RIP Tweedlove

Whilst it would be nice to have government funding and I get there is a small tourism angle I dont really see why taxpayers should be funding our fun. In the same way I don’t see why taxpayers should be funding the arts. It’s all entertainment which should be self funding by those who participate or sponsorship.

I do think that where government agencies do have a role is in facilitation so allowing trail maintenance and building to be allowed as any oversight required should be have a minimal cost to them.

Its not over dramatic at the moment given council funding to say they can either spend the money on an mtb event or fund a bed to allow an elderly person to get out of hospital and back home again.

we’re now left with a few novelty events at Glencoe, Nevis Range and Comrie.

And the Muckmedden Aberdeenshire(ish) events.

Maybe this could have been an opportunity to move away from enduro, which people can see is starting to go into a lull, and move the focus to XC events. GT7 has been popular, and easier to manage. XC has really grown again in the last few years and the SXC only has 6 rounds all done by July, and there’s only 2 summer endurance events (10 Under the Ben and 10 at Kirroughtree).

I’d disagree massively with that. This year was an unfortunate washout with horrendous weather, but in every other year then “festival” bit has been very busy all day, loads going on, great for kids, beer tent absolutely rammed, showed movies at night, live bands, all the exhibitors, a real buzz about it

Agreed it’s great for kids, but we’re talking about the enduro. If you’re racing there’s no time to demo a bike. I don’t recall any bands and I’m pretty sure the movie was a kids film.

The year I did it there was no camping so loads were staying in Inners, and the stages were in Inners too, so we were back and forth to Peebles just to accommodate the festival element which we were paying for but not part of. Very different to the EWS for example where it all ran from that central location.

He’s not shuttering the whole operation, just Tweedlove.

He actually says he’s focusing on other events.

Whilst it would be nice to have government funding and I get there is a small tourism angle I dont really see why taxpayers should be funding our fun.

Agreed, he’s honest that the event relied on industry sponsorship and public funds – and the latter are always cyclical.

They’ve had some good times thanks to all the money poured into the valley in the last 10 years, but good times never last forever.

Not saying the Tweed Valley bubble has burst, but maybe it’s more on the same footing as other areas now?

Sounds like the Ardrock sport to me. That’s the type of event I’d like there to be more of, so I can ride the marshalled, waymarked route of trails i’m not normally able to ride, plus get all the festival vibes alongside it, without feeling the need to compete or worry too much about the odd arsehole that takes it too seriously and gets the hump if I’m in the way.

OT but sounds a bit like the Gambler 500 off road events in the US. Basically bring a $500 vehicle, a central village, a load of waypoints and you just go off and have fun trying to get to them all and clean up the trails on the way round. I’ve always thought that sort of Mad Max type event could really work if you have a few different “loops” at varying difficulty levels. Orienteering on bikes really.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler_500

I’ve just had an SIEntries email – looks like Tweedlove round 4 at Yair is cancelled. Round 3 (Innerleithen) is going ahead.

@euain, yeah i just had the email from tweedlove.. shame i really fancied that, rode thornielee last week and loved riding something different..

Update on our events:

Glentress 7 (XC/trail/endurance)| 24 August | Going ahead | Entries available

Hope Enjoyro EVO presented by Ridelines (intermediate level one day enduro) | 25 August | Going ahead | Entries available

Glentress Family Day (fun racing for ages 2-13) | 25 August | Going ahead | Entries available

YT Industries TweedLove Enduro Series Round 3/BNES final round 2024 | 14-15 September, Innerleithen | Going ahead | Entries available. This will be the final TweedLove event.

<i>YT Industries TweedLove Enduro </i>Series Round 4 | 5-6 October, Yair | Cancelled | Refunds will be issued

Tour O The Borders (closed road sportive) | 7 September 2025 | Going ahead | Entries available

Whilst it would be nice to have government funding and I get there is a small tourism angle I dont really see why taxpayers should be funding our fun. In the same way I don’t see why taxpayers should be funding the arts. It’s all entertainment which should be self funding by those who participate or sponsorship.

I suppose if you only view it from the angle of entertainment, sure.

But, like the arts there are a lot more benefits than entertainment. The ROI isn’t always tangible but in many of these cases it is.

