The Great British Escapade North and South Downs is a new self-supported bikepacking event in the South East of England with the first edition held in September 2020. Suitable for MTB or Gravel Bikes with around 50mm tyres this event has been created to be an excellent introduction to longer bikepacking events that allow newcomers to the sport to gain valuable experience and confidence whilst also still providing a decent challenge to those more experienced with self-supported riding.

The route is 70% off-road with a distance of 480km and 8500m of climbing - with a late afternoon start and just over three days to complete the course there will be plenty of challenges to deal with whilst never being very far from civilisation and have the convenience of finishing in the same place you started from.

The route is tough and it is challenging with the most common description after the first editions being EPIC!

What and When

The Great British Escapade is a self-supported bikepacking adventure ride. It is 70% off road and requires a mountain bike, ‘monster cross’ bike or a gravel bike with around 50mm tyres to complete.

It starts in Canterbury on Thursday 2nd June 2022 at 17:00hrs and will come to an end no later than 1900hrs on Sunday 5th June when the finish and live tracking will officially close. There will be one checkpoint on the route at Pilgrims Cycles at Box Hill Railway Station which all riders must pass through and have their Brevet Card stamped. 

Full GPX files for the route will be shared with all participants on the ?.  See our website for more information about the route.

What Does it Cost?

Entry Fee – £65.00 per individual entry

We have tried to keep the entry fees for the Escapades as low as possible - they cover our costs which include some cool stuff for all our participants, make a contribution to our chosen beneficiary charities and cover a little bit of our time. Our aim is to make these cost effective for you to take part in and hopefully tempt you to have a go at our flagship event the Great British Divide at some point in the future!

What Do I Get?

Included in the entry fee are –

A fabulous three day adventure through a lot of the best bits of the South East of Great Britain…

Live Event Tracking - Our sponsors Map my Tracks will be providing this using their Endurance Smartphone App – This is a really important part of the event from both a safety aspect and from a spectators point of view – ‘Dot-Watching’ as it’s known is a significant part of these events and allows your family, friends and the world at large to follow your progress. This is a much more cost effective option than using Spot Trackers and the App works really well in areas that have good mobile coverage which all of this Escapade route has. It essentially uses your phone as a spot tracker with it sending a signal every five minutes and having very little battery drain. With a good quality cache battery you should be able to keep things running if you do not have a dynamo system on the bike.

A full GPX track of the route (available from the ?) for you to download to your navigation devices and follow.

An Great British Escapades Enamel Camping Mug - whether you hang it off your seat pack or take it to the office is up to you but it will be a great momento from the ride!

An embroidered event patch and a bike frame sticker (we all love them!)

A charitable donation equivalent to 5% of our profits – we are working out who our beneficiaries will be and will announce them soon but they will be in-line with our type of event and provide you with a warm and fuzzy feeling for helping do something good!

Mandatory Requirements

The requirements for participation can be found on our website here

Terms, Conditions and Rules

The terms, conditions and rules for the event can be found on our website here

View the Event Disclaimer / Terms and Conditions.

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