The weather forecast for the weekend was questionable. All weather apps predicted a weekend full of rain and storms, but miraculously the motorcycle gods were on our side. We were met with a huge thunderstorm in the middle of the night on Friday, shaking and waking most of The Canyon Camp, as The Malle Expedition Tents lit up from the lightning and shook from the pounding rain, gale force winds and thunder. With promises of a glorious, sunny end of summer race in Portugal, this was concerning. How would this affect the terrain? Would the tracks all be filled back in with sand?? Is anyone going to turn up??? Come Saturday morning, as I anxiously unzipped my tent I was very pleased to be met with glorious sunshine which stayed for the whole weekend. No spirits were dampened, only the race tracks, which were now compacted down and de-dusted, creating the perfect surface for the 2 days of Canyon Carving, Dune Climbing and Scrambling racing ahead! Phew.
Saturday morning kicked off with our first of The Malle Scrambles. The 5km track that we had designed and spend hours the week before cutting out with the tractor, was now not only a mixture of hard winding trail, with small dips and climbs, with occasional deep sand sections, but now also small lake size puddles, adding an extra element to the already challenging course. Needless to say, riders ripped through their 3+ laps of the track, winding through cork forests and sandy canyon trails with no looking back.
The first race of the weekend was The Canyon Carve. There’s so much about this that shouldn’t work. The mixture of carefully restored and finely tuned classic machines, heavy customs with dirt tyres on, lightweight bikes with skinny tyres, rental mopeds and more, racing head to head in deep wet sand. This poetic mixture of people and machines define the ‘inappropriateness’ of our forgiving community proudly embody. It’s less about the bikes or winning and more about the spirit of the people and the fun you have trying and only because of this, it all worked out beautifully.
The second race was The Dune Climb – a short, steep, deep sand, hill climb challenge. We’d given it a few test runs that week, but only on more appropriate modern off road bikes, so we knew it was possible, but not for all. That’s the challenge. The track starts on the flat bottom of the canyon and quickly splits into two tight lanes, carving their way through ravines in the canyon cliffs, with one of the Malle Team stood precariously on a canyon peak in the middle of the two lanes signalling left of right to alert the race control at the start line who won. Filipe Lopez from Tramontana Motorcycles took The Dune Climb win on his custom Triumph Scrambler 400. Gille and Francisco from Holy Moly won the award for synchronised dancers and they simultaneously high sided, flipping their machines at exactly the same time. Bravo!
