10 years living in France and last weekend was the time we’d finally head back to the UK and check out the GB race scene.
The race – The first of the British National DH Series in 2026.
The venue – The iconic Rhyd-y-Felin track. Long, fast, rooty, stumpy and a regular choice for British Series and Championship events.
The likes of Danny Hart, Reece Wilson and Peaty would be gracing the dirt. In the U17s, Thomas would be joined by a couple of lads fresh off the back of a one-two finish at the IXS European Continental race in Portugal the previous weekend.
Should be good!
We’ve been in France 10 years and Thomas has only ever raced in our region, which is enormous to be fair. As we put together the race calendar for this year, we knew we needed to expand our horizons and experience.
We were also really keen to head back ‘home’ and check the British scene out. This would be a step up for T, taking part in his first National-level race.
Personally, I was looking forward to being able to have a good old chinwag without heading home with translation brain strain… Although it is Wales, so it could be even worse!
I signed us up to British Cycling and booked him in!
Next decision. How to get there? Drive and take plenty of tools, spares and maybe even camping kit.
Or, fly and save money, but have to juggle flights, gear, van rental, and accommodation with limited bike kit.
We decided to fly. Flying with a bike would undoubtedly crop up again in the future, so we may as well give it a go now, get some practice, and learn some lessons.
Luckily, we’d mentioned the trip to a mate a few weeks earlier and he’d said, “Hey, don’t buy a bike bag. I’ve got one you can borrow, no problem.”
“Sweet! Cheers dude.”
We booked the flights to Manchester, adding a bike bag and a hold bag. 32kg weight limit on the bike bag and 26kg on the luggage.
Next stop, YouTube for the obligatory how-to vid, and as flight day approached, we set about taking the bike to pieces before covering the whole thing, and all the bits, in pipe lagging, bubble wrap and two kilometres of masking tape.
We jammed in everything around the frame that we’d like to take… Tools, spares, kit and an AirTag just in case. We packed it all up so nothing would clatter around and zipped ‘er up!
Thomas fetched the bathroom scales and we muscled the bag onto it for the weigh-in…
37.9kg!
“Daymn!”
We unpacked pretty much everything we’d like to take and gave it another go…
31.7kg.
“That’ll do pig.”
Tools, spares, his helmet and a skeleton wardrobe went in the hold bag and the leftovers got crammed in our hand luggage.
The race schedule showed us that registration and track walk would be on Friday. Practice and a seeding run would take place on Saturday, followed by more timed-practice on Saturday and a single race run on Sunday.
We travelled to the UK a couple of days early to pop in on family up North and picked up a transit van from Manchester when we landed.
That threw up the first hiccup (or something else ending in up!) of the trip…
Used to using my phone almost exclusively to pay for everything, I’d accidentally picked up a discontinued physical credit card to take for the van deposit
If you’ve ever wondered what your options would be in that situation, they are almost nonexistent. The only other option is to pay a hefty additional payment on a physical debit card. I won’t say how much but I will say don’t forget your credit card! It’s not something I’ll be doing again in a hurry.
With the cost savings of flying reduced significantly, we headed North for some family time and a bike rebuild in the grandparents’ garage. Two days later, we headed south towards Wales under threatening and rainy skies.
Our digs for the weekend – The New Inn pub in Llangynog. A bit dated and rough around the edges but the room was clean and there was food, beer, parking, a pool table and some of the comfiest beds we’ve ever slept in.
We checked in with the bloke behind the bar, who closed his eyes, put his finger in the air and visualised his way through the route to our room like a rider visualising a race run. He went out of the bar down the corridor, up the stairs, around some corners and ended up pointing above his head before opening his eyes with a look of almost surprise and said, “Just above the bar.”
“OK…”
I quietly hoped the people of Llangynog weren’t fans of regular, rowdy, weekend, late-night lock-ins.
We dumped the bags and headed up the road to register and walk the course. The track at Rhyd-y-Felin is only a mile along the road from Revolution Bike Park, which itself sits on the fringes of the village of Llangynog.
Five minutes after leaving the pub, we joined a queue of traffic waiting in turn to rally their way across a waterlogged field and find a spot to park. If we got stuck, at least food and bed was only a short walk away.
We presented Thomas’s license credentials to the ladies at the British Cycling stand, signed on a dotted line, received a race plate in exchange and grabbed a transponder from the timing dude.
Then we set off up the track. There were some wide open flat, grassy corners at the bottom with a squelchy, boggy patch near the end. Further up, rooty and rowdy sections were interspersed with fast shaley channel sections. At the top was a bike park-style jumpy/bermy section after you fire out of the start hut.
The rain had greased the whole place up like a fresh headset and we slipped and skidded our way up and down the track. We joined the general murmur of excited amusement at the impending carnage that was likely to unfold in the steep woody section. It had Battle of the Somme quagmire potential, coupled with subterranean sniper roots lying in wait to surface and pick riders off one by one.
