NEW PLACES TO RIDE IN 2022

Now is the time to put together your mountain biking hit lists for 2022; what better place to start than our pick of six new, off-beat or improved places to ride in the UK

- Jamie Darlow

1 ABERDEENSHIRE, SCOTLAND

Think of great Scottish riding and you’ll probably conjure up craggy peaks on the Isle of Skye, the white stone singletrack of Torridon, or the wild tracks around the Tweed Valley. It’s no surprise honeypots like this draw riders from across the globe, but has it been at the expense of the rest of Scotland? Have we been missing the trails for the trees?

Undoubtedly yes, argues Scottish Cycling’s Anna Riddell, who reckons we should really turn our attention to the east. “Aberdeenshire is one of the hottest emerging destinations that perhaps has seen less traffic than the iconic Tweed Valley and Fort William destinations,” she says.

On paper Aberdeenshire certainly looks good – it’s one of the most mountainous parts of Scotland, let alone the UK, dipping right into the heart of the Cairngorms National Park. And it’s also rich in forested, hilly and mountainous woodland, the kind of terrain where mountain bike trails flourish. A bit like the Tweed Valley then.

“In some ways it is similar in that they both have an abundance of ‘enduro’ type trails but the landscape, soil type and trail character are very different,” Will Clarke from Scottish Cycling says.