The end of the road for TweedLove

The end of the road for TweedLove: A statement from founder Neil Dalgleish

TweedLove began as an idea round a kitchen table and grew to become Scotland’s only full-time bike event business. Over 14 years, we hosted literally hundreds of bike events, mostly for MTBs but also road, gravel, kids and more. At a conservative estimate, over 70,000 participants have signed up, got on their bikes and taken part in TweedLove events – that doesn’t include all the free events, guided rides or all the people who came to spectate, support or just hang out at the festival.

We created Scotland’s first-ever home-grown bike festival, produced the country’s biggest enduro race series and ran the UK’s biggest kids’ cycling events. Alongside creating several full and part-time jobs, we also invented the Valley Crew – an awesome army of event volunteers with over 700 individuals registered.

This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve had to write during the whole 15 year TweedLove journey, and it’s with a heavy heart I have to announce that there will be no TweedLove events in 2025 or beyond. After several difficult years keeping everything afloat, these final races over the next couple of months will be our last.

There’s a fuller explanation below, but, like so many bike event organisers, we face an unwelcome reality. Though TweedLove’s entry numbers have largely bucked the trend of dwindling participation, it doesn’t balance the negative elements. Costs have risen 30% since Covid, bike industry sponsorship is a fraction of what it used to be, and public sector support for events like ours is generally sporadic and minimal – despite the number of visitors we attract to this part of Scotland. The bottom line is we can’t afford the salaries to attract or retain all the staff we need to do what we do.

I’ll have a lifetime of pride in what we achieved, both as a micro business punching way above our weight, and as a catalyst for the positive changes we’ve seen in the Tweed Valley. But it’s time for change. Having spent 15 years literally subsidising the whole operation, I just can’t see how I can (or maybe more accurately how I can afford to) take TweedLove forward. Those 15 years were also crucial years of being a Dad, and I can’t deny a nagging feeling of guilty absenteeism.

TweedLove has been an amazing experience. It’s been a privilege to create and steer it along what was never a dull or easy trail. The events brought some totally inspirational people together to achieve something that, as far as I know, is still unique in the bike/event/tourism world.

This is a special place and all those people have made it even better – name another community where, for example, a few hundred people regularly give up their time to help run events for visitors to have a good time on their bikes. Or where so many locals are now confident with the basic protocols of safety for a mass participation sports event. Those are unique things which reflect, as a visiting international journalist once said, ‘what can be achieved when a community pulls together to deliver something amazing.’

I’d like to pay tribute, and say a massive thanks, to all the people who helped make TweedLove such a unique and positive creation, and of course to all the riders who took part and made all the races such a blast – we’ll definitely miss you. Big thanks too to all the bike brands, agencies and businesses far and wide who have sponsored or supported us over the last decade and a half of riding bikes and good times.

It has, as they say, been emotional – in a very good way.

PS If anyone has any realistic proposals for how TweedLove can return, we’re all ears. 

An outline of the main contributing factors

by TweedLove founder Neil Dalgleish

TweedLove has been regarded as a success by just about everyone, so why’s it coming to an end now? The current economic climate and rising costs are the biggest, but not the only, cause. Here’s an outline of the main contributing factors.

Enduro and the sport overall

Some things have changed which have made the race scene less robust. Ten years ago enduro was awesome – it was ‘the people’s’ racing; what we all did on our rides anyway – suffer the climbs whilst having a good laugh with our mates and racing each other on the bits that mattered (the downhills). Enduro felt like punk – it was racing for us and by us as riders, with each event unique to its venue and local clan of organisers.

It was also a lot of fun and stuck a finger or two up to the po-faced commissaires and self-importance of the ‘official’ race scene. We could do it how we liked and make the events as good as we could, without being told how we had to do it. Often that was way better and more enjoyable than the sanctioned races were, and happily it was exactly what we all felt TweedLove’s attitude was about. TweedLove’s ethos was always about accessibility and wider participation – bike events for the many not the few, to borrow a phrase.

A suitable statement of intent, in 2014 we hosted the first EWS on UK soil. It was regarded by many as the best one to date, despite a huge two-day course – old-school enduro right enough.

The enduro scene took off in a big way and the fact the top pros were taking part in the same races as us mortals was pure gold. In the valley, the stage-race revolution coincided with an explosion of trail-building, and ‘oor valley’ became the UK’s enduro hot spot. Our races became the most popular in the UK and we did everything we could to make the courses, the vibes and the organisation the best there was.

