Hi
Yes - Austin, Lois & the Johnsons are planning it already, they said about moving 70KM from Llavorsi which was this year's base, and making it much more technical. recommending that entrants have proper off-road training, a shame in my view as I just love trying things out. They seem to want to discourage bigger trail bikes. Ah well.
Thanks to Mike Austin - who told me about more videos:- Scottish madmen - great footage:-
YouTube - Elounda Highsiders 2008 part 2
Cheers
Col

I would say this quote that they want to 'discourage bigger trail bikes' is totally untrue, as being organised by Austin /Lois and the founders of this website know that the vast majority of the sites riders use Big trail bikes, so why would they discourage them?
I ride the the Pyreknees-up event that is run prior to the following humm event, and whatever you ride you will certainly enjoy.
The only problem I can see about the humm is something I have noticed the last 2 years with the Pyreknees-up, an event that was for friends and aquaintances of Austins and to be 'non competitive' and even said that if you came to win- you were in the wrong event, as now become for some a major thing if they do not win or do very well, I still take the original laid back approach that we are among friends and do whatever to help each other out, and bol*x to racing around doing David Knight impersonations.

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'He who laughs last, was too slow to get the joke'
Never confuse the map with the journey.

If the off-road event becomes a bit tougher then maybe more people will try the on-road event. We had tremendous fun on the on-road event and I think I heard a few of the off-roaders say they'd like to try it next year.
We didn't ride to win, just to have a good time and a bit of fun. The roads around there are truly superb. The scenery, the road surfaces, the bends, the weather, the lack of other traffic. It's biker heaven!
The humm was a part of our Spain/Andorra/France tour but once we'd left the Pyrenees everywhere else was a bit of an anti-climax.

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If you think you are too small to make a difference you have never spent the night with a mosquito.

Here we go, Listen Dave, I was there and that was THE IMPRESSION THAT I GOT, so do not please be all high and mighty. I was with an excellent team mate - we had not met before and carried out the days in the totally in the spirit of the thing, we were not racing about but really enjoyed the riding and the social aspects of the job. We weren't there to win anything but my team mate - Mike Austin came up with nice routes that kept us off the road as much as possible. We were told clearly by Austin that he was worried that riders would go haring about and spoil the whole job by attracting adverse attention from locals/walkers/police etc..
As Harley rider says - it may be that more people go for the road event next year. Which was good anyway.
So, to complete - if you disgree with someones thoughts/impressions, then do you say "I disagree - for the following reasons" or do you jump in with "Untrue"?
Cheers
Col

It's DEFINITELY on for 09! The checkpoints are all set, the hotel is in progress, just final details to settle, and then we'll be announcing dates. New location is a little east of 08.

Glad you enjoyed it! Seems everyone was pretty happy, there were a load of big - but tired - smiles at the end!

"Too hard" - Some of the trails are more difficult than 08, but nothing impossible for average bike and rider. It's all designed to be rideable. You will have to work a little harder on some trails.

See you there next year!

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Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

Cheers Grant, for clarifying the situation for next year. And many thanks again for all the work you guys put into the event. My team mate and I should have asked at the end of the event just how badly we did. Will you put a list on the HUMM page or somewhere please. I am not too concerned, but friends and relatives ask me "where did you come?" all the time. Think they're obsessed like everyone in the UK with league tables and targets and medals and all that rubbish!
Kind regards
Col

The above link to videos were of our two teams (19 and 20). We all had a fair amount of offroad experience but thought the rubbly areas in the south east (checkpoints 42, 46, 21) deserved a bigger warning--if we had been relative novices we wouldn't have made it through. And I doubt that many people could have got big trailies through checkpoint 34 if approaching from the south as we did.

We really enjoyed the riding but the feedback to me from others in our teams was that they didn't feel part of a bigger event. There was no information either disseminated before the event, or posted up at the hotel, showing who the various teams were, or even how many teams there were.

It would have been great to have seen a list of the teams showing the names of the riders (and HUBB handles if appropriate) and the bikes they were riding. Plus an update at the end of day one showing the points gained by each team.

Tim

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Especially when they are beaten by a a couple of girls eh?! x

It's interesting to read the critisism/comments above... as Dave (and more importantly Austin) says, it's not meant to be a 'competition'??? so you don't really need league tables etc as that is only going to encourage competitiveness...

That said, I can see where Tim is coming from, it is nice to have the team names listed, and this year on the 'Kneesup, Austin used a system of a percentage score for each team (based on the leaders getting 100%) - so it was less about the actual numbers, and just how well you did relative to everyone else...

As for the route for 2009 - you guys are going to love it! Part of the reason some of the trails (and I emphasis only 'some') are harder is because the scenery is even more dramatic, and lets face it, if you want to get there, then you're going to have to ride whatever is in front of you?

That said, the point of this kind of event is to 'ride clever' - it really is about how well you can read your map, plan your route, and most importantly, which checkpoints to leave out as much as which to visit. There is no point spending two hours riding up the side of a cliff just to get one high value checkpoint, when you could spend that time visiting a number of lesser value (but no less beautiful) checkpoints? The reason Austin and Lois have spent so much time reccy'ing this area is because it is a beautiful place to ride - the checkpoints really are only punctuation, and an incentive to ride a particular route...

Enjoy!

xxx

Points noted Tim! "could do better..." and will!

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
------------------------
Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

From Austin:

"Some of next year's trails are a little more washed out and therefore technical but most are not. As per usual we have a comprehensive set of notes that warn of any particularrly nasty sections so there's no need for anyone to be caught out. Pls note and pass on that we absolutely do not include difficult trails on purpose. We include every single trail on the map that we found to be rideable. If faced with 'parallel' routes we always opt for the easy one however, if the only trail that connects two valleys together has a tricky bit in it and is rideable by the average rider then we keep it in and put something in the notes. It seems mad to cut out long trails just because 15% of the riders couldn't cope with it.
Finally, if people leave out the tricky stuff they'll still have a very busy two days - no way can you do all the checkpoints in two days - three days, maybe."

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
------------------------
Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

Just booked another week off in September to go back to the HUMM 08 area!

We missed so much of the South West corner of the check point map we reckon if we have another 4 days riding down there we will tick the rest of them off.....

The girlfriends 200cc AJP is great on the small trails but a tad slow for lots of road work but we still clocked up 900 cp's in a day by planning the route carefully.... that said, we thought buggerit on day two and went trail riding, collected just 400cp's and had a fab time.

Personally I thought the mix of trails were spot on, big GS's got big road miles under their belts to get to big scoring CP's.... off roaders knocked off all of the local stuff with ease.

I think its not so much a case of how many CP's you can do in 2 days.... more of a case of you need to get every cp ....eventually ....to be a 'finisher'..... I once rode over a 1000 miles in a day across 5 countries..... in which 3 of I never even stopped for pee.... let alone 'visit'.... 'have i been to Luxembourg ..... yes ..... whats it like... dunno, was only on the main road there for 20 minutes'

Anyway up...... does anyone have a web address for the Llavorsi camp site.... I cant afford the hotel this time...

Hi Harv,

Here's the link for Camping Riberies. You won't need reservations in September, though.

If you're down that way, you might also want to check out the HU Portugal meeting which is near the Spain/Portugal border. See the meeting page for details.

Cheers,
Susan

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Susan Johnson

Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

Linky

YouTube - HUMM 2008 Horizons Unlimited Team Fruit