Hi all !
Two weekends ago my brother, Ozzy, and I went to see my parents. They live in Dumfries and Galloway (where we went to school), proper foot and mouth territory a while back. I, of course, took my Monzta. Ben (my brother) took his videocamera.
The 7 Stanes project have been busy round here making the Kirroughtree cycle route and some stuff at Glentrool.
At Kirroughtree they found some huge bits of granite sticking out of the ground so they cleared more of it and made it a feature of the bike tracks. It is a bit off the track, but easily accessible by road/car if you’re just going to it itself.
They decided to call it “McMoab” as it is a smaller version of Moab, and it’s in Scotland. Everything should have “Mc” in front of it here! - McUnicycle, McDinner, McPub, McEtc.
The three of us took my ma’s wee gay 4X4, and went to find McMoab. Working purely from a print out of the 7Stanes Kirroughtree map, off we went. It is out in the middle of nowhere in a big newly-cleared area of forestry land. My brother took his videocamera along so he filmed me and Ozzy playing on the rocks.
The Video can be found here. It is 25Mb, 320X240, wmv format, and lasts 6min50.
Now my brother is no cameraman and it was very windy up there so please excuse the shaky photography! When I was knackered from cycling, Ben’s face was bright red and he couldn’t move his fingers! BBrrr!! Good job I was driving home!
The start of the route has the usual 7 Stanes logo and symbols (black, red, green, etc) So far, the hardest graded section of 7 Stanes I have done is a double black diamond, and this was the Mabie Dark Side, where I broke my big toe!
McMoab has a black diamond and a SKULL AND CROSS-BONES !!! You know you are in for fun when you see that!
McMoab is all rough granite, the kind that grips and grips and grips but would rip you up if you fell on it! It also destroys tyres quickly. The video doesn’t show it too well, but lots of it is very steep. It is very hoppy, I’m gonna go back with my trials uni, and it soon tired me out hopping on my (heavy) muni.
I reckon that on a bike, McMoab would be stupidly hard! My flatmate says he’s done it, but he is good on mountain bikes and has been riding them since he could. But on unicycles it is amazing! I wasn’t really in the mood, but you could spend all day there finding different gaps and lines to do. When I go back, Pebbles will come and we will film more (on a tripod!!).
I recommend this place to everybody, hope you enjoy my video, and also hope that watching it makes you want to go there.
T.
P.S I have tried an Andrew Carter style preview image for this vid/post. Hope it works…