Ten years on, and though numbers racing here are still strong, the whole enduro vibe has changed, not helped by sub-par management and direction of the sport at the top level, and what could be seen as a move towards elitism in the racing. Access to the big races has changed and much of the buzz/spirit has disappeared.

The rise of eMTBs has also changed the picture, but the development of eMTB racing is still far from clear. The rise of eMTB participation is not proving an easy fix for race organisers though, as eMTB races need more stages, more bike scrutiny, and ultimately more work, more staff, more facilities and more cost.

Been there, done that, followed the mantra on the T shirt.

The post-Covid bike industry

Unfortunately this downturn in interest in enduro has coincided with a crisis for the bike industry in general. Most bike brands are still recovering from myopic post-Covid (over) ordering strategies, so their potential for sponsoring the race/event scene has understandably disappeared.

For context on the impact of this, some event organisers have traditionally operated on a model which aims for event entry income to cover basic costs with sponsorship providing any potential profit. Clearly that’s not ideal in the current climate, but in any case it’s not a model that supports anything beyond bare bones event management – and it’s definitely not how TweedLove has ever operated.

The annual festival weekend in Peebles became a highlight for many. It seemed a very unlikely prospect until things lined up and we made it happen.

Nonetheless sponsorship income was always hugely important and sometimes the awarding of public sector funding has depended on the ability to prove we could attract support from the private sector too.

We created a full-time, year-round professional events company, one which specialised in bike events and the outdoors, and we wanted to do it better than anyone else. As you’d expect our overheads have always included several full- and part-time salaries, permanent office premises and all the other costs faced by small businesses. Our approach was unusual for bike events though, as all but the biggest (and almost always publicly-funded) events were run on a much more volunteer, part-time or amateur basis.

2010. This was the first ever TweedLove event – a local ride where visitors joined us to share the trail gold on our doorsteps. These rides created friendships that are still going strong today.

In years when the bike industry was strong and some funding was available, it worked OK. In the last few years though, our business model has become a lot more ‘house of cards’, with too many different and inter-reliant income sources needed to make running the business add up. When each event only makes a very small profit, you need a lot of them to keep the cashflow healthy enough to cover the overheads, which in itself was part of the problem – too much pressure on a small team. That cumulative entry income, festival vendor fees, sponsorship, grants and merchandise sales have each been vital parts of our financial jenga. Sadly it’s now become too fragile.

Last year we were forced to drop a few events and re-schedule others due to the World Champs coming to Glentress, and as a result we made a loss over the year – my own salary had to come from company savings.

This year looks like it will be similar, and with costs and overheads still going up and the bike industry still lacking confidence, the outcome has, sadly, become clear.

TweedLove was mostly about enduro, and what a place to do it.

Funding and the bigger picture

Good events make a big impact. They change things and they change places, and that’s why they’re important. So here’s my bit about event (and bike tourism) funding in the Tweed Valley.

Having grown up here, the welfare of the place is important to me, and when I was a kid the mills were closing and the towns declining. Peebles became a retirement town; Innerleithen and Walkerburn looked half-abandoned, because they were.

The trails built by Forestry Commission Scotland at Innerleithen and Glentress provided a big spark for change. Bike visitors came, younger people moved in, and the MTB trail network grew. After 2010 TweedLove played its part by helping to consolidate the bike community, ramp up the bike destination marketing (we actually did way more of this than all the official agencies put together), which brought thousands of additional visitors.

It wasn’t all on the hill though. The best TweedLove night ever, we put on a Frightened Rabbit gig in Peebles Burgh Hall, July 2011. Just unforgettable.

Jump forward to today and bike-tourism is the biggest economic driver in the area, spawning cafes, hotels, bike shops (bear in mind there was only one of those in the whole valley when I was a teenager – I know, because I worked in it), guides, coaches, uplift and more – oh yeah, and us.

But with all that growth has come problems of sustainability, management and funding and it’s time for a strategic rethink to support the reimagined, outdoor-focussed Tweed Valley economy. The visitors won’t keep coming unless someone provides the encouragement, infrastructure and facilities for them to do so. Above all, our trail network won’t maintain itself.

