The second Blair Castle Trail Weekender (4 & 5 June 2022) is shaping up to be a right royal treat for the whole family.

With the festival now in its second year, organisers Outsider Events have their sights set firmly on making their new event a fun filled weekend for runners and non-runners alike. 

In addition to four great off-road races, participants and their supporters will also enjoy evening events, catering, a bar, family games, guided trail runs and yoga classes.

Like many race organisers, Outsider Events have been working hard to minimise their festival’s impact on the environment, too. A full sustainability policy is in place for 2022, with race t-shirts ditched and replaced with eco-friendly wooden medals. 

Pulling together this year’s event has proved to be slightly less stressful than organising the first festival in June 2021. Covid restrictions were only lifted the night before the inaugural event, making for a stressful race build-up for the one third of the race field living ‘out of zone’ in Glasgow – as well as for the organisers.

In the end, the race got the green light, the Glasgow runners made their way to Perthshire, the first-ever Trail Weekender festival was blessed with glorious weather, and 400 participants and their supporters had a brilliant time in the stunning surrounds of Blair Castle.  

But arranging four off-road races in such a popular location has its complications, too, as Outsider Events’ Cameron Balfour discovered while organising the 2022 event. 

As Balfour, who learned his trade with Borders based Durty Events, explained, “With a wedding on in the castle garden the same weekend as our festival, there’s a section of the course we can’t use. As we didn’t want the 5K to be an out and back, we rethought the route and made the race 7K instead.”

But with the new 7K now so close to the 10K distance, Balfour took the opportunity to add in a really ‘cool woodlands loop’ to the latter event – neatly bringing it to 13K and setting the distances further apart.

Balfour hopes the longer – and unusual – distances will go down well with runners, and notes that the routes are still suitable for everyone. Even the new 13K isn’t ‘too technical’ for beginners, he assures us, and there’s still the ultra and the 30K for those who fancy bigger challenges.

And, as runABC Scotland pointed out, the extended routes will almost certainly give participants shiny new 7K and 13K PBs – a win in any runner’s book. 

The Blair Castle Trail Weekender will be held over the Jubilee Weekend (4 & 5 June 2022). Camping is available at Blair Castle on the Saturday night. 

Image: Outsider Events