It’s likely that many gravel event participants have opened emails over the past 18 months which said something like “It is with a heavy heart that we write to you today announcing the postponement of….” I received one of these recently when the team behind the Raiders Gravel event announced that due to the ongoing effects of the Covid19 pandemic in Scotland, it was not possible for the event to be held this year and that they would be postponing it until 2022 instead.

Gravel event organisers only take a decision to postpone or cancel an event in exceptional circumstances. They know that their decision will negatively impact vast numbers of people – participants who had signed up, different commercial organisations like caterers, entertainment and security who were all expecting to earn money from the event and not forgetting of course the impact on local communities. With big events often attracting high hundreds (or even thousands) or participants, supporters and spectators, the positive financial impact of an event on a small, rural community can be vast. So, when an event is cancelled or postponed, the ripples of this decision are felt widely

For the Raiders Gravel event, my wife and I had booked ourselves a team place and due to the potential of less-than-perfect weather, we decided to forego the minimal comfort of a tent and had hired a motorhome instead. It wasn’t a cheap choice and unfortunately due to the late notice of postponement of the event, we weren’t able to get a refund on our booking. When we read the postponement email from the organisers we were initially pretty disappointed. But then we re-read the email and realised the organisers had put a Plan B in place to try and soften the blow. As well as the option of full refund (or deferment to the 2022 date) they were going to “be hosting social guided rides over the original event weekend in October”. We gave it a bit of thought and decided that as we had our accommodation sorted and had booked time off work, that we should go anyway and make the most of a chance to do some gravel riding in the beautiful Dumfries & Galloway countryside

Golazo, who are the team behind the Raiders Gravel event, came up with a schedule of three day rides and some evening entertainment too. Everything was based from Gatehouse of Fleet, where the original event was to be based and the rides were designed to showcase the variety of scenery and terrain that the event itself would utilise. In the week running up to the social rides, hourly glances at the weather forecast made us realise that a) we’d picked wisely not to go for the camping option and b) it wasn’t going to be quite as lovely as when I had attended the media launch of the event back in the summer. Luckily British weather forecasts are often wrong, so we had our fingers crossed that would be the case and the sun would come through (or at least the Scottish Monsoon would hold off for a few days…

he day before the rides were scheduled, we packed up our bikes and kit and headed up to Dumfries to collect our home for the next few days. At 7.5m long and 2.5m tall, our home on wheels was quite a big beast, but offered the luxury of a double bed, heating and a hot shower (something we figured we would be glad of if the forecast was accurate). We spent our first night camped (illegally it later turned out) on an incredibly scenic spot next to the sea. After some early morning apologising to a (luckily super-friendly) farmer whose land we had incorrectly thought we could stay on, we headed for the start of the ride. The rides had been designed to start outside a local café, which was a stroke of genius, so we made sure we were fuelled and caffeinated before heading out.

The first ride was scheduled for a Friday and the group size was perhaps slightly smaller because of this. What we lacked in volume, we made up for in quality though. As well as the team from Golazo and local route-finding maestros Galloway Cycling, there was an eclectic group of gravel riding fans. We had a real mix of ages, sexes, and experience levels – the only common factor was a love of gravel riding. The participants had come from diverse locations across the north of England and southern/central Scotland (and were joined at the weekend by riders from much further afield too). Even the bike choice was diverse – there was everything from top of the range carbon gravel race bikes, to a monstercross to my aluminium “work bike” fitted with full-length mudguards.

As we rode along chatting, the general opinion was that organising some guided social rides had been a great idea and no-one seemed that disappointed that the event hadn’t taken place. The route for our first ride had been chosen to be representative of the Raiders Gravel event - a mix of surfaces, with sections of trail linked up with sections of rural roads, some great scenery and a really nice flow. There were just enough technical challenges to make it fun (and to cause some issues with punctures), but nothing too challenging. During the ride, Malcolm the MD from Golazo and Warren & Esther from Galloway Cycling made a point of chatting with everyone in the group about the event and canvassing our opinion on how we thought the 2022 event could be shaped. It would be easy to be cynical and think this was just an easy way of them undertaking a customer survey, but it felt as though they genuinely cared about our opinions and wanted our views to help positively steer the way the event will look next year.

A key component of the ride was a stop at the Cream o’Galloway. Despite the fact that it was October and the temperatures were only just into double figures, an ice cream stop was a definite crowd pleaser! The first ride was 40kms and around 500m of climbing – a good warm-up, but not super tough. Miraculously the weather forecast had been wrong and it stayed dry, with even a few patches of sunshine.

One of the sponsors of the event are local gin distillery, Dark Art, and they were keen to showcase their newly opened distillery and give everyone a taste of their gin, so on the Friday night the organisers laid on a coach to take us over to nearby Kirkcudbright where the distillery was based. Based on the number of people who bought bottles of Dark Art’s gin to take home with them, the distillery tour and tasting session had done its job!

Day 2 arrived in the worst possible way – with the sound of rain hammering on the roof of our motorhome. Despite my normal distrust of British weather forecasts, all of them said the same thing – heavy rain and low temperatures until the middle of the afternoon. If you live in the UK you learn to put up with poor weather, but the thought of riding all day in pouring rain, particularly when the route was heading up into the hills so would potentially be even colder, didn’t appeal, so we took the soft option and bailed out. The group still headed out and based on their feedback, had a great time, but we were happy with our choice to have a day off the bikes instead.

Our plan all along had been to ride with the group on Days 1 and 2 and then move an hour further west and do a slightly different ride than the one planned by the organisers. Luckily the weather made a dramatic shift late in the afternoon of Day 2 and while we had arrived at our new location in pouring rain, by the evening we had clear skies and an incredible view of the Milky Way overnight. We could certainly see why Galloway had been given International Dark Sky Park status.

Day 3 dawned perfectly – blue skies, a cloud inversion and a fantastic sunrise. I had planned a route which although had a different start/finish to the Raiders Gravel event, would take in the majority of the route for the Queen Stage (including the main climb up over the high point of the event – a 360m high pass next Brockloch Hill). In the scheme of things, a 360m high pass isn’t going to win any records, but the gravel climb up to it was a sustained 10% gradient with fantastic scenery. After a speedy descent on gravel, followed by a beautiful traverse on a tiny rural road with grass growing up the middle, we arrived at Clatteringshaws Loch where we met up with the rest of the group

Although the weather gods weren’t always on our side, which impacted our decision on which rides to do, the weekend felt like a resounding success. It would have been easy for Golazo to have simply postponed the Raiders Gravel event and basically just say “sorry and hope to see you in 2022”, but instead they put in a lot of effort to try and make the best of a bad situation. Hopefully the enthusiasm of the riders that attended the weekend will have helped inspire them to keep going and the feedback we offered will help make the event even better next year.

We’ll be staying in touch with the team at Golazo and will post up any news about the 2022 event as soon as we have it.