Lisbon Faro
Day 0
Once again the extended team of middle aged male cyclists is doing an adventure ride.
The group has contracted and expanded over the years but generally is between 15 and 20. We've cycled from Paris to Geneva, Brussels to Paris and many other routes but we're currently at the end of a three year challenge to cycle down Portugal. We spent 2019 in the Duro valley and the surrounding hills, and then, when COVID abated, last year we cycled up the coast north of Lisbon.
This year is the final leg from Lisbon to Faro. We can then say we have "done" Portugal and it looks like it will be a great ride when it starts tomorrow.
However, Day 0 is the day when everybody tries to get their bikes to Stansted airport, get through security, get on a flight, retrieve their bike in Lisbon and then get themselves, their luggage and their bike to our starting point in Setúbal.
Despite JJ's exceptionally comprehensive planning and his extremely detailed instructions, there are a surprising number of opportunities for chaos and confusion. As is well known, when groups of middle aged men congregate in one place, the probability of some error goes up very fast and those errors tend to compound and cascade. As I sit here in Leon in Stansted airport, we have had one set of pedals which didn't come off or maybe Greg just didn't have the right tools. Two groups of cyclist on the train in different places and a swarm of WhatsApp messages.
Moody shot of a bike bag being left on the tarmac.
Of course, the minor level of chaos couldn't be maintained. One person arrived too late and therefore couldn't get checked in, it became clear that some important things had been forgotten, getting on the plane was a nightmare.
The RyanAir kettling procedure. Let's hope nobody sets fire to themselves.
Luckily for all concerned the flight was on time and landed on time. Because RyanAir is so cheap, we had to get a bus which appeared to take the long route from the stand to the terminal via Africa.
It all started to kick off at the luggage carousels.
Yes, this was fun.
A bunch of blokes hanging around a "wide load" carousel while chatting and on their phones is never going to work out well and as we walked out of the arrivals hall, at least 25% of our party was either late or lost. The traditional "cat herding" was about to start. John Lane headed off to find the taxi driver. I headed off to find the taxi driver. Other people headed off to find me. I took moody Rouleur style photos of peoples ears and shoes. It was a laugh a minute.
The ear of a champion
I call this shot.."foot".
William and Greg waffling in front of a waffle shop.
Eventually we got in the taxis and our taxi driver showed us the driving technique known as "binary driving". You either have your foot full on the accelerator or full on the brake. It was a hairy old trip.
Greg entering a zen like state as he contemplates imminent multi-car pile-up death.
We crossed the Tagus on a giant impressive bridge. If it wasn't 11:30pm, I would write a bit of stuff about the bridge, what an amazing infrastructure project is is, how old it is...but...it's 11:30pm. Look it up yourself.
Setúbal itself is a kinda nice town with some ok hotels and nice restaurants. We met Karim and Sally at the hotel and then proceeded to take about twice as long as we should to make up our bikes, pack away the bike bags and bikes and get to the restaurant where we were having dinner. There are, naturally, a couple of massive mechanicals waiting to happen tomorrow but...hey ho...that's part of the fun. Who wouldn't laugh like a drain when somebody's bike collapses under them 10km into the ride?
Meal tonight was a kinda tapasy thing. Food good, too much wine drunk.
Nicely oversaturated shot of the "team dinner".
Very much the Rouleur shot of the pre-race team dinner.
And with that, Day 0 is over.
I, for one, had forgotten how incredibly difficult it is to get 16 blokes to the right place at the right time. You would think that some order would naturally emerge from a group but, in fact, it just gets more and more chaotic as you add more people.
That being said, it was lovely to meet everybody again, share stories, find out what they're doing, shoot the shit about...stuff.
It's hard to write a cycling blog about a day where you don't cycle. So this one was really a simple travelogue about a day travelling -- albeit livened up with arty photos of ears. Tomorrow, we ride at 8:30...or is it 8:45...or maybe 9:00. Who knows? We'll work it out and tomorrow should be a nice day. Longish but not too much climbing.
And a lot of time to prepare stories for tomorrow's blog...
Day 1
Stats at the end but this was a lovely but hot day.
We had decided to start the day with a time trial prologue. This is a tradition in the grand tours and sorts out the strong riders from the weaker ones who are going to grovel for the rest of the tour.
