Event: Fort William Mountain Festival

The Fort Wiliam Mountain Festival will be holding an evening devoted to bikes on February the 20th, 2016, titled “I Want to Ride My Bicycle”. Despite the title on the website stating “Bikes. Dirt. Downhill”, they write that will be “much more about celebrating the lifestyle and the sheer pleasure of Mountain Biking”.

The evening will be hosted by bothy queen and Juliana Ambassador Aneela McKenna, with guests Crawford Carrick Anderson (course designer and veteran downhiller), Chris Ball (Part of the Enduro World Series organiser team), and Julia Hobson (MTB guide and racer). The discussion will centre on the pleasure of moutain biking, the great outdoors, and the opportunities for adventure and travel it offers us all. Tickets are available on the FWMF website, and immediately following the evening, there’ll be a party at the Alexandra Hotel.

David Hayward

David started mountain biking in the 90’s, by which he means “Ineptly jumping a Saracen Kili Racer off anything available in a nearby industrial estate”. After growing up and living in some extremely flat places, David moved to Yorkshire specifically for the mountain biking. This felt like a horrible mistake at first, because the hills are so steep, but you get used to them pretty quickly. Previously, David trifled with road and BMX, but mountain bikes always won. He’s most at peace battering down a rough trail, quietly fixing everything that does to a bike, or trying to figure out if that one click of compression damping has made things marginally better or worse. The inept jumping continues to this day.