Julie Cartner has joined the 7stanes mountain bike project team as Lead Co-Ordinator, working on the development of the popular Scottish MTB centres across the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway. Julie is uniquely qualified for the job - she's local, having been brought up in Dumfriesshire, and she's pretty handy on a bike - she won the 2005 Scottish Cross Country series and placed in the top 30 at the UCI World Cup round at Fort William.

Her new role includes a number of key areas of work: business liaison, marketing and promotion, event organisation, developing outreach work to bring more groups into biking and visitor monitoring.

Julie says:

"Through this job I want to help put the south of Scotland on the map as the best place in the world to go mountain biking, and to bring a mountain biker's perspective to the management of the 7stanes."

"I hope to bring some big mountain bike events to the area next year which will bring more visitors and business spin offs. One of my main objectives is to let local people know they are living in the heart of Scotland's biking heaven. I am also keen to get more people out on bikes and show businesses how they can capitalise on the growing market of mountain bike tourism."

This year, the 7stanes project helped Scotland receive "Global Superstar" status from the International Mountain Bike Association which also rated the country as the top destination in the world outside North America.