Some of the mountain towns of Europe and North America probably provide the most relevant examples of how we should look at it. Who ever heard of a ski resort that didn’t look after its pistes and infrastructure?

Tracy Moseley is a Class A legend, and this is one of the reasons why. I’ve no idea how many of our races she’s done, but her advice and involvement over the years has been priceless. Thanks Tracy!

I share some big concerns with many others here – and not just the other small business operators. The area has been getting away with it for quite a while. The Tweed Valley as a destination needs more love from the public sector authorities, probably prioritising the MTB trails. It was fantastic to see Forestry and Land Scotland find funding to build the new Masterplan trails in Glentress, but they can’t afford to maintain them.

The enduro trails get a bare minimum of maintenance, mostly from voluntary organisations or other secret diggers. At TweedLove, we are given permission to work on ‘off-piste’ trails we’re using for a race, but often we’ll be the only people to work on those trails all year. We rely on our already stretched team and volunteers to do that work – but we just don’t have enough resources to do everything we’d like to. Anyone who’s done a bit of trail digging will know just how much work’s involved.

You may recognise him as our indefatigable event MC, but Jamie Birks has been on both sides of the TweedLove tape right from the start.

As for events, we’re very grateful for the support we’ve received from EventScotland and Scottish Borders Council when it’s been available. I won’t miss the application process though, nor the constant ‘cap in hand’ chase for whatever public sector help we might have a chance of winning, despite how much good our work might do.

In many bike/mountain towns elsewhere in the world, event organisers are paid (by tourism/local authorities) to bring their events there. Additional staff and facility support is often provided too. By contrast, we’ve usually had to fight for respect and any recognition that what we do is good for the place. We all know there’s limited investment available for sport and tourism so it’s time we had a small tourist tax (like you encounter pretty much everywhere in Europe now) to help fund some of what’s needed.

And a bit less abuse and negativity from the tiny-minded ‘aye-beens’ would be good for the place too.

Not an easy ride. The more you put in, the more you get out. Greig Brown with a lesson in commitment at the Glentress 7 in 2013.

What happens now – back to the future?

At time of writing, quite a few organisers around the UK are in the same boat as us, with some packing it in for good. Next year in the UK there will be less racing and less grass roots events, and the scene may go back to being mostly run by amateur and club organisations, and on a much less ambitious scale.

For the sport of MTB and cycling more generally, this is obviously bad news, and for me it’s sad as one of the joys of TweedLove has been attracting new people into the sport and showing the positivity of the bike scene. Cycling, racing and being part of the bike gang should not be niche – it’s for everyone and the world is a better place with more bike riders in it.

We’re proud to have played a wee part in that movement and to see quite a few local riders cut their teeth with us and go on to achieve big things in the sport. It’s been a pleasure to support a number of young riders to see TweedLove become a part of growing up and family life in our community.

We’re all in this together. You don’t have to be a superstar to get the crowd behind you – going full throttle to finish the last lap with two seconds on the clock creates instant heroes.

Running TweedLove has been brilliant and I’m massively proud of it, but it’s time for a change. Obviously if the numbers added up better, things might be different, but as it stands, we’ve come to the end of the road.

I’ll now be concentrating on other projects with the remaining core staff at Hillside Outside, while others in the TweedLove team will be going their own way. On a positive note, Tour O The Borders, TweedLove’s sister road bike event will be making a return on its glorious closed road course next September – maybe see you there. And at least I can get out on my bike more.

TweedLove – water under the bridge?

Update on our events:

Glentress 7 (XC/trail/endurance)| 24 August | Going ahead | Entries available

Hope Enjoyro EVO presented by Ridelines (intermediate level one day enduro) | 25 August | Going ahead | Entries available

Glentress Family Day (fun racing for ages 2-13) | 25 August | Going ahead | Entries available

YT Industries TweedLove Enduro Series Round 3/BNES final round 2024 | 14-15 September, Innerleithen | Going ahead | Entries available. This will be the final TweedLove event.

YT Industries TweedLove Enduro Series Round 4 | 5-6 October, Yair | Cancelled | Refunds will be issued – more info here

Tour O The Borders (closed road sportive) | 7 September 2025 | Going ahead | Entries available

Photography by Ian Linton and Richard Turley, whose images have done a huge amount towards giving the Tweed Valley the reputation it has today.