The Gralloch: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The race starts at Garries Park in Gatehouse of Fleet, a small market town in Dumfries and Galloway, and the loop returns there after 111 kilometres. The first ramp begins after a kilometre and a half, and at kilometre 4.4 comes the hardest climb of the day: 2.5 kilometres averaging 6.3 per cent with pitches to 13.7. Anyone who wants to be at the front later has to be there already.

After that it is a race over waves. Eight climbs are spread around the loop, three of them categorised – at kilometre 4.4, at 21.8 and at 54.4 – and there is almost no flat between them: 39 per cent up, 38 per cent down, only 18 per cent level. Fuffock Hill, Kenick Hill and Slaughter Hill give the course its names, and the descents past Loch Skerrow, Loch Stroan and Loch Ken give it its speed. Kilometre 63 holds the steepest short ramp of the race, 7.2 per cent over 750 metres.

The surface is genuine Scottish forest gravel: wide working forest roads through Galloway Forest Park, the Raiders Road forest drive among them, linked by short sections of tarmac. The terrain is open, treeless on the tops and exposed to the wind, with views over Loch Grannoch. More than 3,000 riders from 47 nations came to the weekend in 2026 – for a race only founded in 2023 as the first UCI gravel event ever held in Britain.

Pacing Strategy

This race has no warm-up. The categorised climb at kilometre 4.4 arrives while the field is still whole and the forest road is narrow enough that a lost position is expensive. A rider chasing a qualification result has to spend the first ten minutes well above race-average power without going into the red – that is the day's central trade-off.

The race is decided on the long climb at kilometre 54.4: 2.2 kilometres at 5.1 per cent, exactly at halfway, when the groups have sorted themselves out and nobody is being carried any more. The short steep ramp at kilometre 63 and two further climbs from kilometre 76 follow – the last thirty kilometres are not a cool-down.

The main trap is the surface rather than the profile. Only twenty per cent of the course is flat, which means it is almost continuously either power or handling. On loose forest gravel every effort out of the saddle costs traction, and the fast descents past the lochs ask for braking and line choice instead of watts. Add mid-May in Galloway, which is changeable, often wet and windy on the open tops. The course cut-off at kilometre 67.9 at 16:15 is irrelevant to a competitive rider and very relevant at the back of the field.

Training plan for The Gralloch: 12-week build

For a competitive age-group rider the race takes roughly 3:45 to 5:30. The demand is markedly surgy: eight climbs, almost no flat, constant alternation between short efforts uphill and technical recovery downhill. This is not a steady endurance load but a string of three- to twelve-minute intervals with incomplete recovery.

The categorised climbs at kilometres 4.4, 21.8 and 54.4 decide the race. The first demands a hard opening, the last a threshold effort two and a half hours in. Prepare it with VO2max intervals of three to six minutes placed at the START of a long ride, and with threshold blocks deliberately set late in a four- to five-hour session.

The surface is a training topic in its own right. Eighty per cent gravel means managing traction out of the saddle, choosing tyres and pressures, and descending loose ground above fifty kilometres an hour. A rider who only trains on tarmac loses more time in the descents at The Gralloch than they can win on the climbs. Equipment belongs here too: the surface is rough, tyre damage is the most common reason for abandoning, and a spare tube plus the skill to use it are mandatory.

Conditions settle the rest. Mid-May in south-west Scotland means cool to mild temperatures, a high chance of rain and strong wind over the treeless tops. Wet gravel rides differently from dry – slower, looser, with much longer braking distances – and fuelling has to last up to five and a half hours without an extra stop. Wet gravel rides, a clothing setup tested at ten degrees and wind, and a rehearsed fuelling plan belong in the final six weeks.