Sunday 8th September sees the return of the Newnham 90, the 90k off road ride for riders who enjoy a challenge without a race.

The route is over 95% off road and provide an extremely varied challenge of moorland, quarry, rocky descents, singletrack, forest and elements of previous Newnham World Cup courses – but no pipeline. The first loop is 55k, at the end of which there’s a slap-up cream tea to restore energy levels before the 35k loop to finish, if you don’t get completely waylaid by the cream tea instead that is.

As usual there’s a Saturday night pasta party the evening before, with live music and entertainment and there’s camping with hot showers for all entrants. Shred magazine will be hosting some short track XC racing on Saturday evening with big cash prizes. Saturday will also include led rides onto Dartmoor, trade stands and paintball.

But the really good news is that following the success of last year’s scrap tandem performance, this year organisers have added the “Scrapheap challenge” to the event. What is it? They’ve challenged the random tandemers of last year to build a working tandem, from scrap in one day, and then to ride it for the full 90k on Sunday. What’s more, they’ve got to build it on site at Newnham on the Saturday of the event using parts donated by other riders attending the event.

If you’re thinking of entering then download the form from here. The closing date for entries is Monday 2nd September, and no entries will be admitted on the day, but ;ast year over a 100 riders were turned away so get your entry in a.s.a.p. There are no categories for the event and the only restriction is a minimum age of 16.

For more information on the Newnham 90, contact the Inevent office on 01752 218185, or for entry forms send an sae to Newnham 90, PO Box11, Plympton, Plymouth, PL7 5XU or email [email protected].