Thank you to all those who attended the start to the 2020 Black Mountains MBO Season on Sunday. This year I again decided to use both sides of the river, and also incorporate a clamber up to the Hafod road on the Llangatock Escarpment. This accompanied with a 3 hour time limit & recent wet weather would place a clearance well and truly off the table. I also placed an additional distraction for some of you up a the Punch Bowl, but that’s your own fault if you stopped to watch the swimmers, you know who you are!

On the morning over 50 riders departed the HQ at Gilwern OEC & following the Biblical wet weather the ground was still pretty sodden, many trails doing a good impression of streams & the stone slab bridge in the Vale was a foot underwater! Apologies to the confusion caused by CP16 & 23, I did some last minute changes to the map and forgot to swap the descriptions around; the dots where in the correct place but acknowledge the difficulty it caused & all those that didn’t locate them have been credited the score. I had left the tape in the original locations so most people assumed they had been pinched and moved on, I hope it didn’t distract from the enjoyment too much.
Looking at the Splits & the STRAVA Flybys there was a fairly good mix of which hill to bag first as everyone acknowledged one of the hills had to be dropped. It was also great to see so many new riders join us and we hope to see you all again in the New Year.

With everyone safely in there were some very good performances all round; the top places going to, Iwona Szmyd, 1st female. Rhys Williams (riding solo for the first time) 4th, Liam Drew & Ifor Powell =2nd & Ian Cartwright 1st overall. The other class winners were, Gareth & Grace Davies MIX, Jill Manning W70, Val Ravenhill W60, Ro Cole W50, Hannah Beeby W21, Alan Shergold M70, Andy Stott M60, Liam Drew M40, Nuno Cerqueira M21 & Dave Tipper EBIKE.

Many thanks to everyone who stayed behind to congratulate the League WINNERS and enjoy the fantastic Chilli provided by Amanda & Verda, with additional support from Lisa on the dishwasher! It was a rightly fitting end to another great season & brilliant start to the new one.

We collect £110 and the donation will go again to Severn Area Rescue Association who have been pretty busy lately rescuing folk from the local flooding.

Following the event I was also fortunate to know several riders had opted for the Event Helpers Discount, thank you Chris Porter, Chris & Julia Aldous, Andy & Gill Stott, Ifor Powell, Mark Morgan, Gary Davies & Simon Gittins who saved me a late night collecting the CPs in.

Looking forward all the 2020 dates/areas have now been confirmed and are on the BMBO website. They include some familiar terrain & also some brand new areas to look forwards to. In particular Clare Dallimore has now joined the Planning Team and is going to introduce us to the Llanwonno Mountain near Pontypridd in the autumn, thank you Clare we can’t wait.

Have a great Christmas and see you on Sunday 12 January 2020 down at Redbrook near Monmouth as we re-launch our very popular Small Area Format (SAT) events for the winter season.

To both veteran and newer riders, it’s been another fantastic year thank you for all your support!

Diolch yn Galon

Siôn and the Black Mountains Planning Team