Image courtesy of Stu Thomson
Until now, if you were heading out of the door on a gravel ride in the hills you would be probably do one of these things before you left home – planned/downloaded a digital route on komoot, found some route inspiration from a gravel guidebook, signed up for an organised event, tagged along with a group of knowledgeable locals or perhaps even used an arbitrary boundary to help dictate the course of your ride. But now, you have another choice to add to that slightly random list – waymarked and colour graded gravel trails. If you fancy a super easy way of finding the best of the local gravel riding, head up to newly launched Gravelfoyle gravel trails and you’re in for a treat!
Image courtesy of Jered Gruber
Based near the village of Aberfoyle, located on the edge of The Trossachs in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park,there are three waymarked trails on offer - 10km, 20km and 30km, all of which start and finish in the centre of Aberfoyle. The official information for the trails says “The routes have been designed to encourage more cyclists, everyone from families with an appetite for more relaxed off-road adventures to weekend warriors keen on longer distance challenges, to experience the joys and thrills of gravel riding in the area, while using Aberfoyle as a base.”
Image courtesy of Stu Thomson
In a world of digital everything, the Gravelfoyle trails have gone both old-skool and new-skool with their trail network and you can download GPX files of the routes but they also have large printed route maps at the trailhead, which are brilliant for literally seeing a bigger picture and in particular for family rides in the area, as kids seem to always love knowing what they’re going to be doing/seeing/riding.
Image courtesy of Graham Niven
Families are a big focus of the entire project with an entire section of their website dedicated to riding with children and some linked content promoting how important it is to get everyone involved in the project “We want the area to be a truly cycling friendly community. Our hope is that our children and their friends have the ability to safely access and participate in cycling as a hobby, travel or ultimately even employment in the future.”
The trail network at Gravelfoyle has also been designed with adaptive cycle users in mind too. Neil Russell from HandBikePacking has been a regular user of the trail network in the area and has worked with the Gravelfoyle organisers to help ensure that “cycling is an inclusive activity for all our residents and visitors.”
Image courtesy of Jered Gruber
With the trails of Gravelfoyle a relatively short distance north from Gravel Union Towers, we hope to head up there to check them out later in the year, so we’ll report back.
In the meantime, head over to the official website to find out more: https://www.gravelfoyle.com