TweedLove to mark 10 years with Peebles spectacular

Born out of a ‘kitchen table chat’ back in 2009 and a love of mountain biking in the Tweed Valley,2010 saw the first TweedLove Bike Festival.

Ten years on, it has grown from the first small, ‘free for pals’ event to one of the biggest bike festivals in the UK, listed by Red Bull as one of the top 10 worldwide.

Each year, TweedLove now stages around 30 events and, since it began, has attracted around 200,000 riders and spectators to the Tweed Valley for events – a figure the local organiser,Hillside Outside, hopes to add to substantially in 2020.

The 2020 festival programme will look back at the last decade and look forward to the next one.

Classic events will remain, favourite ones will return and electric bikes will take centre stage, with a new element of the festival, ‘Electric TweedLove.’

“TweedLove has played a major role over the last 10 years in underlining the area’s reputation as a world-class place to ride bikes,” said festival founder Neil Dalgleish. “So positioning the Tweed Valley as a switched-on-e-bike venue puts

the area at the front of the e-bike revolution in the UK – exactly as it should be,”

Over the festival weekend, TweedLove will be hosting the UK’s biggest e-bike demo and staging a major European eMTB Challenge, as well as introducing e-bike categories into its introductory enduro ‘Enjoyro’.

There will also be e-bike skills sessions and an e-bike test track into the programme.

“The really exciting thing about all this is pretty simple, though – it’s about getting more people on

bikes and letting more people enjoy the hills and trails who maybe thought they weren’t able to,” added Neil.

“It’s a win-win situation for cycling. We can play our part in bringing new participants into the sport – a

huge variety of people with different levels of fitness and abilities can now have access to these experiences.

“We hosted the first major international e-bike event this year and we are proud to be the first UK bike festival to put e-bikes front and centre of our festival event programme, side by side with non-assisted bikes. What better way to celebrate our 10th birthday?”

Electric TweedLove isn’t the only new element, however. The headline enduro ‘Tenduro’ will pull together five of the best stages from across the last 10 years, a true celebration of TweedLove enduro history.

With some of the biggest names in enduro, and downhill, set to take to the trails the second event in the TweedLove Triple Crown Series, a must on the enduro calendar.

The festival weekend will also feature Gritopia (TweedLove’s gravel bike adventure), Enjoyro, LoveClub (social and ‘off-the-bike’ programme of events), an expo village, skills sessions, an outdoor cinema, ride outs, local food and drink companies, bike guides, clothing manufacturers and more.

The full line-up for the 2020 weekend can be found at tweedlove.com with certain event entries on sale now.