Video & Photo Story: Exploring a Wide Variety of Trails in Scotland's Biggest National Park

I'm stoked to share episode 3 of my short film series aptly named, 'Scotty's Scotland Showcase!'

The Cairngorms has two amazing trails centres. Laggan is probably known as the UK’s most progressive, famous for its massive rock slabs and technical ascents and descents. Whilst we were there, we checked out the lesser-known Laggan Brown trails which are all natural and climbed up to Dum-da-Lamph, a Pictish hill fort above the trails.

On the east side of the National Park is Glenlivet, here they’ve been developing new trails and just this year they built an orange flow jump line, which was incredibly fun. We also checked out their ‘Mini DH’ trail which is a hand cut natural trail with a good size machine built jump line.

As for big mountain riding, Sgòr Gaoith is one of my favourite Munro’s in the Cairngorms, it is relatively accessible and upon reaching the summit you have incredible views right across Scotland. The descent is fast and technical all the way back down, you've really got to watch out for those water bars.

We finished off this episode by checking out High Burnside, the trail network above Aviemore. The trails are rugged, burly and hand cut and it really showcases the variation on offer in the National Park.
















This episodes sustainability focus is on re-wilding. A fact very few may be aware of is that, only 4% of Scotland’s woodland is native and as a country we only have a 19% woodland coverage, compare that to the 37% average in Europe. Once upon a time, our hillsides would have been covered in native woodland and to find out a little more, I met with Peter from Scotland: The Big Picture.

The entire series is being created carbon neutral. All our journey emissions will be offset and the advertising revenue generated from you watching the series will be split between planting more native trees in Scotland and the local trail associations.

Produced by Scotty Laughland
Cinematography by Glen Thomson
Photography by Jonny Cook

Laggan, Aviemore

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Travel Videos Scotty Laughland