Was my first time doing the ride this year. I would say that I enjoyed it but I wasn’t feeling too well last week, thought I’d give it a go anyway. Found myself out of energy before we got to the top of Winterfold and then it was a long boring slog from there to the finish.

A great event, very well organised and sorry to hear about the bike theft at the end.

My only gripe was nothing to do with the organisers but the standard of some of the riders!! People were stopping to go over tree roots and generally holding up large amounts of other participants. I’m talking about things I wouldn’t hesitate to push my 4 month old son over in his pushchair. I wouldn’t expect everybody to ride like Danny Hart but it’s an off road cycle event, I’d expect people taking part to know how to ride off road!!

Yeah I got held up in one big queue, some guy said “yeah theres a technical uphill up ahead”. Turns out there was about 3 roots about 10cm high!

reading this makes me SO glad I went off early.
did anyone ride up the steps on the bridge over the road?
I gave it a go and was surprised how doable it was.

We set off around 7.30 but still experienced hold ups. Mind you, everyone was going at a reasonable pace.

I managed to ride about halfway up the bridge and then had to stop as everybody was walking it. Then had to ride down the other side with the front brake on as nobody else seemed capable of going above walking pace.

One amusing moment around there was in the woods, everybody taking the same line to avoid getting too muddy etc. A mate of mine got fed up so took a different route and forgot he has 740mm wide bars on his Yeti, ended up clipping a tree and doing an unplanned dismount.