Northern Downhill Enduro Series Rond One Hamsterley Forest

2018 has kicked off to an amazing start with the Northern Downhill’s first enduro race of the year at the trusted venue, Hamsterley Forest. The race sold out well before the weekend, which is proof that there’s a real thirst for not only racing in the winter months but also in the North East.


You’ll all know by now that Hamsterley is part of the Super 6 trail centre network around the North of England. Nowadays, it can be a struggle to mix up the stages from just trail centre purpose-built trails, but at Hamsterley, Carl the man behind Northern Downhill, can mix it up with amazing downhill bike park stages run by the Redcar Rocket himself, Danny Hart and family. More and more over the last year or two, I’ve seen all-mountain and enduro bikes smashing down the trails at Descend Bike park, a testament to how capable modern bikes have become.


At this time of year, there’s always the risk of inclement weather, who can forget last years snow storms on the day. But this year the weather was most forgiving, cold yes, but this did not deter riders going all out van life the night before. Even before the NDH team had set up there was queues of riders waiting to sign on. You could feel a real buzz around the forest Sunday morning. Anticipation was high and it was game on for the first enduro race of the year.


The course was very different to last year. With 4 stages in total, 3 of them all followed purpose built trail centre routes. All 3 of these stages provided fast and flowy berms, drops and tabletop jumps. Overall quite hard on the pedals, but a good remedy for the post-Christmas indulgences. Between stages 1 (K Line) and 2 (Transmission) there was a small climb then back down to the start of stage 3 (Accelerator/Nitrous) with no climb. Once these stages were complete, it was back up the other side of the valley to the more technical stage 4 at the Descend Bike Park.



Stage 4 was far more testing for riders, but by no means the toughest stage NDH has used. Much steeper than the other 3 stages across the valley with rocks, greasy roots (some off camber) and some super tight berms, riders could still find their flow and shred it down the stage.



Most riders had finished the course within 2 hours, as riders could start either side of the valley. 200 riders completed the race with some seriously fast times for the overall.

The overall fastest time of the day was Sean Robinson (masters) with a 6:41.63, followed very closely by Ryan Martin (19-29) with a 6:43.77 and 3rd fastest of the day was Christopher Philogene (19-29) with a 6:46.24. The top fastest 3 riders were separated by 5 seconds. That’s some battle they had for the top spot!

The fastest woman on the day was Lucy Bell (30+) in 8:24.60 and second was Katie Purvis (18-29) with a 8:37.45, and third place was Emma Bean in 9:14.31. For the full results click here.



The first round of the Northern Downhill’s Enduro Series was a sell-out race at the awesome Hamsterley Forest. Next up is the trail bike TT (time trial), a winner takes all race down one stage in the borders of Scotland at Ae forest which is on 11th February and places are still available, do not miss out click here to find out more! One final word and special thanks to Start cycles/fitness for sponsoring the event and providing the podium prizes and to the Loose Riders for additional podium prizes.