- Thursday 15 January 2026
Once again we brought the Questars magic with the weather and what a day it was to kick off our 2026 year of races! Legs out, short sleeves, sunshine and even the need for suncream… Thank you for joining us for our third race of our 2025-26 Winter Series in the ever-spectacular Midhurst, South Downs. It is an area that surprised and impressed in equal measure – it was hillier than most people expected but the views were worth the wait and a huge percentage of you made it up that slog of a climb to take them in. There was also a lot of variety in the course with castle ruins, wooded areas and heathland all within a short distance of the event base.
We had managed to time the event pretty much perfectly with it falling on the only dry day on the forecast and cold overnight temperatures hardening up a lot of the trails (albeit leaving some ice in places). As ever, there were so many smiles, stories and firsts at this event: our first ever tandem to do our events, gliders swooping past enroute and loads of great stories of teams showing the true spirit of adventure racing with the likes of Team Lost & Found (Ian Norfield & Deke Pedrick) stopping their race to help Andrew Wayland who had a nightmare blow-out on the bike leg.
As is often the case, the majority set out on foot first with 65% of racers opting for foot over bike to start the day. Out on course, at over 26km and with around 700m of climbing the run course was another tough one. Despite this, Ben Hawkins (2:21), Mark Montgomery (3:19) and Dave Chaplin (3:27) managed to clear it with Dan Thorby (2:17) and Tom Davies (2:23) dropping just one checkpoint. Ben Hawkins also had the most profitable run, picking up an excellent 2.55 points per minute, followed by Dan Thorby (2.54) and Tom Davies (2.43). In the Female category, Team In Search of Control (Pollie Boyle and Julia Robson) had the most profitable run, picking up a brilliant 1.83 points per minute, followed by Helen Chapman (1.81) and Jen Hunt and Team Escaping the Kids (Charlotte Duncan & Belinda Robbie) (both 1.74). In the Taster category, Team Lost & Found (Ian Norfield & Deke Pedrick) had the most profitable run picking up 1.93 points per minute. In the run-only category Team PNA (Romain Jacquet & Justine Brocard) had the most profitable run collecting an excellent 2.33 points per minute, followed by Oscar Sly (2.26) and Team Worst Pace Scenario (Andy Oakey & Matt Dixon – 2.15).
At over 45km and around 900m of climbing, the bike course was a biggie! Despite this, Team Chiltons (Alex & Trevor Chilton) cleared the course in a time of 3:31 and Kev Stephens (2:57), David Carr (3:25) and Richard Smith (3:56) all came close, dropping just one checkpoint. Campbell Walsh had the most profitable bike, picking up an impressive 2.64 points per minute, followed by Carl Silver (2.52) and Eddie Winthorpe (2.49). In the Female category, Helen Chapman had the most profitable bike, picking up an excellent 2.27 points per minute followed by Steph Gibbins (2.16) and Jen Hunt (1.92). In the Taster category, Magspeed Racing (Natalie Creswick, Christina Wiejak) had the most profitable bike picking up an excellent 2.23 points per minute.
It was a course that we never planned on anyone clearing and so it proved with Ben Hawkins getting closest dropping just three checkpoints along the way. The bike leg proved most profitable with teams picking up an average of 1.65 points per minute compared to 1.61 on the run – this was a bit of a surprise as we felt we had maybe been a bit harsh with the biking points. We also felt it would be a course to potentially set records for penalties and it nearly got there! An impressive 1,314 penalty points were amassed in total with the likes of Team Mash & Dash (James Cross & Stefan Pye) collecting 132 of them for being over an hour late on the three-hour Taster!
Ben Hawkins took the overall win in the Open category for the first time; Helen Chapman took the overall win in the Female category and Team Truffle Hunters (Andrew Woodhouse & Vanessa Fisher) took the overall win in the Mixed Category. It was so nice for us to see some of our regular racers getting onto the podium with the likes of the Blazing Ballers (having come fourth on five separate occasions!), Team Frisky Whiskers and the Burridges all taking the accolades after excellent races. Full results are included below.
Our Special Checkpoints made a reappearance, they carried no point value but entered finders into a spot-prize draw with the following riddle leading racers to their location: Over 6,500 of these in the UK on this map two can be seen, Once housing theodolites to calculate the distance between. The answer: trig points! Congratulations to all those who worked out the riddle and found the trig points!
Thank you to everyone who came out to take part and support at our event and helped to make it a great start to our year of racing. A special thank you to James Brown and Matthew Saunders for heading back out after racing to help collect checkpoints, superstars. An extra shout out and thanks to Ross of Cyclexperience fame who cleared a good portion of the checkpoints away for us at the end of the day. Huge thank yous as well to regular-racer Kirsten, Abbie, Debbie, Robert, Jerry and David who volunteered as marshals for the day, Neil our medic and Dan, Naiche and Rob who provided excellent photography. Thank you everyone!
With the days getting longer (yes, we’re that optimistic in January!), we now turn our attention to the fourth and final event in our 2025-26 Winter Series down in Sonning Common in the ever-popular Chilterns. We know how deceivingly hilly the area is and, as mentioned in our briefings, our kindness resolution for 2026 is still strong 15 days in, but who knows what tomorrow may bring and a week of rain could certainly spoil our resolve! The Series is definitely coming to a very exciting conclusion for the podium places and the chance to get names etched on our Winners Fingerpost for perpetuity. We will be reviewing the state of play in our Series next week.
