Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
The Surly Dorset Gravel Dash isn’t your average gravel event. There is a focus on pubs, not miles…tea houses, not KOMs. Unless you’re interested in racing, then you can do that as well.
Event Recap (by Charlie Hobbs): “How was the Surly Dorset Gravel Dash? It was bloody amazing.
This was the fifth Dorset Gravel Dash, and it has grown from a few guys belting it out while 30 others sat around a pot of chicken stew in the woods, to much greater numbers, a massive 100 person tipi, live acoustic punk, and 130kg of pork.
Leading into the event we had plagues of problems: a re-route due to a running marathon, landowners demanding money and thinking that 4:50pm the day before the event is a good time to discuss the route, severe weather warning with 30mm of rain per hour predicted, and even a bloody forest fire on the route.
It turned out to be a couple of heavy showers that came and went in an hour, and then just great sunny weather. But this made for one of the toughest years yet. The rain turned the dust into a slippy, claggy, mech-eating soup. And the humidity was almost unbearable. We had almost 1/3 of the registered attendees not even show up, and of those that took on the challenge, almost 10% needed help or rescue.
So, we have two rules: “it’s not a bloody race”, and “Don’t be a dick”. This covers everything, and it also means we have almost no idea of timings and positions. However two guys stood out. Kean was the first back in the two day ride, on a single speed, and was the last guy standing in the tipi at Gravel dash camp at 3am ish. Tim Gardener he entered the two day event, and completed it without a bike! He ran the whole bloody thing, and beat a lot of guys with carbon bikes and lots of gears. An amazing effort.
The finish was awesome too. By chance our finish line coincided with the Purbeck Pirate Festival and racing a “yard of grog”. A few gravel dashers managed to neck 3 ½ pints of ale in as little at 24 seconds!” – Charlie, Event Organizer
The Dorset Gravel Dash is an award winning event. You have two options:
100: that is 100 miles of Dorset countryside in one day.
50:50: this is the same route over two days with a night out in the woods, where we supply lots and lots of really good food: goats and deer, and great vegetarian food too. There is also lots of beer.
Entry is now open, places are limited, so get on it. And hey please don’t worry about doing the event on your own. Half the people arrive solo, and soon hook into a small friendly peleton rolling at their pace, and that can be “steady as she goes” or “stop at most pubs and cake shops” pace. Bikepacking.com attended a few years ago…. And you can read about it here.
Plus on the Friday evening, legendary round the world cyclist Markus Stitz is giving an engaging account of a bikepacking journey less ordinary, presented with pictures, videos and stories from the road, sometimes tragic, most times funny. Learn more about that here.
