Wrapping up the URT
8 Sep 2011
By David Scorer
It is over. After more than 2 months on the road (67 days to be exact), 19 bike parks, countless incredible trails, stunning mountain scenery, friendly locals and some damn cool mountain bikers we have reached the end. Highlights include the Alpe d’Huez Megavalanche, riding with Nico Vouilloz, the Val di Sole World Cup, meeting the Athertons at Alpi, and Hart’s final run at the World’s. But best of all it was just being out on the bikes riding trails.
We really need to thank our sponsors, the guys at Winforce for supplying us with the fuel we needed to get round this epic tour – could not have done it without this stuff!
A massive thank you to everyone who supported us along the way, in particular…
@ Les Deux Alps: Héléna, Pascal, Florian, Steven, Anis and Alex.
@ Tignes: Stéphanie, Yannick and Max.
@ Alpe d’Huez: Céline, Celia, Nico and Ophélie.
@ Verbier: Isabelle, Trifon, Amitai and Sivan.
@ Wiriehorn: Samuel and Thomas.
@ Todtnau: Axel, Arne and Andreas.
@ Bad Wildbad: Charlotte, Ute and Rainer.
@ Bellwald: Pamela, Holger, Frédéric and Romi.
@ Livigno: Simone, Jens, Michael, Lars and Camillo.
@ Leogang: Daniela, Daniela and Kornel.
@ Saalbach: Edith, Sasch, Sabine, Roli, Mucki and Eno.
@ Wagrain: Sonja, Jason, Christoph and Lukas.
@ Planai: Philipp, Gary, Cecile, Yannis and Sebastien.
@ Fassa: Wylly, Mauro and Ivan.
@ Val di Sole: Alberto and Sergio.
@ Bardonecchia: Alex, Riccardo and Carlo.
@ Les Gets: Ben, Chrystelle, Christoph, Florian, Alexi and Ian.
@ Chatel: Pascale and Vanessa.
@ Champéry: Danny Hart for raising the bar and Manon for keeping it Welsh!
Extra special thanks to Martina, Dan, Kelly, Ele, Paul, Mark, Sam, Nadège, Mark E, Dani, Rob, Waldi, Chris, Dave and Jayne for invaluable support. And of course thanks to everyone who joined us for a ride, hung around for photos, stopped to chat, and followed us on the blog as we went along. Hope we entertained as well as informed and with a bit of luck inspired some road trips of your own
It feels very much like the end of the season now, with the major bike parks in the northern hemisphere beginning to shut-up shop and prepare for the winter season. But there are plenty of bike parks that are not in ski-resorts and have climates that enable bike park riding all year round, so it is not the end! And then there is the southern hemisphere with established bike parks in New Zealand and Australia and new parks springing up all the time. URT South America is not far off…!
Stand by for some huge developments with the WorldBikeParks website over the winter months. Adding your own reviews, images, videos etc will help things along and certainly benefit other riders in discovering all the amazing options that are available. In the mean time, happy trails.
Comments