Safety fears close Moray bike route

The most challenging section for mountain bikers of the Moray Monster Trails near Fochabers has been closed due to safety fears.

Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) says it has shut the Gully Monster black trail after a recent inspection determined that the route posed a potential danger to riders.

Justin Livesey, FLS’ regional visitor services manager, said; "Unfortunately, over time this trail has become too dangerous to ride so we’ve closed it off and removed all of the route markers.

"It would be a very costly and quite difficult job to effect repairs to the standard that would make this route usable.

"At the moment we’re focussed on getting our forestry activities back up to speed, so we just don’t have the resources available to tackle this.

"The safety of any and all of our visitors is one of our top priorities and we do our utmost to provide riders with safe trails.

"We understand that the trail closure might be disappointing but the remaining trails are all still good to ride so we hope that riders will continue to visit."

Any mountain bikers visiting Moray Monster Trails are urged to stick to way-marked routes and to make no attempt to follow the closed trail.

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