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Come on an Escapade

Adventure cycling continues to grow in popularity around the world as does the desire to take on massive ultra-distance races and challenges. These things take a load of time though and can prove to be quite expensive – and that’s just doing the training!

Everyone has to start somewhere though and wouldn’t it be great if there was something you could do that whilst really difficult, is still possible? Something that challenged you and pushed you on? Something that was all done and dusted in a long weekend away, and that didn’t require you to buy a whole array of new kit?

Starting in the South East with the North and South Downs route we will be creating similar format events in several locations around the country during the next couple of years. They will typically be held in the Spring and then the Autumn and will make for excellent training rides for something big in the Summer or as a great round off to the season as we head into Winter.

The Escapades will all be of a similar distance at a little under 500km with plenty of climbing and will be mostly off-road. They will be around three days in duration, will have at least one checkpoint and will have live tracking provided by our partner Map my Tracks so even for a smaller event such as this, ‘Dot Watching’ will be possible!

They will be rideable on a Mountain Bike or a Gravel Bike (with around 50mm tyres) – MTB would probably be our preference but where a Gravel bike will loose on comfort it will definitely gain in pace… They can be done with minimal kit – fast and light will be the best approach regardless of what bike you are riding – you really won’t need very much with you to get through the weekend. Please see the Important Stuff Page for the list of mandatory requirements for the event. You will also need a means to keep your smartphone charged and running as this will be your tracker. The Map my Tracks Endurance App uses very little power to send a signal every five minutes, but your phone does need to be on at all times for it to work. If you have a dynamo on your bike then happy days, but if you don’t, a decent capacity cache battery will do it and in test riding a 20000 aMh battery pack kept the iPhone and Garmin going.

Our first Escapade will take place in September 2020 with a repeat in April 2021 ahead of the Great British Divide. Then, in Autumn 2021 we hope to hold at least two events so watch this space for more news on them!