Mountain biking’s movers and shakers select their favourite places to ride. Here’s one such trail chosen by photographer and videographer Andy McCandlish.

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“Of course I don’t believe we were the first people to have turned wheels over the trails on the Isle of Harris, we just couldn’t have been, but it sure did feel like it at the time…

“Myself and friend Jamie had just taken a notion to go there after noticing a promising network of single dotted lines on the OS map. We both knew they could mean anything, from a surfaced, groomed singletrack, right down to what-the-hell-were-the-OS-thinking? wasteland of nothing but peat hags and tussock grass. But we had the time to go and investigate and neither of us had been to Harris — this was a long time ago — so we just packed tents and bikes and went. Those were the days.

“Back at home we had marked possible routes out on the map, knowing they could come to nothing, but each time we found the trail on the ground we were absolutely blown away. Here we were in the middle of nowhere, with literally no one around, and there was a picture perfect trail winding away from the road and into the hills. So where it went, we followed.

“I can still remember rounding corner after corner on the trail from Rhenigidale, watching this incredible crofters trail, likely hundreds of years old, snaking away around the cliffs and crags in a perfect – and I mean perfect – singletrack ribbon. A foot wide, it just kept going and we kept following. Round headlands, over hilltops and behind gloriously aquamarine bays it went and we were utterly made up. We had struck oil, discovered a seam of gold, cracked nuclear fusion, all at once, on these remote hillsides. It was glorious and we just kept riding for days. The nights were spent out on glorious beaches or high on heathery hills and I still vividly remember lying out on a Karrimat reading maps by the light of the sky right up to midnight.

“You don’t often get to discover a new trail but, when you do, it is always your trail. Harris is just that for me.”

Andy McCandclish, MTB photographer

Andy has been taking award winning photography since the year dot, exploring his native Scottish lands in search of adventure, whiskey and trails unknown.