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The story of the Tweed Valley's mightiest trails and one of the men behind them.

The Tweed Valley has a huge amount of iconic trails that are well known, well-loved, and well-ridden. There were very few people involved in the design and creation of these trails, 20 years ago, and here we speak to (he will not like this but he really is!) a real local legend, Dik Hamilton.

Dik Hamilton randr photo

Dik Hamilton, was responsible for trails such as Berm Baby Berm, which he built entirely single-handedly, with his five-ton digger, the free ride and skills areas, Blue Velvet, the Mushrooms, Spooky Wood to name a few at Glentress.

Caddon Bank, the DH tracks, and the Innerleithen XC route at Traquair, with other legends in the craft of trail building, Andy Wardman and Pete Laing.

Working for Glendinning Groundworks at the time, Dik, has now worked now with Forestry and Land Scotland for a number of years.

We caught up with him for a walk around some of those trails and a really interesting chat about those early days. A proper insight into how those trails shaped the Valley as a real destination for mountain biking.

It’s 51.25 of pure gold. We urge you to take some time and have a listen to the history of these trails and share our appreciation of this very humble man and those like him who have given so many of us our love and enjoyment of the sport by giving us such quality trails to cut our teeth on and progress to.


Dik Hamilton - Building Trails in the Tweed Valley

Iconic trails built at a pivotal time for Scottish mountain biking.
Listen now!

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