Innerleithen

Went down to the Traquair XC course at Innerleithen for the Sunday morning adventure. Two other cars there at 9am, both with guys in full armour. This is the site of the Redbull Downhill project... a serious downhill course. The sign on the gate says, 'expert bikers only', the first ascent has had rocks planted across it all the way up to put off the grannies. After a short ride through the forest, and a huge bomb hole to test our nerves, a long 45 min climb though the forest to the top of Minch Moor, one of the higher peaks. 570m climb - 1 hour ish. Lovely sunny day. first descent is fun, and then some confusion in that the path goes back to the top again. 1km down a very slidey straight single track though the heather, down to a forest road. At this point we were thinking that there was not much too it, until the sign down a single track that says walk before you ride. Plora Craig is a recently felled hill, with a few built drop offs, then the rocky bits start, easy at first, but by the end one wonders - 'how the hell do you get over that'. Then the fun started - the path is very rocky, lots of drop-off, steps, climb-overs etc. Pulled up a few times, Neil managed to fall with the bike on his head, and a deadleg. Made it down to the forest track then to where the XC joins the serious downhill track. Expecting lunitics to crash past, but no-one, so we go for it, slowly, missing all the jumps, and half the dropoffs. Absolutely crazy, huge chutes to speed down and whizz up the other side, like nothing else I have been on (link to some videos). At the bottom we a crowd of downhillers arrive at high speed, a number of them seemed to be out of Steve Peat's Stana Cruz team van, not sure if he was there or in Peru, but I guess we were riding on the same hill as the world champion.
2:20hr total time round, 1:50hr in the bike.
Lots of homework to do, we can try some easy runs round the black run at Glentress before trying this again!
Some photos from the Edin Uni bike club to get an idea of what we did not do.
Another route description from mtbroutes.com
Cycling Scotland
More videos from Dave Halton
Some more videos posted on Google - downhiller stuff. this would break me and my bike. Includes some of Glentress and other bits of Innerleithen, mostly fom the Delamere bike club