All Points North 2022
At the time of writing the last few riders are expected back into Sheffield, completing this year’s epic All Points North event. Taking in ten checkpoints and covering at least 1000km around the North of England, they had the toughest challenge yet.
As part of our support for APN we hired local photographer Mark Harvey of iD8 Photography to capture as many of the riders as possible before the start and at their finish. There are stacks of great images available with our compliments.
Please tag Kinesis Bikes and All Points North in any social posts you make with these.
Riders can download and use their images for free by visiting the galleries here.
A selection of Pairs Riders before the start. (All Paired Riders)
Rookie riders were given an earlier start time to complete the challenge. It was great to see more rookies and a high number of women taking part this year. (All Rookie Riders)
The solo start list included new faces and rider returning from last year. It’s always interesting to see everyone’s bike set up and lovely fresh faces before the start. (All Solo Riders)
Behind the event are a group of dedicated volunteers, led by event creator Angela Walker. After the sign-on, rider briefing and nervous excitement before the start, the riders would be on their own in this self-supported event, but with live tracking of riders they were always under a watchful eye from the (Sheffield HQ).
We all love to look at kit. From the gallery link you can check out some of the details on the bikes ridden this year. Lovely to see a selection of Kinesis Tripster AT, RTD and GTD bikes being ridden too. (Details of Bikes)
We asked Mark to photograph riders straight after they finished. Call us sadistic but it’s interesting to see a before and after comparison and the exhaustion of over 60 hours or riding on a person’s face. (All Portraits)
Congratulations to our Ambassador Rupert Robinson who completed an incredible ride with a sprint to the line taking 4th place in Solo. Challenged by the weather and the last 60km with only one gear working on his bike, had to dig especially deep to finish.
We would like to put a big shout out to Angela Walker from A Different Gear bike store and cycling community hub in Sheffield. APN was her concept and in only its third edition become a great challenge event for any keen cyclist and an important steppingstone to longer ultra-distance events like Transcontinental. Even though they were exhausted at the finish, all riders had nothing but praise for Angela and her team for arranging such a special event.
(The Finishers)
Speaking to Angela Walker, she explained why the challenge was greater this year. “I wanted to make sure all riders completed the advertised distance of 1000km as previously some clever route planning allowed some riders to come in under that. So this year we made sure that to complete all ten Check Points, the riders would need to ride at least the full distance.”
There was also the good old British weather to contend with. A lot of riders chose a clockwise route to get the bigger hills of the Lake District out the way early. Angela noted that basking in Sheffield sunshine before the start some riders decided to reduce their luggage passing up their main wet weather gear. “As heavy rains fell on the first night and well into Friday”, said Angela, “this became tough for those not fully prepared and approximately 50% of the 81 starters scratched this year. The weather played its part in this for sure.”