A beautiful section of the time trial route
It was a 15km route out along the coast and back involving some pretty punchy climbs. This was going to be painful. The "race of truth" (as time trials are known) involves sticking to your FTP for 40 minutes, not going into the red zone but burying yourself at the end to gain ultimate glory. The results of the time trial are below.
- Khalil. 40:22
- McNeil J: DNF
- McNeil P: DNF
- Tamberlin: DNF
- Kirk: DNF
- Quantrill: DNF
- Glass: DNF
- Tyndal: DNF
- Boyce Cam: DNF
- Howe: DNF
- Fennel: DNF
- Veenman: DNF
- Smith: DNF
- Flynn: DNF
- Guthrie: DNF
- Lane: DNF
To be completely clear, in this case, DNF means "did not actually get out of bed and start the race" but DNAGOOBASTR isn't a great initialism. First blood to Karim I think.
Surprisingly there wasn't a huge amount of faffing in the morning. We loaded the van and took the usual photographs.
There was time for our leader to give us important instructions.
Strong Nurenberg energy going on here.
And, of course, the group photo.
The team photo of Jumbo-Visma doesn't look like this.
And then we were off...about 2km to the ferry terminal.
There was considerable confusion because there were about 400 Portuguese teenagers also joining the ferry but despite that, tickets were bought and we crossed the estuary in some style.
Some confused but happy people.
Bikes, cars, people in blue jerseys.
A small subset of the 400 teenagers. We just blended right in.
And then it was over.
We...well, *I*...made a bit of an error on the first 20k because we...sorry *I*...went off a bit too fast. I was obviously smarting a bit from my DNAGOOBASTR in the time trial and wanted to put down a marker for future performance. A ghostly Irish Sean Kelly voice droned in my ear "Well, he's really givin it one hundert percent out of the gate and it's blowin the peloton apart. They will be majorly suffering at the back of the peloton but I tink it's going to be a real difficult one for him to keep this oop when he hits the hills. It all depends if he's got the legs but it's givin a bit of exposure to his sponsor. Team ShitShirt is going to be pleased with the screen time. That's always a good ting in these early stages of the race. Back when I was racin Carlton, we'd pop a few amphetamines at the start line and then ride until our eyeballs bled".
My eyeballs were bleeding.
Eventually sanity was restored and we rolled through some really nice littoral scenery. Sandy soils, fragrant pines and a nice following wind.
The peloton sweeps round the corner
Important emails while waiting for coffee.
The peloton
I should point out the in the lefthand side of this picture, Tim is fixing his bike. Tim had forgotten to pack (or lost) the top cap of his stem. Whilst it's possible to ride without it, it does increase the probability of expensive and extensive dental reconstruction surgery a lot so Tim had spent the morning with Mick buying a top cap at a Setúbal bike shop. Tim is fitting it.
One thing that isn't very clear from these pictures is that the "blue" tops we are wearing are effectively sweat soaked flannels which get progressively heavier and heavier as the day goes on. I understand that this is also an issue for the Aston Villa womens' football team. Unfortunately, there's no exit clause in our "ShitShirts" contract. There was some loose talk about wearing our tops two days in a row but I think that is banned by various international biological weapons conventions.
I'm not entirely sure what happened between coffee and lunch. I set off pretty sharpish from coffee and ground out most of that part of the route on my own.
It probably looked a bit like this. I dunno though.
Lunch was a rolling affair with people arriving in dribs and drabs. An enormous amount of Coke Zero and Callipos were consumed from this Pasteleria.
Although the drinks and food were good, it smelled of feet and body odour.
From here to the end, the groups split and fractured. A group consisting of me, JJ, Tim, Christopher, Adrian, Layton and Karim left pretty early and started to grind out the long hot 40 kilometers to the end.
Tim got hot, Adrian got hotter. We stopped quite a lot to cool off in some shade.
Adrian looking surprisingly perky as he nearly passes out.
Adrian and Tim looking a lot less perky.
The final 40km were enlivened by us attempting to stay ahead of "Fat Electric Gandalf". FEG had (surprise!) an electric bike and (also surprise!) looked like a short fat version of Gandalf. We would sweep past him and then stop to cool down and he would come past us. This caused some consternation for some people in our small group...I'm looking here at you JJ.
The whole "can we beat FEG?" thing was getting pretty tetchy and difficult. I did manage to sneak a picture of Fat Electric Gandalf when he came into the cafe that we were using for emergency rehydration.
Oh the humiliation. He had caught us again.