I do agree though that when priorities have to be made then the “nice to have” stuff idls the first to go and that more can be done to just enable these things.

Forestry Commission in the valley are apparently very difficult to work with.

If they have cut local management then it makes the bureaucratic nature of the beast more difficult. The local manager knew the value of volunteer work to keeping their forest relevant and would help with the form filling. Now there’s likely to be one person with a lot of responsibilities and too little time to advise on how FC want things done.

The attitude in MTB circles is that we aren’t clubby/organisation people, getting someone to start the form filling and make a relationship with FC management is difficult as a result.

Not quite a 50/50 responsibility but not far off.

Based on the amount of call outs to get volunteers to help with events, I’m definitely of the opinion that MTBers are a selfish bunch* – which sounds bad, but for many people they dopn’t have the time to ride their bike AND get involved in helping organise and put on an event. A shame more people don’t have the time to help make things happen, but for many people, they’d rather use their free time to ride rather than use their free time to allow others to ride.

The same can be said for trailbuilding, supporting clubs with club rides/junior rider development via coaching, etc. These all have the same issue – people want to ride their bikes and time is a constraint so they don’t manage to do everything they want. It varies between person to person, but that seems to be how it is.

Things that rely on volunteers to help make things happen are always going to suffer and it is always going to be stressful making sure you get all the volunteers you need to make it happen. Many hands make light work and all that, but convincing those many hands to put down their bike to help out is always the challenge.

* I’m saying this for effect, but I’ve seen this with events, with club activities – both senior and junior levels, with coaching and racing…it seems a universal issue – it is very easy to say MTBers are selfish, but it is much more nuanced than that in a lot cases…

It’s not just mountain bikers. If you look at the majority of kids sports most parents just drop of their kids and never get involved. I’ve done my fair share of helping out with fundraising and volunteering but I’m damned if I’m going to let others take the piss and let a handful do everything. With a big event like Tweedlove I’m sure there’s only so many times you can go to the volunteer well.

We run a pumptrack every year we ask for volunteers to help every year no one comes forward. Every year folk complain that nothing gets organized.

Aye…it isn’t just the big events that have this issue…and also isn’t just mountain biking or kids sports. Before covid the issue was there just the number of volunteers needed that hadn’t already stepped up was a lower number. Now post COVID and it seems far more people aren’t interested in getting involved. It is across the board in everything.

@chakaping

This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve had to write during the whole 15 year TweedLove journey, and it’s with a heavy heart I have to announce that there will be no TweedLove events in 2025 or beyond. After several difficult years keeping everything afloat, these final races over the next couple of months will be our last.

Dunno what other events he’ll be involved in, Tweedlove is the company, not just the festival/race series.

@snotrag the NN is a decent slog but honestly not all that difficult, I did it on a Trailstar LT. If you could drop the stepdown at Ae there wasn’t anything particularly knarly.

@squirrelking my suggestion was that the marketing might be the issue, not neccesarily the reality of the trails!

One of the other issues I think is offering value for money. You can go and ride the valley trails pretty much any day of the year for free, so your paying for the race side of it, timing system, Marshall’s etc etc and whatever the other festival side of it benefits of the event are. Personally I’m not bothered about putting a race number on my bike to ride stuff I can ride the rest of the year anyway. As a result if there isn’t a value proposition from the festival side of the event then why bother?

As a result if there isn’t a value proposition from the festival side of the event then why bother?

If the Trailbuilders charged you to ride the trails they’d put their time & money into would that change your view?

You can go and ride the valley trails pretty much any day of the year for free, so your paying for the race side of it, timing system, Marshall’s etc etc and whatever the other festival side of it benefits of the event are. Personally I’m not bothered about putting a race number on my bike to ride stuff I can ride the rest of the year anyway.

Umm, sounds like you were never the target market then.

my suggestion was that the marketing might be the issue, not neccesarily the reality of the trails!

Ah, fair. TBH I don’t know how it compares to other events, it’s the only one I’ve done barring the MacAvalanche. The former was DH level trails I remember from way back whilst the latter’s quali stages were blue and red trails that needed a lot of pedalling. Point being they’re possibly trying to avoid a bunch of Barracuda Bobs hurting themselves when they find themselves miles from anywhere and completely out their depth.

