Glenlivet Orange - The Back Story

Most mountain bikers have a passion for the activity that extends beyond just getting out for a weekly spin. And parents of keen mountain bikers probably know how family life can start to revolve around bike trips, repeat unplanned visits to the bike shop, the occasional A&E trip. And when those kids get racing it can be a life sacrificing weekends, travelling, and sitting in fields nervously while the kids go and go their thing. For some families it goes further.

In the case of the family of Jamie Edmondson, a young rider from the Highlands who has progressed to racing World Cups and Enduro World Series, that meant taking over a trail centre, running a café, and building one of the best trails in Scotland. As if that wasn’t enough, it happened just as Covid-19 hit.

Glenlivet trails have always been a bit of a bit of an outlier. Geographically they are at the edge of the Cairngorm National Park, on the hilly Tomintoul road, well away from the busy hub of Aviemore. More of a traditional cross-country trail centre, with blue and red routes and skills area, its main feature the long 22km red trail. But the Edmondson’s saw potential for more than this, and when they took over the business, they negotiated with the landowner that they would also take on the trails and have potential to develop more on the land.

Paul Masson was the man challenged with making it a reality. Paul was behind the original Glenvilet trails, as well as Laggan, Learnie and more. As a rider and builder, Paul specialises in technical cross country, rocky, slabby, tight and technical – Laggan black is a prime example.

His kid’s, however, have other ideas and prefer to go big on the jumps and drops. After a family riding trip to Wales, he was excited by the prospect of challenging himself and moving out of his comfort zone and doing something exciting.

And so, Barry Edmondson and Paul Masson, and their kids, started planning. The vision was a progressive Orange jump line, which could be ridden by less experienced riders, but also challenge advanced riders. As Paul puts it, this could not be a ‘warmed up blue’, they wanted something that would stand out as being exceptional. The landowners, Crown Estate Scotland, gave the go ahead for the build in November, and to be ready for spring meant a full winter build in the harsh Cairngorm environment

As Paul puts it, they assembled the ‘A team’ – Paul with his extensive experience managing trail builds, CR Contracting North, an Aberdeenshire based footpath and mountain bike trail build specialist with workers who have progressed through volunteer trail work with Aberdeenshire Trail Association, and Jamie Edmondson, on hand to keep upsizing the features beyond everyone’s previous concept of ‘big’.

The line of the trail was flagged, walked and re-flagged numerous times until they were happy, then a minimum number of trees cut – the trail was to fit into the pine forest rather than be imposed upon it. The build then started, with excavators and a team on hand tools working through rain, wind, and snow, carefully hand shaping the trail, test riding, making changes. And then reinstating the ground around the trail, clearing fall zones of dangers, and giving the trail time to settle – the one positive aspect of a global pandemic on the build…

From Paul’s point of view, the whole process was exciting as it progressed, and produce a high-quality ride experience, but also built great working relationships (hopefully one we see more of again!).