Each year we typically list around 100 events listed in our Events Calendar and they cover everything from one day social rides to multi-day bikepacking events to events which traverse multiple countries. They are spread across the globe from southeast Australia to California to Finland. We think there is something for every style of gravel & adventure riders from flat-out racing to festivals, family rides and journeys.
Our aim for the calendar has been to showcase as wide a depth and breadth of gravel and adventure cycling events as we can, but always with an eye on quality. We’ve tried to showcase the best events and we are selective about which ones we will accept for the Gravel Union events calendar. As the events are so widely distributed, it’s not possible for us to have tried them all out personally, so we rely on the information that event organisers provide us to create the event listing.
For 2023, we’re again going to showcase the best-of-the-best, so we’ve selected 11 events from our calendar which we’ve given “Gravel Union Recommended” status to. What does that mean? For an event to display our thumbs up logo it means the organisers have agreed to our Gravel Union Recommended Events Charter. This charter is our way of ensuring event organisers have provided an appropriate level of information to participants.
We should make it clear that our thumbs up logo doesn’t mean we’ve completed any external validation or assessment and it doesn’t have any legal value. Also, just because an event hasn’t been awarded a thumbs up isn’t a negative thing either – the fact the event is already included in our calendar means we already consider it to be a good one!
What does it mean for you? Over the course of the next few months, we will be running features on the eleven events that we have selected for 2023. We will go behind the scenes with the organisers, give you some great insight into what the event involves and perhaps most importantly, we will be giving away a couple of free entries to each event. These entries will only be available to Gravel Union members and the names of the winners will be drawn out of a hat.
If you would like to sign up for free membership, please click on this link.
These are the events that we have selected for 2023: