Into the rugged North... the Alwinton Enduro, May 4th 2014

(Photo copyright of Geoff at Backpacking in Britain)

Whilst Angie's away with the Team Berghaus crew in sunny Spain the Seagull’s here with the Alwinton NDH Enduro run down, let’s do this!

Last weekend saw the second round of the NDH Enduro Series at Alwinton forest, for those of you who didnt race it last year this is probably the meanest most testing Enduro race in the UK, putting it bluntly you go there to hug trees and get bruises!

(Photo copyright of Paul Mears)

Alwinton’s tracks are notoriously steep, fast, rooty and all out naughty, absolutely perfect for my trusty Orange Five! There’s not a lot of pedalling involved which is what makes life great. With its wild nature it’s insanely fun to ride and incredibly hard to race on as the majority found out, myself included!

(Photo copyright of Victoria Dawe)

The tracks were in awesome condition, still fairly wet from the previous week’s rain but that just made for good entertainment. Just about everyone on the hill seemed to be smiling even though the majority of us spent a lot of time on our arses!!

(Whoops….!)

This was probably one of the best races i’ve done in over two years, there were 3 race tracks in total (all dirtily technical) and due to the nature of them it was damn hard to get clean runs, I tip my hat to the few that managed it.

(Photo copyright of Paul Mears)

It certainly felt like I was riding fast yet couldn’t quite keep it together and kept humping trees hahaha! Luckily for me that was the only order of the day as most people took a tumble or two, I finished in second place which I was very chuffed with, flat pedals for medals at Alwinton I tell ya! 

Mega apologies to Orange Mountain Bikes for not wearing a team jersey on the podium, I think the previous bloodied arm photos explain why and me not wanting to look like an extra from ‘The Walking Dead’ up on the step!

(Photo copyright of Paul Mears)

All in all it was a great weekend and a massive thanks goes out to the NDH crew for making these kinda races take place. In my opinion the no-frills approach along with Carl Davison’s track building skills gives way to some of the best racing in the country, well done again bro’!

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