Karim did an absolutely stand up job of leading from the front and guiding us into the outskirts of Vila Nova de Milfontes where we are staying tonight.
Of course, it wasn't going to be completely plain sailing even this close to the finish line...
This is what it looks like when you lose the van
The group behind split and was short of water and therefore water had to be left at drops beside the road.
A cheeky little composition entitled "Water and foot in bus shelter"
Every one transmitting pain and suffering into your body.
Eventually we rolled through a beautiful (but cobbled) seaside town and we rolled up to a beautiful beach side hotel which...critically...had a bar which served liquids...I guess like most bars maybe??
A welcome sight
We all shared one beer. We are high performance athletes.
Dinner was at the Milafontes Beach Hotel which has a gargantuan buffet which was custom-designed to satiate the appetite of a bunch of blokes who had ridden a long way in sweat-soaked flannel tops. The fact that the buffet also included unlimited wine added to its aforementioned attractions.
Free food. Woo hoo!
Unfortunately, there wasn't room in the main dining room for us. I suspect the waiters worked out that a bunch of pissed up middle aged blokes wasn't going to make the dining experience of their other customers terribly nice. However, somebody in the group managed to use their legendary charm and organisational skills to arrange a private room where we could eat together and be loud and cycle-blokey without inducing withering looks from the couples out for a romantic buffet...with free unlimited wine(*)!
The free wine came in a barrel. It wasn't good.
(*) A quick footnote here. After we had pillaged the free wine like a horde of Vikings, it was pointed out that there was a small (and easily overlooked) sign which said that the buffet included one glass of white wine and one glass of red wine. That would have worked out as 34 glasses of wine for our party. I'm pretty sure a couple of people drank 34 glasses themselves...
We had the usual discussion of tomorrow's route, the timings for tomorrow and everybody drunkenly agreed to meet...err...somewhere...at...err...some time. What could possibly go wrong.
The team, diligently discussing tomorrow's route while drinking cheap wine.
So today was a pretty good day. I blotted my copybook by putting the hammer down in the first 20km (and I'm not going to be allowed to forget it). From morning coffee until the end it was relentlessly hot but the countryside is really pretty and the gradients today weren't too bad.
Tomorrow is the hardest day. 120km and a lot of climbing mostly in the afternoon when the heat has built up. It's going to be hard for everybody.
Stats:
- Distance: 109km
- Climbing: 713m
- Average Speed: 23.4km/h
Not a massive day but challenging.
Day 2
It was the trifecta of pain today. A lot of tired and broken people at the end. I am one of those broken people so the blog may be a little more perfunctory today and I may rely a bit more on photographs rather than witty and engaging writing. Nobody can do witty and engaging text after a day like today.
The day dawned bright and cool. We all met for breakfast at the main hotel and got the bikes ready. As usual, there was a lot of pumping tyres and a lot of odd stretching going on.
Greg bowing to the sun...or something.
Tony obsessively pumping up his tires to 110psi.
Christopher looking cool and calm. This would not last.
Ashley doing his Michael Flatley impression.
Godric and Paul looking both purposeful and oversaturated.
Part of the cork forest
It got a bit hotter and, as we wound through the cork forests, the weather was promising to give us a hard time later on. It delivered on the promise.
As soon as we had crossed the river at Odemira, the bailiffs came round to demand payment of those cheques. There was a sustained hill of 13% out of Odemira and after that, although it was a bit flatter, it just got more windy and hot.
A lot of the road looked like this
There was a lovely swooping descent into Odemira but, due to Odemira not being the highest point on the route today, we were clearly writing climbing cheques which were going to have to be paid later on. Thanks topography!
The bridge at Odemira
The climbs started to come a bit more regularly and we hadn't even hit the main climb of the day. I stopped at the side of the road for a drink and a rest on one of the climbs.
Look carefully at the picture.
This is the important thing I missed.
Yes, stretching your back out over an Armco barrier when there's an electrified cattle fence on the other side is not a terribly good idea. I got a lovely shock across my chest. Sadly getting an ersatz defibrillation didn't make the climbing any easier.
We also from this point until the end, there were an increasing number of these signs.
Translating the Portuguese: "This road is in a terrible state and
as a cyclist, you will spend all your time avoiding potholes and cracks
in the road. You may die.".
It was a long, hot and windy ride to the coffee stop. The wind had really kicked up and was a horrible head wind. The temperature was kicking up towards 34-35º and, at that temperature, the wind doesn't cool you. It just heats you up more. There were a lot of rude words hurled into the teeth of the hot gale.
