vertiginous berms on the descents.

It's the berms and the woodwork which stand out for me as Ae's signature features. Mabie has berms, too; so does Kirroughtrie. But they're pale, half hearted things beside Ae's berms. True walls of death which take the trail and hurl it by the scruff of the neck back across the hillside; and corkscrew descents down gullies which look unrideable but if you can get over the edge prove to be a blast; and badmintons of berms which fling you back and forth across the hillsides like a shuttlecock. Berms with banking fully three metres high and banked at 70 degrees or more. Berms that really mean business.

The woodwork also shows far greater confidence then older red routes. Yes, Mabie now has its amazing (and exceedingly tough) kilometre of north shore. Nothing at Ae is anything like that. But Ae has bridges galore, and raised board walk sections, and frankly they're much easier to ride than the older board walk sections at Mabie.

Hey! Rider! Leave those brakes alone!

Of course, I fell off. Of course I fell off because I always fall off, it's traditional. But I fell off today because I didn't trust the trail. There was a blind drop off before a steeply bermed turn, and, because I don't like blind drop-offs, I slowed for it. Consequently when I got onto the berm I didn't have the speed to stay on the banking, and just slithered down it to the bottom. You need faith; those berms simply cannot be ridden slowly. And, indeed, that's the trick to Ae. Have faith in the trail designers. They don't want to scare you and they certainly don't want to injure you. They want to thrill you. They want to give you a workout. And they want to give you a good time. And by now they have a lot of experience.

There are a lot of trick features to Ae: suspension compressing dips with near vertical climbs out; rollercoaster sections of big mounds and steep descents, often with those amazing bermed turns; blind summits and stepdowns galore. And the trick to riding them is, for the most part, leave those brakes alone. Obviously, sometimes you need those brakes; some parts of todays ride were ridden to a chorus of Hope disks, all squealing in slightly different keys. But the roller-coaster sections seem to have been built so that, if you roll into them gently letting gravity do the work, you can just flow through all the berms and over all the summits without turning the pedals.

A Vroom with a View

The hills around Ae aren't particularly high, but they're steep and it doesn't take long to get well up above the valley floor. The landscape the route traverses is varied - old established plantation woodland, clear felled hillsides, meadows. And out on the high meadows and clear-fell areas, the view down over Nithsdale is pretty spectacular. It's not up to Glentrool standards, but when you get the opportunity to lift your eyes from the twenty metres of writhing trail in front of your front wheel, there's a lot to look at.

And under your wheels the surface is amazingly varied. There's pine needle carpets. There's well-crushed shale. There's clayey mud, wet in some places, hard and rutted in others. There's very hard packed sandy shale that's almost like tarmac. There's loosely packed broken rock in jagged edged lumps bigger than your fist. There are raised boardwalks and bridges. Oh - and there's water - one ford which was deeper than my hubs (although other people took a better line and didn't get in quite so deep) There's a running joke on the Singletrack discussion forum about inexperienced people asking 'what tyres should I use for...'. There are no ideal tyres for this trail; it has just about any surface you can imagine. Whatever tryres you choose they'll be less than optimal somewhere - so what you've got on will do.

And, in the end...

So overall this is another excellent piece of work from the 7stanes team, and another link in the chain of excellent trails which are making southern Scotland one of the places for mountain biking. It's generally more technical than Dalbeattie (although lacking Dalbeattie's outstanding set pieces) but less technical than Kirroughtrie. While riders at my level can ride it and enjoy it hugely, it will clearly be a blast from someone more competent and confident on their bike. Recommended.