We cannot wait to see what unfolds in the Chilterns before we jump straight into our 2026 Summer Series! And what a Series we have in store for you all! We hope those calendars are filling up fast with all we have on offer this year. Something for everyone and then some, we like to think. 25 years of Questars wouldn’t be complete without a stop in Wiltshire where we start our Summer Series on 21 March, followed by 18 April back in the Chilterns, 13-14 June for our two-day in the Brecon Beacons, 4 July in the Malvern Hills, and 12 September returns to the South Downs before our big anniversary event – 25 hours on the Long Mynd on the 24-25 October weekend, giving you that extra hour to experience more, test yourself, and let’s be honest, submit yourself to Joe’s torture aka special adventures!! We can’t wait to share some more adventures with you all! Further details can be found on our event pages.
Full results can be found here and pictures here (where you can search using a selfie and download high-res images for free).
A summary of the results follows:
Run-only (2 hours)
In the Open category, Oscar Sly once again topped the podium with 273 points ahead of Worst Pace Scenario (Andy Oakey, Matt Dixon) with 245 and Timothy Hooker rounding off the podium on 217.
Jailed Thunder (Melissa Sammut) won the Female category with 144 points, ahead of Beverley Hawkins on 140 and The Pi Team (Nicky Best, Issy Currie) on 132.
Team PNA (Romain Jacquet, Justine Brocard) won the Mixed category with a score or 260 being, Can’t Bike, Won’t Bike (Ruth Brownlee, Rochelle Jones and Tim Adams) came second with 210, The Misfits (Jay Allen, Caroline Roberts) were just 10 points behind on 200.
Taster (Run & Bike 3 hours)
Team Lefty (Dave Meikle) won the Open category with an excellent score of 337 ahead of Lost & Found (Ian Norfield, Deke Pedrick) on 279 and SN Lonely Goat (Cameron Lamond) on 247 (-48 penalty points). Special mention to Mash & Dash for racking up the most penalty points (or shall we call them ‘making the most of the course’ points) with -132 penalty points being back 1 hour and 6 minutes late, but still ended up with 73 proud points to their name (and some stories to tell, we’re sure!).
First timers to Questars events Magspeed Racing (Natalie Creswick and Christina Wiejak) had the highest score in the Taster category with an impressive score or 377, winning the Female category followed by Pedalon (Mandy Hibberd) on 289.
The Stockton Roadies (Andy & Karen Jones) once again led the way in the Mixed category with 243 points ahead of Team AtoZ (Andrew Hodder Smith and Saskia Palmer) with 209, and Hannah & Paul Richardson finishing the podium with 178 on their first ever adventure race!
Full (Run & Bike 5 hours)
There was some very exciting racing at the top end of the Open solo with just 24 points separating the top four. Tom Davies just missed out on the podium with the tyre gods frowning on him finishing on 714 points. There was a bit of a shake up on the podium, with Ben Hawkins’ hard work paying off as he usurped several previous Series winners to win his first event with us with a score of 738, just four points ahead of Campbell Walsh on 734, with Daniel Thorby completing the podium with 720 (-25 penalty points cost him that top spot!).
The ladies were on fine form with excellent performances throughout. Helen Chapman continued her winning streak this Winter Series in the Female solo category with 608 points, Stephanie Gibbins came second with 570 with near perfect timing, followed closely by Jen Hunt with 550.
Truffle Hunters (Rob Smart & Damon de Boor) were looking strong with a winning score of 633 points in the Open Team category, followed by Fusion Adventure Racing Team (Graeme & Aidan Williams) with a healthy 568. To finish up the podium, we had regular racers but first timers on the podium, team Blazing Ballers (Jakub Malik & Mark Boscott) with a score of 520. After five times finishing 4th, getting on the podium is a huge achievement – congratulations, all those years of hard work, learning, and experience are really paying off! Hopefully just the start of things to come in 2026!
In Search of Control (Pollie Boyle & Julia Robson) continuing their winning streak in the Female Team category with a score of 484 points followed by the ever-smiling Mad Old Tarts (Maggie Salter & Liz Jones) on 471, and Escaping the Kids (Charlotte Duncan & Belinda Robbie) on 455.
Truffle Hunters #1 (Andrew Woodhouse & Vanessa Fisher) seemed to have predicted their win as another Truffle Hunters team on the top of the podium in the Mixed Team category with a score of 500 points, closely followed by Team Burridge (Rob & Sarah Burridge) on 490 and Team Frisky Whiskers (Sarah & John Russell) with 427 – just two points ahead of Team Wetsocks (Joanna & David Taylor).
Vets
It was incredibly close racing in the Vets Open category with just one point separating the top two and six points separating third and fifth. Carl Silver came out on the top with 672 points followed by Kevin Stephens on 671 with Eddie Winthorpe completing the podium with 654. Rob Smart (652) and Phil Haycock (648) were those to just miss out.
Summer Series champions Maggie Salter & Liz Jones topped the podium for the first time in winter with 577 points ahead of Vanessa Fisher on 508 and Pollie Boyle on 499. Joanna Taylor was unlucky once more finishing just four points behind on 495.
