Sunday 18 January 2009

The Strathpuffer Challenge, 24 hour madness!

The Strathpuffer Challenge has come and gone. The event which has developed into a sort of cult status with mountain bikers in Britain is the most extreme 24 hour mountain biking event held in Britain, being for a start held in the far north of Scotland and also in the dead of winter when the weather is probably at its most unpredictable. Baz and I set off on Friday night and reached Strathpeffer about 10 pm to book into the Ben Wyvis Hotel for the cheapest room available, we are Scottish after all, and were surprised to discover the hotel was massive and looked quite magnificent! The whole of Strathpeffer in fact seems to be made up of hotels of grand proportions, apparently in Victorian times it was famous as a spa and was visited by the great and the good in large numbers, now unfortunately it seems to be mainly mountain bikers!
Next morning we had breakfast in a dining room you could have played tennis in, such was its size, and then it was off to the village of Contin just along the road where the event was being held.

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