Nobody looking terribly happy at coffee
Me looking a bit pissed off at coffee.
Note two double espressos. Caffeine is a performance enhancing drug.
But Guy looked happy despite being about to pass out.
The elite group was up the road and the climb started here so we got on it and started the main 15km climb.
It was brutal. Sensible gradients but unbearably hot. We knew that we had about 20km to Montchique but it was going to be hard. The team was fractured all over the road. Ghostly Sean Kelly droned on again "Well Carleton, I think we're seeing a majorly difficult part of the climb and it's going to be a difficult one to get the group together before the big descent. I tink we're seeing who has the legs right now. When I was racing we used to snort horse tranquilliser off the buttocks of the masseuse and then ride until our heads exploded but youse would know where youse stood in the boonch.". Our heads were exploding.
Greg, William and I rode together for a while and serendipitously discovered a roadside fountain.
It is hard to explain just how good it felt putting your head in the fountain.
It was like this
The climb continued. The cooling effect of dunking your head repeatedly in a fountain wore off pretty quickly and there was nothing to do but try and survive.
The view from the "top".
At some point Tony met some people from Huddersfield whom he could do "northern bonding" with.
"We're from Huddersfield! No way! We aren't!"
The elite group had been at Velochique in Monchique for about an hour. As we arrived, they were definitely into their second beer and the food was great. If you're ever in Monchique, we can thoroughly recommend it.
Not far to go now.
There was a bloke in the cafe who looked exactly like Gandalf including a properly Lord Of The Rings Wizard Hat. I took a photo of him but my media consultant (Godric) explained that it would contravene a number of GDPR regulations were I to post it. Just sort of imagine somebody that looked a lot like Gandalf. He looked like that.
It was only 30km to Silves where we are staying tonight and it looked like a lot of it would be downhill.
In a long day punctuated by moments of misery, the last 30km were maybe the worst bit. The road down from Monchique is busy and fast. Some (but not all) Portuguese drivers delight in zooming past cyclists at 100kmh inches from your bike. Some of them even give you a cheery and bowel loosening parp on the horn as they skim your elbow with their wing mirror. All the while, a hot and gusty wind was blowing in our faces and the "piso em mau estado".
The road into Silves without 100kmh racers on it. This
was a rare sight.
Going over one large pothole Ashley created "waterbottlegate" when his bidon popped out of the cage, over a wall and down a hill.
Waterbottlegate. Or maybe derailleurgate.
The bridges of Silves couldn't come fast enough.
But it ended like this
As is the tradition in southern Portugal, the day dawned bright and clear. It looked like it was going to be another hot day. Everybody seemed very cheery in the morning despite being kept awake during the night with the local club pumping out incredibly loud techno until 1:30am. That was followed by a bunch of German Harley riders arriving in the hotel car-park at 3am and...insult/injury etc...the local dogs going absolutely mad for an hour starting at 6am. I'm not sure the Hotel Colina dos Mouros is going to be getting good reviews on Trip Advisor.
Despite being rolling and beautiful, the road was trending upwards. Not very steep but enough to sap the minimal amount of srength and stamina that we had retained after two hard days.
The cohesion of the peloton fell apart very quickly. Some headed down one way streets, some just stopped at the nearest (and incorrect) cafe. I foolishly headed up into the town which was quaint and beautiful.
A number of us did finally make it to the "correct" cafe to find Mick.
The van arrived, we rehydrated and continued up the hill. An eldritch Sean Kelly sat on my shoulder and intoned "Well Carleton, I tink dis group is totally cooked. It's going to be majorly difficult for them. Dey have been on the rivet for hours and in dis heat they're going to be majorly suffering. Back in my day we would do 250k stages with 10,000m of climbing in Morocco and think nutting of it. The human growth hormone helped a lot tho"
I think this might be a Roman bridge. I am honestly too tired to even
look it up on Wikipedia.
However, we made it to the hotel and the traditional one beer was shared by all of us.
"Just the one beer gents?"
Tonight we have a restaurant booked. I had suspected that it was going to be a subdued evening...but, much to my surprise it turned out that everybody was feeling pretty up for a big evening.
Walking to the restaurant
We booked a restaurant called Compromiso which was excellent. Any establishment which can deal with this group of 17 blokes with the sort of grace and charm that the owners of Compromiso managed deserves some recognition. The food and wine was exactly right.