Personally I’m not bothered about putting a race number on my bike to ride stuff I can ride the rest of the year anyway.

This is much how I feel. I’ll pay for Boltby and Ard Rock for example but I’d rather ride them without all of the other people there. “Racing” them is the only option but that’s not the case for the Scottish trails. It’s also difficult to judge the levels of some of the events, and I’d rather not waste my money on something that I’d be out of my depth on and not enjoy.

I hear what he says about the local authority being short sighted, but from their side, their budgets are so squeezed right now, there are L.A.’s that are going bankrupt

Neil wasn’t really criticising the council, as they have generally been supportive of events, and provided funding and help where possible, but his dig was aimed at select councillors, who basically don’t like bikers.

To give an idea of what Neil was up against at times, the Community Council Leader once said that “TweedLove brings nothing to the community and doesn’t benefit local businesses”.

<em style=”box-sizing: border-box; –tw-border-spacing-x: 0; –tw-border-spacing-y: 0; –tw-translate-x: 0; –tw-translate-y: 0; –tw-rotate: 0; –tw-skew-x: 0; –tw-skew-y: 0; –tw-scale-x: 1; –tw-scale-y: 1; –tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; –tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; –tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; –tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246/0.5); –tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; –tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’; background-color: #eeeeee;”>Didrounds up in scotland. PMBA also shut up shop last week.

Not quite yet. PMBA’s final round is in just over a week at Ae, in the form of the first BC sanctioned National Champs since the de-affiliation quite a few years ago (I can’t actually remember if there was a sanctioned National Champs at that time…)

Kev has put a lot of work into the whole re-affiliation with BC, so I think it’s only fair that he gets to run the first one. Although I don’t think even he was planning on it being his last ever event.

Forestry Commission in the valley are apparently very difficult to work with. The trails on the inners side for example get zero maintenance. There’s been a couple of high profile digs of very short sections, but general necessary maintenance is zero from the forestry commission. Adrenaline Uplift have been pushing for ages to take on some of that work and the forestry simply won’t allow it. I get the liability angle, but it’s not an unsolvable problem. It just seems like a lot of barriers to getting the work done.

The trail fairies are no more. TVTA have a very limited number of trails they’re allowed to work on.

FLS are a typical public body, with lots of hoops to jump through, some quite restrictive rules, and have been short staffed for the past few years, however Adrenalin have been doing maintenance work on the main DH tracks for a good few months now.

Trailfairies do still exist, just not been on due to a shortage of staff.

TVTA do seem to be in a bit of disarray just now due to a few reasons, but their remit is limited to trails that they have adopted, but adoption on any further trails in the near future isn’t likely to happen.

I blame ebikes, probably

Participation is definitely down significantly.

Looking at the recent Tweedlove International race in June, they had about 250 entrants.

I’m not sure where you got the 250 number from, but there were nearly 400 people started on the day.

However to use that as a basis for a discussion about numbers, TweedLove have largely bucked the trend among similar organisers in terms of maintaining entry numbers since Covid. Nobody really knows the reason the exact reasons why, other than they’re good events, but some of the other organisers I’d say have had equally as good events, just without the non-racing bits, yet some of those event numbers have noticeably dropped.

I think the big driver is people just don’t have money, so they are prioritising which events they do. If you still want to do and can only afford one or two events, do you do one or two proven events with a good track record of people having fun, or risk an event with a patchy record?

I’m not sure where you got the 250 number

Ah, my bad, I didnt look at the seeded numbers. Bizarrely it’s not on R&R but Id looked at the sportident results. Looks like it was just under 400

https://www.sportident.co.uk/results/TweedLove/2024/International/

Hi mc,

Tried to get in touch with Trailfairies and got no reply, and there’s been nothing posted on the facebook page in years. Are you sure they are still on the go?

And having tried to get simple info from FLS, I can well imagine just how difficult they are to deal with. Obstructive and evasive doesn’t begin to describe it.

@mtnboarder they’re not running at the moment. Last conversation I had regarding them with FLS was a few months ago.

They’ve not been forgotten about, but the relative FLS staff had been very stretched due to the other major things going on at Glentress, although things were improving and they had been hoping to get them started before the summer. However FLS have been very quiet lately, and I’ve not had any chats with them for a while to find out what the current status is.

