Anyone else take their bike for a walk around Northumberland’s steepest bits yesterday? I can’t move today. The last downhill was fun, as was the run down to Barrowburn Cafe, but the rest of the time it felt like running the course in reverse would probably have been a better idea – with more fire road ascents and singletrack descents.

I saw some poor soul hauling this around the course, any ideas what it is? I thought as if I’d brought a blunderbuss to a biathlon on my Alpine: can’t imagine how he felt at the end of the day.

yep, another first time hiker here. Way too much non-rideable stuff for me (well uphill anyway), and felt the markers could have been better…got very lost at one point and ended up hitting the Barrowburn café twice :(. Glad I did it, but will think hard before doing next years if the walking to biking ratio is going to be similar.

Yes, I had nice walk and took my bike along too. Overall I enjoyed the challenge but there was more HaB than I was expecting. Towards the end I even walked up the steep fire road on the final loop as I was so spent.

I’m not sure doing it in reverse would have made much difference. Most of the singletrack ascent was followed by singletrack descent, and vice versa.

I think I spent maybe 20% of the time walking (so maybe 10% of the distance), but I was on a 30-odd pound full-sus with 1×10. On a light hardtail I with the right gearing I could have ridden a lot more. It was mostly my legs rather than grip that let me down.

Hmm, last week I was considering going but my usual riding partner thought it wasn’t for him – I’ll have to congratulate him for his hindsight…

Have just been told by my riding mate that a competitor may have passed away before checkpoint 1. Has anyone else heard this?

If that’s true, then my sincere condolences to their family.