Hope PMBA Enduro Series R4 & Northern Champs

Joe Flanagan reports in his own unique style on the Hope PMBA Enduro Series R4 & Northern Champs which took place over the weekend!

Joe Flanagans ingredients for a good time:

1. Bikes! Anything with two wheels is guaranteed to put a smile on your face!

2. Sweet tracks to ride bikes on. Ribbons of dirt, gardens of loam, berms and booters guaranteed to make you fill your pants with excited juices.

3. Sunshine! Sunshine is warm and being warm is nice this often produces a smile on the faces of people involved with sunshine.

4. Friends, family, close ones, pets. Where would we be without them, the answer to that is on our own and being on your own is no fun unless your have a good wi fi network and are familiar with websites such as pornhub.com

We all know these things thrown together in the right mix are the ingredients for a good time however im making this point because these were all found in abundance at the Hope PMBA northern enduro champs in the grounds of the Graythwaite Estate.

The English Lake District was the location for the northern champs and by heck did it put on a show for us!

Sunshine blooming flowers and a flurry of wildlife was the order of the day. Nestled in the grounds of Graythwaite hall it felt like we were on location at the set of the antiques roadshow rather than the Pmba series.

The weather tracks and people present created an incredibly chilled out friendly atmosphere I don't think you can find at many race series nowadays. This atmosphere however is not easy to produce and only made possible due to the hard work and collaboration of trail builders, land owners, riders and race organisers such as Kev the bastard Duckworth and mike half height marsden, the Pmba is well and truly alive and kicking! So if your sat on your botty feeling miserable get on up and get yourself to the next Pmba festival of good times for some jolly good times!

The stages provided a good mix of technical tree weaving and balls out berm blasting with some of the finest loam I've ever had chance to set wheels on!

Stage one was like navigating a maze in an Egyptian pyramid a blur of changing corners angles and narrow tree sections kept you on your toes. If you pulled it off you were rewarded with a perfect feeling of flow, in the other hand if you clipped your hips of the first tight tree it seemed you were scraping bark all the way down.

Stage two was a fast flurry through some magical woodland I kept expecting to be held up by fairies crossing the track.

Stage three was the dogs fucking bollocks Stage 4 I would rather not talk about because it tried to remove my rear mech!