Everyone looking happy after a hard day. Which is all you really want.
As I walked back from the restaurant through the beautiful town of Silves (trying to ignore the thumping techno which has been reverberating through the town from the moment we arrived)...I thought about how lucky we all are to be able to do this.
Silves looking wonderful. Shame about the non-stop techno music.
A group of 17 middle aged blokes with reasonably disparate backgrounds get together once a year and test themselves against a fairly tough challenge. We suffer but we also laugh and enjoy each others' company. There is "banter" but there's also real care about the well-being of other people.
It's important to recognise that this sort of trip doesn't come together without a mind-bending amount of pre-planning and organisation. JJ takes on this burden and, every year, produces a trip that we are all proud to be a part of. Long may the tradition continue.
The stats for today are
- Distance: 120km
- Ascent: 1385m
- Average Speed: 18.5kmh.
Note that average speed is my average speed. The elite group will have done considerably better than this.
Reading back through this blog post, it comes across as a brutal and miserable day. It was...but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a great day for me and for others. Part of the joy of these trips is pushing oneself into the misery zone but doing it with people who make you laugh and make you glad you're here.
Tomorrow there's two routes. Day 3 Short and Day 3 Long. Almost everybody will be doing the shorter route because I there are a lot of tired legs in the group. The last day is traditionally a bitter-sweet moment. It's nice to finish but it's not nice that it's over.
Day 3
There were some moments of this today
Broken on the hill
The end
We had one drop out this morning because Paul's bike was completely broken. Even given the high concentration of bike maintenance skills in the group, there was nothing we could do. Paul, sadly, had to pack his bike and head to the airport. See you next time Paul.
Greg looking as cheery as ever
A happy Karim. Maybe he knew it would be over soon.
Big shout out to Mick who drove the van and managed the logistics.
Layton looking appropriately concerned about the forthcoming climbing.
My bike had been knocked over while I was in breakfast (with absolutely no evidence, I blame the German Harley riders). The derailleur had taken a knock and that would come back to haunt me later.
We "clicked and rolled" for the last time at 8:45 and spun along in the cool morning air. Very soon we turned off onto the small winding farm roads in the hills above the Algarve Coast. It was beautiful. The peloton remained pretty cohesive and the banter flowed freely.
There were a few short sharp climbs including a short 10% drag up onto a dam. Time for a Rouleur style shot of two lonely cyclists sweeping down a hill.
It was like this for at least 30km
The first coffee stop was early. After crossing a railway line -- always strangely scary even though trains are a lot easier to predict than cars -- we hit Messines which was the designated stop.
Look out! Trains!!
Quaint, beautiful, absolutely bloody massive cobbles.
Even quainter but with even more massive bloody cobbles and some bloody potholes too.
"Any of you gentlemen fancy a tart?"
Mick distributed some of his stash of cakes, tarts, pastries and crisps. Despite it only being an hour or so after everybody had had a 2,000 calorie breakfast, there was an almost obsessive desire to eat more calories. Because "you deserve it".
After what seemed like a long time, Adrian, Guy and Layton caught me up and we cycled together for a while. We ran out of water and stopped in a truly terrible cafe.
The hill continued. Layton ran out of water, we lost the van, we got sweaty, we stopped.
Bike park.
The day started to go downhill (but only metaphorically) from here. The hot and fetid headwind which we had endured yesterday as we cycled south had helpfully swung round to the east so we experienced the joy for a second day.
I spent the first hour on my own wondering when everybody would catch me up. I hadn't counted on Greg having a third tart at the coffee stop.
The first to speed by me were Karim and Ashley who were on a mission. Karim is by far the strongest rider in the group and really wanted to do an extra loop of about 20km at the top of the main climb. To be able to do that he and Ashley needed to put the hammer down and so they did. Ashley didn't look entirely comfortable hanging on the back but it was a brave effort.
Brave and unbowed.
The air got hotter. The road continued to just trend upwards at 1% or 2%. It was dispiriting and grim. A small mechanical issue with my front wheel was a flavour of what was to come.
When I was a boy I used to drink cider in bus shelters. Now I fix bikes.
All we needed was a seat and two cokes each.
