Singletrack
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CLASSIC RIDE<br />
ULSTER<br />
SAYS YES!<br />
Ian from Rock and Ride Outdoors shows us<br />
round his home trails in Northern Ireland.<br />
WORDS IAN BAILEY PHOTOGRAPHY CAOLAN HAWKINS<br />
Loosely tracking a section of the Ulster Way, this classic ride<br />
skirts the foothills of the Mourne Mountains while linking<br />
sections of sumptuous forest singletrack. All done in the<br />
shadow of Slieve Donard, Northern Ireland’s highest peak.<br />
Summer can be a bit of an abstract concept up here<br />
in Northern Ireland, a land not exactly renowned for its<br />
temperate climate. All we know is that at some unspecified<br />
point between March and October the slop will temporarily<br />
subside and for a fleeting moment we’ll smell dust in our<br />
nostrils and hear the buzz of tyres on dry roots. Those joyous<br />
occasions remind us that we have way more than our share of<br />
top-class trails, handily compressed into a tiny geographical<br />
area, particularly in the locality of the Mourne Mountains,<br />
County Down. Inevitably, mountain biking has flourished<br />
here, despite the weather, with several local trail centres<br />
developed and a plethora of hidden woodland trails tended by<br />
a dedicated selection of local builders.<br />
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