The mission, should I choose to accept it, was to ride as many iconic Scottish mountain bike locations as possible in four days, but limit my travel to public transport… at least as much as possible.
Given how much I love riding in Scotland, and a strong curiosity to discover more sustainable ways of mountain biking, this challenge was right up my street. So after deciding on the Tweed Valley, Comrie Croft, Aviemore and Fort William, and a little wrangling with various ticketing systems that make it unnecessarily awkward to book a bike space, I was set.
Commence Mission: Bikes, trains and autobuses. Yeah, I know it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
FIRST STOP: TWEED VALLEY
Destination one – Glentress – is a bit of a cheat, because I’m lucky enough to call the Tweed Valley home, so rather than needing public transport, all I have to do is spin down the traffic-free greenway that connects Peebles, Glentress, Innerleithen and Walkerburn. Following the route of a now defunct railway line, it makes getting around the valley by bike very convenient.
However, if you do want to hop on public transport, the nearest train stations are either in Galashiels or Edinburgh, and to reach either of them, you and your bike can hop on a bus. The X62, run by Borders Buses, is unique in the UK in that there’s room for two bikes on
