New mountain bike trail opens at Inverness Royal Academy

PE teacher Jane Chisholm unveiled the new skills loop at a busy event on Saturday

Transcript

00:00Well, the cycle hub started in 2018 and this is basically, it was a little seed that was

00:09planted by James Brasher from Scottish Cycling and it's just kind of grown and grown and

00:15now we have a trail and look how many people there are, it's incredible.

00:19So hopefully it provides a facility for the urban population, so it's not just mountain

00:26biking, it doesn't necessarily have to just be for people who can get into the hills and

00:30get taken to trail centres at weekend, they can get down here themselves and pedal to

00:35school, use the trail after school and we can run groups and organisations can come

00:42and use the trail when it's open to the public as well.

00:45I just think having a facility like this in Inverness at my high school is just incredible,

00:53I'm watching kids getting air here in front of their school, it's just set such a good

00:58tone, great mentality and the fact that it's going to be open in the evenings and the weekends

01:03it's just like, yeah, such an asset to Highland and yeah, my hope would be that every high

01:10school could have a facility like this because the kids really deserve it, imagine a PE loop

01:15like this, it's like, hell on earth.

01:21You quite often see pump tracks and things in public parks but at a school itself it's

01:26amazing to see it, I think I would have loved it as a kid growing up.

01:30So we've got three different kinds of trails, we've got one with banked corners, a bit of

01:35berm trail there and then we've got a couple of jump lines, so they allow riders to build

01:41up their skills in jumping and then we've got a rocky line as well with some drop offs

01:46and a rock garden, so a good mix of skills really and yeah, just a really nice way for

01:52folk to get into biking.