We slopped back into our clean rental van which was beginning to get an idea of the type of dirty weekend it had ahead of it. Vans love that stuff. Waaay better than a house move or a tip run gig.
Back to the pub for showers, steak pie, chicken burger, beer and six games of pool. At only 50p each, it’d have been rude not to.
We hit the sack for a very satisfying night’s sleep and thankfully no all-nighter Welsh choir lock-in.
Practice day – We parked up in the same spot as the night before and Thomas kitted up and rolled back off down the road to the uplift station to start practice. I set off up the track to stack the footage and see if I could spot anything useful I could feed back to him.
I was already enjoying speaking the lingo with ease and was making the most of chatting to anyone who looked like they were up for it. It felt like I was turning into my dad, or his even. They’re always MIA only to be found nattering away to someone.
T’s morning went well. It had rained a bit more overnight and the track was wet and slick. We decided not to bother faffing with tyre changes, though. It was going to continue drying from here on in for the rest of the weekend and we figured he’d feel the benefit of his regular tyres as that happened.
We did notice that a lot of washing was going on. In France, there have so far been plenty of bike wash stations at races but here, it seemed like everyone had their own bike wash station. Riders, mechanics and parents were busily ferrying water containers backwards and forwards, washing, rinsing and fettling endlessly between race runs.
Thomas put in five practice laps and, despite several log jams, felt like he was getting quicker and more familiar every time. The track was evolving as riders found similar preferred lines and the ruts formed.
I picked my way back down to base for a bite of lunch and we found the single hose at the source of the wash-water procession. We gave T’s bike a rinse and a once-over ahead of his seeding run and away he went. I scrabbled back up the track for another vid.
Thomas eventually came through looking solid and composed. I followed him out of sight on the phone screen, then stopped recording and headed down.
He’d caught up and overtaken two riders and ended up in the lower half of the pack, but he was happy. He had come into this with no seeding position and he was in the first year of the age category. A lot of these lads had already ridden this track for two or three years as U15’s, plus he’d had a couple of hold ups.
We knew the standard would be high and hadn’t been expecting too much. It’s all about the progress at the moment and being forced to learn fast and get up to speed quickly with a new track would be something that would serve him very well in the future.
We headed back to the pub and our arrival coincided with the arrival of a coach load of smartly dressed revellers. They proceeded to pour out of the coach, across the road and straight through the front doors of the pub.
“Ot oh…” Saturday night all-nighter?
We headed upstairs and Thomas got started on a school presentation while I jumped in the shower.
The din from downstairs was significant but as I got dressed, I started thinking to myself how nice it was.
At that exact moment, Thomas piped up and said, “I love the sound from downstairs.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking that.” I said.
The constant babble of jovial chatter punctuated with crescendos of laughter was infectious. It was muted enough by the lime plaster, canted floorboards and thick carpet that you couldn’t make out anything specific, but the busy, carefree cheeriness and early evening promise of a Saturday night were a real treat to listen to.
I began thinking, “Actually, I reckon this group is at the start of a crawl to a bigger, brighter destination like Oswestry or even Chester.”
30 minutes later, a loud whistle sliced through the chatter, followed by a different tone of voice issuing what sounded like instructions. The babble gradually faded over the next 15 minutes, finally returning to its natural baseline hum.
We took that as our cue for dinner and headed down for a carbon copy of the night before: Steak pie, chicken burger, beer and pool.
We didn’t get the pool table to ourselves this time but we did score a glorious doubles win over a scouse Jimmy Tarbuck wannabe. He was on a solo pub mission and had somewhat hijacked proceedings with a monologue of one-liner banter.
He sledged Thomas, me and another kid relentlessly for three whole games before I pulled off two of the best shots of my amateur career to snatch the best of three in front of a small crowd that had been sucked in. Gotta take the glory when you can.
Another glorious night of slumber followed, and then it was race day.
We dropped the room key in a big porcelain dish, shipped out of the New Inn, drove up the road and reversed back into our usual spot.
Thomas headed up for timed practice and I headed off for a cuppa tea and a bacon and egg roll that I’d had my eye on all weekend. Oh my days, it was so good! I think the good spirits of the lovely Welsh ladies in the butty van made it taste even better.
T got a couple of timed practice runs in and I hiked halfway up the track for another clip request, before we reconvened at the van for a burger lunch.
“Yikes.” With limited food shop options in the area, this trip was turning cholesterol-tastic. Camping would definitely have been healthier.
But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t enjoyed it.
Thomas headed off in good time for his start time and I milled around at the bottom this time to get him coming over the line and so I could quickly meet up with him.
