Twedlove British Champs

Sigh, Tweedlove being less than helpful

Pretty annoying that they advertise camping at the race £20 a night on top of £92 for race entry. And then don't have capacity for all racers 🙄

Not sure that's totally fair. Are Tweedlove supposed to hold (and pay for) sufficient space for 100% of the entry, or 80%, or ??%. It's unpredictable, and as a fellow event organiser, I can see Tweedlove's situation here. It's not really their problem if entrants leave it to the last minute to sort accommodation.

They only put the camping site live on Friday, it seems to have old out straight away

Had they warned places were limited, I'd have happily booked elsewhere, when I signed up

I've camped at loads of races (including ews Tweedlove earlier in the year). And there's never been a limit

In fairness the camping option was publicised and opened up for bookings on 5 Aug. Fortunately I saw this in one of the emails and booked at the time so will be there in a tin tent. Forecast looks decent too!

Really? I didn't see it until race notes came out on Friday

Spoke to 2 other racers who assumed you just rocked up like other races

Assuming I have space to put it up and you're not looking for a place to pitch a camping spaceship you can pitch in my caravan awning. Drop me a message.

This is the email from 5th August:

Greetings everyone. We are extremely chuffed to announce that TweedLove will now have its own temporary campsite in Peebles for the festival weekend 16-18 September.

We’ve been trying to make this happen for about 10 years, so it feels like something of a podium moment for us. We’re very grateful to the landowners and partners we’re working with to make it happen.

Camping is always part of the TweedLove-fest experience but with such a beautiful festival site slap bang in the middle of bonnie Peebles, camping on site just isn’t an option.

Instead we now have a lovely site within easy walking/bike distance of the festival village, on the south west outskirts of Peebles. So now we have all the advantages of a town-centre festival site with our own campsite in easy reach.

Full info is on the website and it’s now open for bookings. Cost is £20 for a tent/van pitch (which can include up to 6 people) per night, or £50 for the whole weekend (Fri/Sat/Sun).

Basic facilities/toilets but no showers on site (more news on showers coming soon though). Sorry no fires or barbecues on the grass.

Should be a good weekend, trails should have dried up a bit by then!

Thanks a lot Ben I think I have something sorted!

I'm really looking forward to the race!

Pretty annoying that they advertise camping at the race £20 a night on top of £92 for race entry. And then don’t have capacity for all racers 🙄

Agreed. I've also been caught out. Have you got into the official campsite now or found space elsewhere?

Not sure that’s totally fair. Are Tweedlove supposed to hold (and pay for) sufficient space for 100% of the entry, or 80%, or ??%.

Yes - I've ridden events by all of the main enduro organisers in the UK. This is the first time I've come across limitations on camping capacity.

From memory, EWS and Ard Rock are the only ones I've had to pay for camping on top of race entry.

Hey Mark

I've found a wild camping spot outside of Peebles (Google 'Beatiful Place') & have a few mates who are planning on staying at the inners dh car park (tho that's not my 1st choice!)

Also been advised people camp at cardona woods car park

Not sure that’s totally fair. Are Tweedlove supposed to hold (and pay for) sufficient space for 100% of the entry

Er, yes? Why wouldn't you? I can't think of a single race I've done that ever had a limit on folk camping.

Will be supporting son #1, practice Friday and back for the race Sunday.

If anyone is available Saturday then the race organisers are still looking for volunteers to help make the race happen. Your reward will be in heaven.....

If you do have time to volunteer then please email volunteers at tweedlove.com 

the fact they have any camping at all is an improvement over previous events( apart from the one year the whole event was based in a field near inners).
for the inners based events we always stay in the DH carpark but it always has been a hassle to get somewhere parked for the weekend at the peebles based ones thats in walking distance of the town.

From memory, EWS and Ard Rock are the only ones I’ve had to pay for camping on top of race entry.

Depends how you look at it I guess.
You could say this is only one which has been cheaper for non-campers. The camping costs were just built into he entry fee elsewhere🤷‍♂️

Thanks @kimbers, may see you there.

You could say this is only one which has been cheaper for non-campers. The camping costs were just built into he entry fee elsewhere

I have no issue with paying for camping, was just pointing out that it's not the norm.

Tweedside camping in inners have spaces

A few people I've spoken to (in vans) just plan to wing it and try & stop up at the venue in peebles

How did everyone get on?

I really struggled fitness wise and was well off the pace. Guys I normally beat put 30+ seconds into me. I've done very little riding other than uplifts recently so the long days in the saddle completely wiped me out.

No complaints about the stages, but surely they could have made a more interesting (or logical) loop? The mind numbing transitions to 1 and 3 killed me.

I heard some complaints about traffic on stage one with track being blocked by people pushing some of the rock sections, but I had a late start and had clear runs on all stages.

Broken, utterly broken despite being on the eeb all weekend. Lack of fitness on top of racing both the Bosch and the Champs made for a tough weekend. Minced down Hammertime the worst I've ever done, and lost hold of the bars at the top of the rocky bit on careless.

Hard course to set- most of the Champs level are on the same side of one valley with a limited number of ways to the top. it worked well to spread riders over the hill and reduce congestion I thought

I <think> the slightly odd transitions were designed to spread people out, reduce the amount of traffic through single junctions etc which is where confusion tends to happen especially with multiple events on (LOTS of people on friday and saturday following signs for the wrong race). It looked pretty odd to me on paper though. Did any of you guys get lost on the bosch race because of the iffy signage at soor plooms?

Bosch stages were brutal tbh, one thing on a high power ebike but on a milder assist bike it'd be savage. I was marshalling the foot fault bit on stage 1 and tbh I was taking the piss a bit at the start because it's so easy- but I was wrong, people were just destroyed by the time they got there so it was a huge challenge for a lot of people. Some folks just rolled to a stop before the first root. Others of course just sat and spun right up it because they had a bike that could do most of the work and were still in good shape. Pretty interesting I thought, just to see all the difference. And this at the end of the first stage! Apologies to anyone I penalised, I felt like a political officer or something!

(ebike racing is imo just total nonsense because of the variation of bike performance, it's like having an enduro race where some people are on unicycles. But it's entertaining nonsense, hope it's fun nonsense for the participants)

Did any of you guys get lost on the bosch race because of the iffy signage at soor plooms?

Yup, along with most of the non locals.
Part of that event is the self navigation element and there were small amounts of tape to guide the way. My gripe would be that there was so much signage for the other events and so many other riders not doing that event but on the same trails, that it was difficult to spot the two strands of tape placed after the junction. Plus the map was crap with no indication of what we’re fireroads and what was singletrack. Need to either mark it properly or have no other markings to confuse matters and a proper route map with scale and coordinates.

Still enjoyed it though. Cleared the first two no feet zones but completely ballsed up the whole of stage 4a.

I think the bit that caught out most was the blind corner into mental steep climb just after the start of stage 3. Was in low power mode as I thought it was downhill and ended up trying to find boost, the dropper button and dump the entire cassette all at the same time. Needed three thumbs.

Course was definitely a step up from last year, which was basically just the black route. Looking forward to next year.

@Northwind , didn’t see anyone in anything other than a full power eeb. Did you see many on lite versions?

When they gave me the marshall map I instantly felt like I knew less about the course and glentress in general. Worse for the bosch probably since it used trails in weird ways so it was unintiuitive. I helped build some of the bloody trails and I still couldn't tell where they were on the map! So, yeah.

@clubby, only a few on the new breed of lite versions, but a whole lot of variation between the actual capability of full power bikes. (and probably a bit of variation in how much button-mashing different bikes needed)