Right after this, we came round a bend and straight into a short sharp climb. 12% average, pitches of 14%...brutal. I slammed my gear into the lowest gear and the chain promptly dropped between the cassette and the spokes. Guy stopped with me and I got very very oily fixing the chain. Guy headed off and I remounted and immediately did the same thing. The beautiful hills of the Algarve echoed with some very very very rude words. The bike was in a bit of a bad way. I could get the lowest gear (essential at 14%) but many of the other ones didn't work. I was also filthy.
The nearest soap and water is 50km away
In retrospect, I am very surprised how happy everybody looks in this picture.
The climb was intended to end at Barranco do Velho. Karim and Ashley were already there but there was an option to forget the final climb and just go straight to the alternate lunch and coffee stop at Loulé. The group reformed in dribs and drabs and short discussion ensued about whether or not we would continue up the climb or just sack it off and head to Loulé. Looking at the photographs below, I suspect nobody is in any doubt as to what the decision was.
Tim broken
"I am *not* going up any more hills"
"More hills? You're having a laugh..."
Despite hoping that the route to Loulé was a nice downhill 15km, there were a couple of little bonus climbs thrown in to completely destroy what was left of our will to live. Even the stunning scenery and the perfect road surface wasn't enough to offset how empty everybody was.
We had intended to have a spot of lunch in Loulé because it had only been a couple of hours since cakes and pastries and we must have used...oh...at least 1,000 of the 3,000 calories we had eaten since waking up.
The kitchen was closed and, apart from a couple of dodgy looking kebab shops, pretty much everywhere to eat was closed. We found a bar which served beer and shandy (very slowly) and played the most awful music at high volume. Even a judicious application of JJ's "angry eyes" didn't seem to influence the bar owner to reduce the volume. 🎵Una paloma blanca🎵. Great.
A subdued and tired peloton in Loulé.
My brain was about to melt due to the non-stop river of middle-of-the-road europop... It was only 10km down to Karim's house and the choice was between leaving early or ending up in a Loulé police station having assaulted a bar owner.
The road down from Loulé was busy, fast and may serve a dual purpose as a ersatz race track for motorcyclists and young men in pimped up cars. I only had two buttock-clenching, rear-wheel-skid, emergency stops as cars driven by idiots pulled out of side junctions without looking. I consider myself lucky it was so few.
Then it was over. We cruised into Quinta do Lago, carving round the roundabouts and swooping down the wide and shaded boulevards. Trish and Sally were there to meet us and fill us full of beer, coke and white wine.
The perfect hosts.
Greg explaining his nutrition strategy. "Yeah, I just eat all the time".
Adrian contemplating packing his bike...
We got the team together for the final time and Godric gave out the awards. Unfortunately I don't have the complete list but everybody got a shout out and a round of applause.
"And the award for best awards goes to...me!".
JJ spoke about how lucky we all are to be able to do this year after year. It's a physical challenge and a mental challenge but, while we are not unique in doing this, the fact that we can do this year after year for nearly 14 years is quite unusual. It is something we should celebrate.
All done
That's it until next year.
On a personal note, I want to thank everybody for being such great company over the past four days. A big thanks to JJ. Rarely in my life am I confident enough in somebody else's planning skills to completely abrogate all responsibility for organisation. It's quite liberating to know that somebody else has sorted everything out. Also, many thanks to Mick for being unfailingly cheerful and helpful. Without Mick driving the van we would all have to carry our own stuff and, from personal experience, I can confirm that it would be a miserable experience.
Finally, thank you to the entire group who have allowed me to stick my camera in their face when they're feeling crap and allowed me to take black and white photos which emphasise wrinkles and don't do middle aged men any favours...sorry. I've also been allowed fairly free hand in reporting the trip without fear or favour. It has been fun doing this with such a great group of people.
We have laughed and suffered together...and we will do it again.
Postscript: Those awards in full.
- Marginal Gain Award (for tech innovation) - Christopher
- Marginal Pain Award (for tech incompetence) - Tim (*Paul self disqualified as DNF)
- Power to Weight Coefficient Award (joint) - Adrian and Ash
- Comedy Cramp Award - Dik
- Best Dressed Rider - Tony
- Most Cheerful Rider - Guy
- Best Newcomer - Kharim
- Modern Day Samuel Pepys Award - Ewan
- Gentleman Amateur Rider Award - William
- Back to the Future Award - Lane
- Best Comeback Award - Layton
- ‘Day Captain 2030’ Development Programme Apprenticeship Award - Greg
- The ‘We couldn’t do it without you’ award (joint) - JJ and Mick
- Best Awards Speech - Godric.
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