Happy Days..

Well I hope you are having a fine day where ever this newsletter finds you, its absolutely chucking it down here in the lakes.  So to news from Open Adventure - we conclude the 2007 Mountain Hardwear Open5 series and give you news on website goings on, as well as spilling the beans on plans for 2008.  Read on and check out the website, we think its worth a look.

What an amazing location Coniston proved to be for the last Open5 of the year - one competitor commented after the race, this is why I bought a mountain bike!  As the clouds cleared competitors could not be but impressed with the views down the lake or for that matter the cheeky controls under bridges and in quarries.  You can check out Anna Gracies report on Sleepmonsters here.  Andy and Hazel Yuill were snapping away and you can find their photos on Sleepmonsters
http://www.openadventure.com/open5



The coniston event concluded the Open5 series, with some frantic calculations going on in the background placings in the top10 almost across the board were tight with less than 1pt splitting many categories.  We would like to convey our thanks to the sponsors and in particular to the competitors who have travelled the width and length of the country.  Well done to all.

Well if you have not noticed, we have given the Open Adventure website a coat of paint and moved much of the furniture around.  Knowing that we have some great pictures from our events, we thought we needed to do a better job of showing competitors - have a browse around, enjoy the volunteers gallery and check out the event pages for 2008.

On that note I'd like to say a big thankyou to James Kirby and Gavin Cummings of SCK Web Works who have spent an inordinate amount of time working on this.  If you need a website, from design to pulling together a complicated database driven solution, I can't recommend these guys highly enough.

In more ways than one, with a new Open5 series starting in November 2008, we needed to feed the thirst of Adventure Racers this spring so we have 3 events running across the top of the country - starting with Dalby Forest on the 27th January.  

We have put together a special offer with Mountain Hardwear offering their "Wicked Tee's" for £10 if you enter all three of the Open5's this spring.  With mens and female versions on offer for this performance top, we think it will be a welcome addition to any racers kit box.

Check out the new event pages online with ideas on how to make a weekend of it, either with your mates or with the family.

Details of the endurance series can also be found online, with entries now being taken for the Open12 in the Peaks and the Open24 in Wales.  The Open24 has a little twist in that for the first time we are allowing competitors to use their own boats. 
http://www.openadventure.com

Its a little note, but just to say we are unfortunately having to put our prices up - landowners are increasingly seeing us as a revenue stream and although we have cunning negotiating skills the prices are creeping up.  Likewise the VAT man is about to bite our ankles, hence we have put the prices up by 15% across all of the events.  We hope you still think that we offer value for money.

No worries
James Thurlow

PS congratulations to John Allen who suggested "Putting the Adventure into Racing!" for our new strap line.  A new bombproof Mountain Hardwear duffle bag is on the way.