Just a quick one to say that I went to both the Enduro at Bielsko and the the Downhill which was a few miles away on the szczyrk mountain resort over the weekend. 

I’ve seen world cups and crank works in les gets me world championships in fort William in the last few years and ridden the original EWS event in Tweed Valley.

The Polish round was in my opinion brilliantly organised and fully deserves to be awarded a repeat visit next year, we will be planning a holiday there to ride bikes regardless. The venue is under 2 hours from either Katowice or Krakow airport. Bielsko is a cracking little town which has a Prague 25 years ago feel and Szczyrk is a low key ski-resort. Our accommodation and food was first class and extremely reasonably priced. Food and beers are half the price of the Uk and a third of the price of France/Switzerland. 

Mountain biking is Big in Poland and the whole area feels like a mini portes de solleil, every day of the competition was attended by huge crowds most of whom turned up on bikes and were massively enthusiastic in their support. The riders seem to have loved the course and fans. The racing was super close and the men’s elite in enduro must have been one of the closest finishes ever. The enduro courses were in a bike park using 3 red trails and 2 blacks with what looked to have had slightly built up features added for the competition day. All well built, flowy and really fast and would suit anyone who rides top/middle reds at BPW. If you could pedal down the road a bit there would be the possibility of a gondola too.

The Downhill course was purpose built for the event and looked spanking new. It clearly amps up the difficulty level of the existing black run off the top of the mountain with additional built berms and wooden features to create big gap jumps that would not have been there last year. I walked the course on Saturday and thought it looked great. Big jumps at the top and a super steep section just before the end. The changeable weather conditions over the weekend kept it ‘interesting’. My impression was that the builders did a cracking job with the hill that they had to work with. Of note is that there isn’t that much altitude in that part of Poland so you tend not to get an above the tree line section like in the alps, or the more northerly fort William. As a result very little of the course in on the sort of bedrock we would be used to in the UK so anyone that has seen the coverage will have noticed that the surface is overwhelmingly mud/roots/loam. 

I notice most of the comments on this thread are about the TV coverage, which was shit even in Poland. Apparently you can watch the semis and the juniors on polish Eurosport but not the elites.

So, for anyone wanting to watch live, I couldn’t recommend visiting in person more. 

Good info @onetimenews thanks. It definitely looks like somewhere I’d enjoy riding.

Were you able to do much riding or is the majority of the network tied up?

Are Bielso and Szczyrk linked or would you need a vehicle to get between them?

Thanks for the info @onetimeews – appreciated.

If it moves to a school holiday week next year we’ll probably try and go for a long weekend/few days and link it with a visit to Auschwitz as it’s on the way back to Krakow.

Did you hire a car of use public transport?

Any links to accommodation would be appreciated too.

Bielsko trails are on the edge of bielsko (a good sized town with all amenities and transport links) so you could easily ride to the trails. We got a taxi from bielsko to szczyrk which was 20 mins and less than £15, then stayed in the village.

For the event days there was lots of activity on the non-competition tracks in Szczyrk. I’m not sure about the bielsko trails because I didn’t go to the E-Edr on the Saturday, maybe they used more of the trails than the 5 stages in the Edr on Friday.

I got quite excited and started looking for next year and there are trails that do link them but and potentially could be made into a 30 mile loop. Interestingly my Polish friends said that there is no footpath/bridleway distiction in Poland so you could theoretically use any combination of trails, fire roads and uplift to get anywhere. If you were renting, an e-bike might make some of the road work a bit easier. Trailforks seems to show natural trails over the whole mountain range.

A quick search on Google maps show that there are a couple of other bike parks within striking distance so a car might make sense for a riding holiday if you wanted to ride several different ones.