Trail fairies

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tvta-trail-digging-tickets-941855343687

https://www.tweedvalleytrails.org/

TVTA is not the Trail Fairies. All a bit People’s Front of Judea/ Judean People’s Front but TVTA are down the golfie and the fairies are glentress

Started as a fun, exciting race series. Ended up a cash grab family day out. You could predict what trails were going to be used months in advance, little to no remedial work carried out on the trails afterwards. The whole post seems arrogant and self pitying to be honest, everything runs its course.

There used to be a local race we had called enduraloo, random trails all over the valley and then a curry. Racing with mates and all the laughs and memories that go with it, that’s the “spirit” of enduro and it’s what tweedlove forgot about.

Dunno what other events he’ll be involved in, Tweedlove is the company, not just the festival/race series.

My mistake, I misunderstood this from his blog:

I’ll now be concentrating on other projects with the remaining core staff at Hillside Outside

I always understood that hillside outside was the company. Also that tweedlove made no profit.

@Brake-neck I got into a Facebook argument when I pointed out what you raise. Fortunately I applied the wrestling with pigs rule and left it pretty quickly.

If the Trailbuilders charged you to ride the trails they’d put their time & money into would that change your view?

If the charge was reasonable I would pay. I pay to ride uplift sites. I pay parking fees that allegedly, not that I believe it, go towards the cost of trail maintenance. This might be because it’s a trip for us to go and ride so we usually manage a week a year. Whether those more local would be happy to pay is another matter. Having said that you could offer those wanted to free access in return for volunteer time to help maintain them

I live locally and the enduro races don’t interest me. The trails are the same as I’d ride anyway, and I’d ride them in the same way whether it’s a regular ride or an enduro race. The family festival bit doesn’t apply to me or any or my mates and I can only think of one who’s entered any of them and he’s a sponsored enduro rider so doesn’t really have any choice. People from outside the area probably see it differently, as a special trip on carefully selected trails they’d struggle to find otherwise.

However, GT7 is a different kettle of fish. You’re racing against other people around you, which you don’t do normally, and with places swapping all over the place, the odd fist fight breaking out and a single base to come back to it’s not like a normal ride at all, so is worth paying for.

Got the email last night. Sorry to see this go to be honest, have done a bit of volunteering and had a go at some of the events. Always really liked both sides of it. Brought quite a bit into the valley (people and money). Sad times really, hope something comes out the other side of this and survives

I always understood that hillside outside was the company. Also that tweedlove made no profit.

Uh, one of us is right and I have no idea who it is!

Hillside Outside is Neil’s company which runs (ran) Tweedlove as well as Tour of the Borders- which will continue for next year at least.

Events like this got too serious, too expensive and lost their vibe at least for me. I did the Naughty Northumbrian in 2019 and it was demanding in all the wrong ways for me.

I turned up 2 minutes late for my set off time and was scolded by the organiser at 8am after a terrible night’s sleep and when we got to the stages they weren’t setting people off at their prescribed times anyway so it didn’t even matter. The day before on practice day I’d crashed quite hard and got shouted at by the rider behind for not getting up quick enough for him to continue his practice run uninterrupted. Tosser.

We were hung over and sleeping in a field with no tap water surrounded by people in 80 grand VW transporters, bright lights in their shade tents and generators left running all night who probably had a far comfier nights sleep than me.

Obviously not Tweedlove but it put me off bothering with enduro events after that. At least with the NN you were riding good trails that you couldn’t otherwise do the yest of the year. I can ride anything from Tweedlove for free whenever I fancy.

Used to do loads of racing, both downhill and enduro but pretty much gave up on enduro pre Covid as it seemed to of changed to a sort of wishy washy multi stage dh race without any of the interesting track features. One of the best stages I remember was at a tweedlove at Glentress, top of ho chi min, to the fort then down to the hydro, 15 minute stage with a decent fire road climb in the middle. Now it’s all 5 3 minute stages with no physical effort. Also remember another tweedlove where the transition time between 2 stages was a bit tight, a few of us grand vets, who went off first made it but as more people failed they scratched the time limit cos people were complaining it was a bit hard.