Calendar purists will point out that, strictly speaking, the SPAMBiking Winter Challenge was the last hurrah of 2007 rather than the opening salvo of 2008. But no-one really sees it that way – the long-running Salisbury Plain enduro is, for many, where the new riding year begins.

The event has been through quite a few changes since long-time organiser Stuart Sidebottom passed the promotional baton to local MTB club SPAMBiking. Last year saw the traditional single 50km loop dropped in favour of two laps of a 25km course, a move that certainly made life much easier for the organisers but didn’t seem to find favour with the riders. This time around, the single-loop format was back, with the shorter 25km and 35km options simply missing off various out-and-backs that the 50km riders took. Making a welcome return was the slightly surreal section through Imber, a deserted village used by the Army for training and therefore full of window- and doorless houses.

The big, and slightly controversial, change was the amount of Tarmac and hard-surfaced tracks in the course. This was, again, in response to last year, when extremely soft and slippery ground conditions made the going very tricky. Time was when you could pretty much rely on a stout frost at the Winter Challenge to make everything firm and fast, but that hasn’t happened for a little while now. We heard a bit of grumbling about the quantity of Tarmac, but we can certainly understand where the organisers are coming from – the fast boys (and girls) may find it a bit easy, but there are loads of people for whom 50km is a real challenge regardless of surface.

It’s a non-competitive event, but for the record the fastest rider around the 50km loop (and the only one with a sub-two hour time) was Scott Forbes. Just to reinforce the point about how it’s a challenge for the majority, though, roughly half the field took over three hours and the last riders home took over four and a half. We’re always impressed by the late finishers in long events – it takes a lot of determination to keep plugging away in the full knowledge that you’re near the back.

With a total turnout of 747 riders across all the distances, the entry was substantially down on last year. We suspect that that’s largely a result of the manky conditions last year. We reckon that the SPAMBiking crew have probably conquered the steep bit of the Winter Challenge learning curve now, though, and we’re looking forward to next year.

Rider times are at www.timelaps.co.uk and there are roughly a bazillion photos at www.photo-it.com (including this impressive sturdy of a gurning BM editor – lovely!).