Cathkin Braes

We were sub-contracted by Malcolm Construction to design and build the mountain bike trails and pump track as part of a wider development of Cathkin Braes Country Park, for Glasgow City Council.

The design stages involved consultation with the Glasgow 2018 European Games committee and Glasgow City Council in order to provide a range of tracks to be used for international standard race competition and provide a long-term public use facility for all levels of user. We worked to UCI guidelines in order to provide a 550m start/finish loop, which was designed with a 200m x 8m straight section and gradients not exceeding 3%. We designed the loop with careful consideration for racing and ensured the track allowed riders to separate out gradually without bottlenecking, maintaining safety on the track as far as possible.

The loop was also designed to green grade standards to be used by beginners, families with young children, gravel/CX bikes and disabled users on adapted bikes. From this loop, we designed and built a blue grade trail that looped on to the existing Commonwealth Games XCO Circuit (also designed by the team in 2013). Further to this we designed and built a jump track and red graded technical descent with racing in mind. This allowed for users to ‘session’ the descents, which maintains interest and provided something that users previously had had to travel a great distance to ride.
A skills area was also developed in consultation with Scottish Cycling coaches with multiple repeatable technical skills sections and utilised the green grade track to allow groups to congregate for instruction.

Finally, within the green graded loop we designed and built a 285m full asphalt pump track including 11 berms and multiple connections and transfer line options. The track was constructed from Type 1 aggregate and surfaced with 154t of Velosolutions’ own bespoke high specification asphalt mix. This full asphalt surface allows for other wheeled sports, like skateboards and scooters. The track was landscaped to provide an aesthetic finish and turfed to protect the track edges. This track was selected to be used for the 2018 Red Bull Pump Track World Championship Qualifier.