28th May – 1st June 2024
Edinburgh to Manchester
500 kilometres in five days of off-road riding – a bucolic bikepacking voyage along the backbone of Britain.
This is a self-supported ride, with participants expected to arrange their own food and accommodation according to their pace and schedule.
Good options for accommodation are marked along the route, though wild camping is encouraged where legal.
This is a rally not a race. Riders are encouraged to enter with the spirit of adventure in mind, not a fast finishing time.
However, for riders who want a bit more of a challenge, there will be the Express option, setting off two days later than the rest of the field, aiming to get to Manchester in three days or fewer.
Sleep (and enjoyment of the ride) is encouraged wherever possible.
Riders can enter as either solo or as a pair to share the journey.
Regardless of your choice, expect to find camaraderie and support out on the trail, you're never really alone.
The Pennine Rally is committed to getting more people bikepacking and we encourage participants from around the world.
We proudly stand by an equal split of gender identities for the event and actively accept applications from underrepresented groups in cycling.
Every year, at least 50% of our riders are women, with spaces for nonbinary or trans riders allocated equally from our men's and women's allocations.
For your safety, all riders are GPS-tracked as part of entry, meaning friends, family and dot-watchers can follow your journey.
There are three controls along the route, providing the chance to top up on supplies, have a coffee and steel yourself for the next section.
Standard riders should expect contact with the rest of the rally once a day.
Express riders have one dedicated control, but should ride into contact by their second day
Self-supported events take a lot of planning and it's easy for the anxiety to build up around kit, route, fitness and bike choice. To help make things easier we'll be running Q&A sessions with Pennine Rally route builders, rally directors and riders to make sure you're ready to apply.
Join us in person or online at these events.
Beyond three checkpoints along the route, you will be on your own.
From when you leave Edinburgh, to your arrival in Manchester, you will be expected to provide for yourself. This includes arranging how and where you sleep, when and where you eat as well as getting yourself out of trouble should you fall into it.
There is no broom wagon to sweep you up should you fall badly off the pace or need to abandon. Luckily, the UK is densely populated, and you’re never too far away from a town for help or supplies, even if it might feel like it.
The ticket price for the Pennine Rally is £155 per rider, whether you ride solo or in a pair.
This covers the complicated logistics which allow the Rally to run.
Not Included
Yes, all riders will be expected to be covered by 3rd party liability and personal injury cover as a minimum. This is to make sure that, should anything untoward happen, you are covered whether it is a minor inconvenience or a major issue.
Being uninsured or underinsured will result in you being unable to start.
Where to sleep will be a big part of the adventure. There’s no correct way to do this, and you could rough it all week or travel from luxury BnB to fancy hotel. We all have different requirements.
When camping, follow the principles of the Scottish Outdoor Code.
It is invaluable guidance on wild camping and land access, so make sure you know your rights before finding a place to kip down. In England please remember wild camping is illegal unless you have a landowner’s permission, though there are plenty of places on the route you can legally bed down.
The YHA run several great facilities on the route and, whilst you’re in Scotland you may be able to take advantage of the sterling work of the Mountain Bothies Association.
Take care to plan your stops, and book ahead where necessary.
There's no 'perfect bike' for this kind of ride. Different bikes will excel on different sections, but this route is designed with gravel bikes in mind. Gravel is many things to many people, but in this case, we mean drop bar bikes with wide clearance and disc brakes. Here’s what we recommend to get the most out of it:
With this in mind, the main factor is comfort and familiarity. You should run whichever bike you feel most comfortable on for five days of hard riding; riders have completed the route on single-speeds, experimental hard-tails and Dawes tourers with cantilevers and panniers.
We start by enforcing a target of 50% female riders. When we have applications from non-binary riders or those who identify outside of the gender binary, we take places equally from our male and female allocation. For example, in 2022 we had 46 women, 46 men and 6 non-binary riders.
At the Pennine Rally, we're committed to increasing the diversity of participants in cycling events, so it represents the full breadth of riders. The UK's cycling event audience is overwhelmingly male, traditionally 86%, and with only 125 places available the event would rapidly fill up if tickets were open.
By taking applications, we give equity of opportunity to riders from under-represented groups by prioritising their applications and ensuring the field is at least 50% female. It also allows us to give places to riders who are first-timers at events such as these and may need a little more encouragement, prioritising the achievement of finishing the rally over a fast time.
We offer two options: Standard and Express.
Standard gives you five days to finish, and you are of course clear to ride quicker than this. Express gives you three.
500km is a long way by anyone’s standards, and to make it easier we have broken the route down into five days of travel. This is our recommended pace, weighted in such a way as to be challenging but enjoyable. Feel free to adapt this schedule to your own ability and whims but remember: It’s a rally, not a race. There’s no prize for the fastest time and your only real competitor is yourself.
You’ll notice there is no express route breakdown. If you’re planning on completing in three days and under, we suspect you’ll know your own body and pacing better than we do and this will form an extra challenge for you.
Strictly speaking yes, the current FKT is held by Liam Yates at 28H:26M.
However, it sounds like you're looking for a race. This is a Rally, not a Race, we'd recommend you enter the following races:
The Pennine Rally route is available on Fastest Known Times, and we'd love to see what numbers you can put up on the board, but perhaps not during the event itself.
