Race Report: PMBA & BNES Enduro Series Llangollen

PMBA was back at Llangollen for a weekender, and what a scorcher it was!


It’s impossible to talk about this race without mentioning the weather. Can anyone remember or name a hotter weekends race in the UK ever? With temperatures soaring into the mid 30s, and very little shade on the hill, HQ and around the campsite, it was one tough weekend for all the racers, organiser, marshals, medics and photographers.


Last weekend should have been the PMBA Enduro Series’ 4th round, but this was the third race of the season for the PMBA due to the devastation caused by storms earlier in the year at the epic Graythwaite venue. This was a 2022 return for PMBA as they last raced here on the 1st May, but that was quite a different format. Last May was a 3 stage and one day mash up event, so no practice, just ride the stages as many times as you could and try and improve your times. Last weekend was an official 2 day event and round 3 of the British National Enduro Series, where Saturday saw the riders practicing the stages and sessioning the tricky sections, followed by Sunday’s all out fast as you could go one chance only at the 5 stages.


If you’ve never been to Llangollen’s One Giant Leap, you’d be forgiven for feeling intimidated the first time you see the hill and trails above you, it simply looks steep and unforgiving. I certainly did the first time I turned up for a photo preview with my bike in tow to capture some of the series ambassador riders. The weekends course was made up of fast, rough, and steep DH tracks with some “enduro” link sections. Tightly packed onto one hillside with only one way up to all stages, thankfully partly shaded from the heat, but the push up itself wasn’t all that forgiving. Overall the riders were looking at a race of approximately 12 miles and a total elevation of 3800ft. One great aspect of this series is the opportunity for the women to go out and start ahead of the main field as a group of women only racers.





Stage 1 – Gentle Giant. The main line with a little tweaking, the easiest stage of the day. Started at the top of the hill and traversed across the top of the hill until it dropped you into steeper berms and finally onto “the motorway” and the newly build jumps section.

Stage 2 – Einherjar. Starting a little further down the hill this is the stage Kev built last year, improved again for 2022. Again, more of the same, steep berms and sections within the woods, but never much time to relax as it was all flat out!

Stage 3 – Ride the Lightning. The lowest elevation start of the day, but that just means you aren’t eased into the stage, it’s just straight into the guts of the hillside with possibly one of the toughest abstacles, “Carnage Corner” as the stage manager referred to it as.

Stage 4 – Gully line. While based around the upper part of “Ride Portugal” the roughest DH track on the hillside the gully end is full enduro and is also “the stage with the climb” contrasting the first half of the stage with the rest it’s really a stage of 2 halves.

Stage 5 – Esquilo. Using parts of Son of Squirrel and Ride Portugal this was stage 1 in 2019 and its steepness surprised many, improvements for 2021 were well received and will be used again.


Across the 5 stages the racing was extremely tight for the top 3 fastest riders of the day. Fergus Lamb (30-39), fresh from his win at Ardrock took the fastest time of the day in a staggering 11:51.10, but it was not plain sailing for Fergus as he took 3 of the fastest times on the stages, 4th fastest on stage 1, but it didn't take him long to pull back to 1st fastest through stage 2. Sam Shucksmith (30-39) took the top spot on stage 3 and was only 0.12 seconds behind Fergus in the overall, that could not have been any closer. Third fastest of the day went to Chubbie Hammond (21-29) who took the fastest stage 1 time of the day and was only 3.72 seconds behind Fergus.


The Womens race was also a hotly competitive race for the top 3 women, with Jess Stone (21-34) taking the fastest woman of the day and winning each of the 5 stages in a time of 13:39.58. Second fastest time went to Corinna Brisbourne (21-34) in 14:17.66 and only 12 seconds behind Corrina was Becci Skelton (35+). Again a pretty tight race for the top 3 spots, but an honourable mention should go to Katy Kaos McGowan (U16) for breaking into the top 10 fastest women at only 13 years of age, she's still going from strength to strength!!



That’s a wrap for this race report. It was one hell of a weekend at Llangollen, and the post race euphoria is still off the scale, even if it was a challenging weekend on the bikes. Next up will be the amazing race at Kirroughtree, often aimed at getting families along for the weekend, not necessarily to be racing, but to be there in support and lap up the thrills and spills of racing. The facilities there are superb, with a top notch bike shop and café. To get entered, there are still places, head over to SiEntries. If you’re not so sure about heading up there, have a look at the PMBA website here or have a read and watch the video from last years event over on Pinkbike.


A huge shout out to all those involved in making this race happen in the heatwaves of 2022! A big thanks and kudos to Martin, the One Giant Leap owner who has continued to support the race and is forever continuing to improve the trails at One Giant Leap. If you want to ride here out of races then get intouch with Martin for further information.

I'll leave you some more images from the weekend. See you at the next round!!








Photos and report Jerry Tatton aka JWDTphotography
Photos James Tatton
Video Theo March

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