The clock ticked on, the nerves grew and by the time Thomas dropped in, three red flags had knocked the start times back by almost half an hour. I counted the plate numbers through the finish and got ready to record.
The rider two ahead of T came through and then there was an extended gap. Could be an issue. I could see the exit of the final woods from the finish area, and suddenly a rider appeared with Thomas hot on his heels… Wheels.
“Damn. That’s unfortunate.”
I watched as they skirted the sweeping grassy corner neck and neck before Thomas stuck the pass on the exit.
They raced down the field, through the boggy bit, over the road, through the gateway and sprinted for the line.
I went straight round to meet him.
“That was unlucky.” I said.
“I know.” he said. “I caught him further up but when I let him know I was there and started figuring out how to pass, I had a moment and nearly crashed then had to catch him up all over again.”
“Do you want to ask for a rerun?” I said.
“No.” He said. “You can only get one for a red flag and I’m happy with that run.”
I should have asked about that then and there, actually. We don’t really know the rules regarding catching riders and reruns. It’s happened a few times and it’d be useful to know.
Even with the issues, he’d knocked 18 seconds off his seeding time and was really pleased with his progress. He ended up 36 out of 76 which put him in the top half of the table and he knew there was plenty of room for improvement. For his first national-level race, away from home, on a new track and with some challenges, he’d had a decent weekend.
He’d also had to listen to the walkie-talkie chatter in the start hut discussing crashes, red flags, a cracked helmet and medics. He’d managed to keep it together, clear his head, drop in and put in a decent performance.
We decided not to hang about to watch the other categories because we had to get the van back to the hire place in Manchester and we felt a courtesy clean was only fair.
We came off the main road repeatedly at Wrexham and Chester, looking for a jet wash and eventually found one behind a BP garage in Manchester. We gave the bike and the van a well-deserved bath and left heaps of Welsh mud behind in the drains.
All the faffing had the unexpected benefit that we surprisingly only had eight minutes left on our journey to Manchester Airport Ibis. “Result.”
We parked outside with a cold wind funnelling through the deep canyon formed by the towering Ibis and its sibling Holiday Inn and set about taking the bike to pieces again.
When we finally wrestled the zip closed, the process had taken us about an hour. We wheeled the finished article into reception only to discover that there are only 5 minutes of free parking outside and fines if you go over.
That could be the cost-benefit of flying completely out of the window… We’ll wait and see…
I left Thomas doing his presentation while I got rid of the van, then we met downstairs for a debrief and bite to eat.
We checked over the results as we waited and saw that in the end, the IXS boys had bagged the top spots in the U17 category. Peaty and Deeks had taken wins in M40 and M50, respectively and Reece Wilson had won for his team AON on the distinctive Gammux bikes. His teammates Harriet Harnden and Stan Nisbet had done the same in the female elite and juniors, respectively. Hmm, Veeery interesting.
Thomas tells me there’s £100k on the line for the first rider to get a World Cup win on a belt-driven bike and his money is now on Reece.
There would be one last hurdle before getting home. We’d switched a few bits in the bags, put the chain and derailleur in the hold bag, but added a few lighter bits to the bike bag.
We arrived at bag drop and weigh-in time.
Limit 32 kg
Actual 32.8kg.
Computer says no and EasyJet man said hell no! He stood and supervised us as we fished bits out of the bike bag and crammed them into our hand luggage.
We eventually made the weight and departed for the oversize bag belt, leaving him holding a kitchen roll freebie that wouldn’t fit anywhere.
The rest of the journey went nice and smooth. It had been a great weekend, cool event, solid performance, progress made, experience gained and a whole bunch of lessons learned:
Lessons learned:
- If you spent ages making the 32kg weight on the way out, don’t change contents for the return.
- Don’t forget your toothbrush (90s ref), or your current credit card.
- Flying should have been cheaper if you’re not a numpty.
- Two layers of pipe lagging was only just enough under the forks. Thicker padding next time.
- Do a big shop before heading into the Welsh valleys.
- DIY wash station if possible. We liked the look of small cordless jet washer with a hose into the barrel. One bloke had an air dryer too.
- AirTag in the bike bag for instant peace of mind on arrival.
- Reruns are rare and at the discretion of race control. The rider must stop and report to a marshal immediately. So just crack on in that case. Good to know.
- Building that seeding record is very helpful.
- Check into the airport hotel before parking.
Being back in the UK for a race was a real pleasure. The vibe, the camaraderie, the racing and the organisation are all comparable to France really but for me all those little bits of home like pubs, cups of tea, bacon butties and banter were a treat.
For Thomas it was a step up in level with loads of positives to build on. It’s brought more pace, more confidence, more experience and more vision. He said, “Dad. I don’t know why but I just absolutely love riding against the clock between the tape.”
Regionals and a French National level up in the meantime but we’ll be back.
