THE BIG RIDE
Scotland’s Southern Uplands showcase a triplet of great roads – the Crawick, Mennock and Dalveen Passes. We link them together for a memorable Big Ride
THIS IS ONE of those hyper-bright white mornings that snap the world into focus like a jump scare. Boo! Hillside outlines pop so crisply against a vital blue sky they look like CGI special effects – even from behind a tinted visor, the sheer volume of sunshine makes my brain melt.
But it’s the only thing heating up right now. Last night was a sharp one, coating the world – from blades of grass to entire mountainsides – in a liberal dusting of frosty crystalline glitter. Light scatters into a billion prismatic rainbows as Suzuki’s V-Strom 800DE glides tentatively off at junction 12 of the M74 on to a bitingly chilly A70, some 30 miles south of Glasgow and 60 miles north of the English border.
Welcome to Scotland; she looks wonderful, but she bites. Thankfully, modern heated kit and the V-Strom’s impeccable manners mean I’m toasty, confident and happy to be bewitched by silent white ice-giant hills. The swathe of hilly land lying from Berwick ‐upo n‐Tweed on the North Sea to Stranraer and the Irish Sea in the west is known collectively as the Southern Uplands – basically the two councils of The Borders, and Dumfries and Galloway – and wedged between them to the north, Lanarkshire. All three contain fabulous riding, but the area we’re checking out today is the Lowther Hills, north ‐west of Moffat (handy, because we can stay the night at the bike-centric Buccleuch Arms Hotel).
The route zigzags across the Lowthers over three hillside passes: the Crawick Pass in the north; Mennock Pass in the middle; and Dalveen Pass to the south. The total distance is a mere 60 miles or so, and the open, flowing nature of many of the roads means it’s only a few hours, non-stop, from one end (we’re starting in the north at Douglas) to the other (the south, in Thornhill). It’s a great diversion off the M74 if you’re heading into or out of Glasgow, or an addition to
