You’ll find the results for Saturday’s event here (updated Monday).

There are still a few updates to be made before these are finalised, please get in touch if you spot anything amiss.

Thanks to all the people who came to the Thorp Arch event, the weather was kind and felt like spring (until I rode home when the hailstorm seemed to pace me). The Cafe went down well and Tim, the owner, sends his thanks to us for coming. The portions were generous and I was particularly taken by the “Big Daddy Tea”. 

I enjoyed planning the event, this is an area I ride from home but I’d not ridden all of the bridleways before. It took some investigation with tracks on the OS map not agreeing with tracks on the ground, tracks on the ground not being on the map and fingerposts having yet a third opinion. The weekend before, I even found a new section of cycle lane that wasn’t there previously.

There was a last minute change to checkpoint 26 to move it away from the river edge. Thursday brought biblical rain and rivers were high. I thought it best to keep away from the edge so we didn’t trial the first NYMBOA – A for aquabike. 

Despite the rain, tracks were reported as generally dry and running well. One local, familiar with the area, said this caught them out as they came in with significant time to spare. Other locals tried tracks they’d not been on before and people reported liking the variety.

It was a good turn out with 47 people in total. Great to see a few new faces both the older generation and younger in the GEN category, we think the 6 gen pairs at one event is a record our statistician is currently getting his notebook out to check.

Every checkpoint was visited and not just because Andy Conn cleared up. Most riders concentrated on the south of the map sacrificing the far north. There were a couple of interesting routes taken, nearly a visit to Wetherby services and a few routes beyond the extent of the checkpoints. A couple of riders used the footpath alongside the river to go between 20 and 26. A penalty equal to the points of the checkpoint travelled to have been deducted for using a footpath as this would have provided an advantage over using the legal road route. 

Reported incidents included – one puncture, a broken mapboard and an airborne phone on a descent (recovered safely). Someone kindly picked up a Camelback Podium water bottle at one of the checkpoints and handed it to me at the end. If the owner recognises it from the photo on the nymbo website let me know and I will try to get it back to you.

Congratulations to the leading riders
M70      David Day – how would this have panned out if his lifetime rival hadn’t opted for an Ebike?
M60     Andy Conn
M50     Jeff Green
M40solo    Paul French
M40pair  Simon Bruton and Kevin Goodwin

Ebike     Steve Willis, despite saying at the start he wasn’t going to be competitive 

Gen     Martin and Will Edwards

W80    Karen Blackburn
W60    Sarah Slade
W50    Jo Anderson and Jemima Parker
W40    Louise Baker
Mix50   Sally Buckworth and Saul Muldoon

Thanks again to everyone for coming and for your kind words of thanks at the end. Its satisfying that people get the enjoyment you hope they will.