SCOTLAND



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This route - 57 miles, 91 kilometres

Solo bikers will get the most out of this circuit. However, pillions, too, will enjoy this circuit.It is scenic, with wide expanses of forest and mountainside, but solo riders will find it a delight because it demands total concentration and repays in spades with corner after corner of smooth tarmac.

Cruisers and tourers are not built for fast flipping from left to right through a sequence of corners. But all travel on two wheels is stimulating and never more than on a road like this. This is not the sort of road where you expect to meet traffic and visibility is generally excellent.

This description begins at the village of New Galloway. The A713 through the Glenkens leads out north towards Bellsbank and Dalmellington. If you're looking for straights on this circuit, you'll be disappointed. It’s twisties and curves all the way, but visibility and road surfaces are excellent for most of it.

The Lochinvar Hotel in St John’s Town of Dalry might remind you of that poem you heard at school "When young Lochinvar came out of the west, throughout all the land his steed was the best" etc. etc.. Well, you should get the most out of your steed on this run.

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Corner follows corner until the road straightens out on the summit to offer brilliant views over Galloway Forest Park. The road is like an alpine sequence of hairpins except that there is no great change in altitude and the corners are much faster than hairpins. You can usually see several stretching out in front of you, so it takes just one glance to plot a path through.

There is a chance you will experience something akin to downhill slalom skiing, but on a bike rather than skis. As you ride through bend after bend, left right, left right, left right, you begin to feel like those skiers on TV who only seem to touch the snow as they turn back across themselves only to immediately turn again the other way. You couldn’t ride like this with a pillion or on a bike that doesn’t like corners.

You will make mistakes by going into corners in the wrong gear or so fast you have to grab the brake. But when you get a sequence right the sense of satisfaction is mega; your speed into the first corner was right,your bike was placed correctly on the road and in the right gear, all allowing you to transition perfectly into the next corner, and the next, and the next….. This is biker heaven. And the scenery is brilliant to boot.

Be careful not to get carried away. Finishing one set of corners perfectly does not mean that you don’t have to be careful setting up the next. A few of the curves are what are called decreasing radius corners and get tighter as you go through them. Let your concentration drop and you could find yourself scraping a peg or a foot – it’s been known to happen.

There is a sequence of downhill curves. Get the balance of throttle, engine braking and line just right and the bike will swoosh through leaving the brake lever undisturbed.

Just over the top, watch out for a patch of rougher road followed by, hallelujah, more twisties as the road descends through Glentrool forest to a T junction where the road meets the A714 Girvan to Newton Stewart. Turn left here.

You’ll notice a sign warning you about deer. This sign can be seen in many countries with never a deer to justify it. But a young deer did cross this road a hundred yards in front of a bike in August 2006!

The road on to Newton Stewart is good – and demanding enough at legal speeds. In the village, look for the A712 going northeast.

This is the last leg of this circuit. Here are more smooth twisties with an occasional hairpin (20 mph). The road, labelled Queensway, rises up towards New Galloway and passes the Red Deer Range near the Visitor Centre at Clatteringshaws Loch.

This is the end of this Galloway Forest circuit. If you are not staying in the vicinity, you now have five roads to choose from: the two you have already taken(A713, A712), and, in addition, the A762 south, the A713 along Loch Ken to Castle Douglas, and the A712 to Crocketford. Whichever you choose, you’ll have a great ride.