When people think of mountain bike trails around Fort William, it’s usually the Leanachan Forest trails at Nevis Range that spring to mind.

Excellent as these are, there are also some hidden treasures not too far away that offer great natural riding and a quieter location for those looking for something a bit different.

Mark Clark of local guiding and coaching company Alba Mountainbike is involved in developing the trails at Glen Loy with the Lochaber Trails Association. As the owner of a new croft high up in the glen, these really are on Mark’s home turf, and he knows them intimately.

I joined Mark and a group of riders, including some from the Lochaber Environmental Group, on a social ride to the trails as part of this year’s Fort William Mountain Festival.

We met at Banavie, beside Neptune’s Staircase on the Caledonian Canal, where there is a large car park. Climbing the stairs, we crossed the canal and continued northwards along the towpath.

The smooth, flat ride gave us all a chance to chat and get acquainted, as well as warming our legs up for more focused riding later in the afternoon.

Reaching the entrance to Glen Loy, things got more interesting, as Mark led us through a low tunnel below the canal. The Glen Loy aqueduct is part of 18th-century engineer Thomas Telford’s original design and consists of three arches, with the central one wide enough to cope with the river in spate.

Route details

Glen Loy MTB

Distance 15 miles / 24.5km

Terrain Canal towpath, tunnel, minor roads, forest track, mountain bike trails with burn crossings, drop-offs etc

Start/finish Neptune’s Staircase, Banavie, Fort William

Map OS Landranger 41; OS Explorer 399

A tour of the Glen Loy mountain bike trails with local expert Mark Clark of Alba Mountainbike

Click here to see the route in OS Maps

The two side arches were for people and animals to cross the canal. They have a cobbled surface, are three metres wide and more than 75 metres long – which is a fair way to pedal in the dark through puddles of water on slippery cobbles, while ducking so you don’t bash your head off the ceiling!

On the far side, we climbed up the track to reach the road beside the Loy Bridge, where we turned left to follow B8004 round the corner and up the hill briefly, before taking a right turn onto a forest track before Strone Farm.

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Mark explained that lots of the trails that had been built on this side of the glen were destroyed during Storm Arwen, so we followed the access track for quite a distance until a grassy trail forked off to the left, just before you reach the Allt a’ Bharraich.

Although marked on the OS map as a forest track, this is little more than a vague and rather wet line through the trees, though with a firm base below the moss and grass. The TrailForks website, which lists all the local trails, shows this route as a blue trail called Bharrward Bound.

The name relates to the 18th-century settlement called Barr, which was cleared shortly after the Battle of Culloden. Having been shown on Roy’s Map which was surveyed from 1747-1755, it is nowhere to be seen on 19th-century maps.

After we ride to meet another obvious forestry track, we turned right down the hill, then Mark stopped us to detour round another trail. The rectangular remains of an old house can be seen near the start of this little loop, one of the few visible reminders of this lost settlement.

For map geeks like myself, it’s interesting to note that Roy’s map shows the buildings at Barr on the opposite side of the burn from this, although the 1774 Forfeited Estates Survey – showing those lands given back to the crown after the Jacobite rebellion was crushed – puts them closer to this spot.

Back to the bikes, and this was our first little taste of the natural trails in the forest here, and we soon swung down to meet the road at the Inverskilavulin Bridge, which we crossed before turning right onto an estate track.

Just past the building here, we took a right turn to ford the burn – an exciting little challenge that everybody took on. Then we headed through a field, picking up another little path that ends at another ford, with a left turn up through a gate to follow.

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This section – named as School Run – brought us to the end of a long forestry track at the edge of some native oakwoods, which are currently being expanded.

A little way along, we took an easy bit of singletrack down to the right on the Oakwood Walk, then continued left along the lower forest road. A long climb followed, veering right at a junction then turning sharp left to zigzag up, before keeping straight ahead on a sharp left-hand bend to follow a green trail along to the start of a red-graded downhill route.

We rolled down the fun Meadows trail that sweeps through an open area then along to tackle the twisty Thea’s route to emerge close to a gate. Both are fun routes with some little steep drops but thankfully nothing too daunting – especially as I was the only rider using a hardtail mountain bike!

Taking the forest track the short way to the road, we headed right to cross the Loy Bridge and have another go at riding the Telford tunnel before an easy pedal back to Banavie.