With the NYMBO Winter Series finishing yesterday, we can now turn our attention to the weekend of events on 15th and 16th March that kick of the the 2014 league . Andy Parsons has been planning MBO at White Horse & Wass, and has sent in this update:

There is a new bike shop at the visitor centre run by Pace Cycles in partnership with the National Park centre. The Sutton Bank bike shop will be open all day and they have bikes available for hire if you need one – contact details and further info is on their (developing) website: www.suttonbankbikes.co.uk . The cycle shop also has bike wash facilities.

The Café and toilets at the visitor centre will also be open all day. The visitor centre has a “Lime and Ice” exhibition that you or accompanying non-cyclists can look around. There are also way-marked walks and excellent views off the escarpment.

The National Park is in the process of developing several new bike routes. These include some new bike specific trail building to link up existing bridleways and forest tracks. There will eventually be Red, Blue and Green routes. The Green (family) Cliff Trail route is already in place and the Blue will be opening in the Spring. We are including part of the new Cliff Trail route on the map as it gives a new route back to the centre from the Cleveland Way bridleway along the escarpment edge to the north. Please only cycle along the cycle routes in the signed direction.

The event map uses selected bridleways, forest tracks and minor roads to both north and south of the main A170 Thirsk to Helmsley road. This is a busy road with fast traffic so please be especially careful to look out for vehicles when crossing or using the road and I suggest that you wear some high-viz cycling gear. Some sections of the road will be marked as out of bounds for the event in order to keep cyclists to the more minor roads and tracks. Please look out for and do not use out of bounds sections of road, track and forest areas as we will deduct penalties from or disqualify riders doing so. Footpaths are always out of bounds to cycling. We are still in the process of finalising control locations and there may be some permissive tracks that are usable only on the day so please do not pre-ride any areas that are not formal bridleways or public highway.

The event map will use overprinted 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey mapping printed on A3 at 1:30,000 scale. The map will cover a slightly larger area than the map used for 2011 event when we started from Yorkshire Gliding Club just above the White Horse – this allows us to include a few more linking minor roads and bridleways.

If the weather stays as it is, many of the more minor tracks/paths shown on the map in the forest areas (shown as a dotted line) are likely to be very muddy and best avoided. The same applies to the bridleways between Old Byland, Scawton and Rievaulx. I have taken this into account when deciding control position to try to keep people off the worst tracks. There will be plenty of controls on minor roads for riders not liking the mud.

On Sunday March 16th, Andrew Windrum has planned the MTBO events at Bishops Wood and Wheldrake to the southeast of York. These are part of the BMBO Sprint Championships.

Both areas are well known for foot O and Bishopwood has previously been used once for MBO. There’s trails, singletrack, woodland, bit of grassland, some bracken, odd muddy bit, route choice, spectators, sponsor marquees and an international field of athletes. Entry for this event is here