With the final race of the 2024 Questars Summer Series behind us, we have been reflecting on what a brilliant Series it was. Whether you joined us for a race or helped behind the scenes we wanted to take a moment to say a huge thank you for making our Series so enjoyable to put on.

The Series took us to three brand-new locations in the Cotswolds, Mendips and Peak District and back to two familiar locations in the South Downs and New Forest.

Our Series started in March under dark skies and an unexpected hailstorm in Duncton in the South Downs and ended in September under sunshine and bright blue skies in Stroud in the Cotswolds. In between, we had visits to Fordingbridge in the New Forest, Mellor in the Peak District and Cheddar in the Mendips. Each location offered a variety of terrain, interesting areas to explore and many a chance to get lost in beautiful surroundings!

In total, we had 808 different racers at our events and an impressive ten hardy souls who completed all five of our events. Kudos to you all!

Our Series

At the start of our Series we introduced our Hall of Fame for racers who have achieved over 10,000 lifetime points with us and it was great to see a further six racers reach this landmark during the Series.

We also refreshed our Vets category scoring with the aim of creating more competition. We are still working on making this a bit slicker and hope to continue to improve this through our upcoming Series.

Probably the most appreciated innovation we had during the Series was the introduction of our ‘Super Vets’ double-sized maps, which we know a number of our racers have found really useful. Credit has to go to Andy Prince here for the idea behind these. Thank you, Andy!

Our Series ended with four new Series winners – Katherina Pedersen (Female category), Carl Silver (Open category), Ella Pyman (Female Vet category) and Nick Gracie (Open Vet category) – who all engrave themselves into Questars history by having their names added to our Series Winners Fingerpost.

Our Highlights

We are often asked what our favourite thing about putting the events on is and we think it has to be the post-race atmosphere with that brilliant buzz of accomplishment where racers are hanging around, chatting about their individual races – the routes they took, the mistakes they made – and sharing tips and advice for next time all over a bowl of our world (?) famous chilli nachos.

Picking one highlight out of the Series is a near-impossible task but, for us, we think it would have to be our two-day event in the Peak District. We really enjoyed the atmosphere and the chance to spend more time over the weekend with everyone. We also enjoyed seeing racers dive, some quite literally, into the special bonus stage of the Cave Bus. It was one of those crazy ideas we had when we first found the venue, and seeing everyone just as up for it, gave us as race organisers a great feeling of satisfaction. Not only was it a squeeze, it was hot and dark, items of clothing were lost, people were popping out all over the place, and fears were faced. It was memorable, it was unexpected, it was the essence of adventure racing crammed into a 2.5m by 10m bus.

Behind the Scenes

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the incredible volunteers, marshals and support staff who made each event run so smoothly. Their tireless efforts ensured that every race went off without a hitch, and we are so grateful to have such a brilliant team behind us. Thank you Abbie, Andy, Anna, Clive, Darcy, David, Debbie, Denise, Greg, Hilary, Isabel, Jerry, Jim, Lucy, Neil, Nick, Olivia, Robert, Rozzie, Serhii, Shawn, and Stuart!

We are also very grateful to Adam Rose, Daniel Seago, Rob Howard and Naiche Kempson who provided such fantastic media coverage of our events.

Looking Ahead

We hope the Questars Summer Series has left you with some great memories and a burning desire for plenty more! For us, our attention now turns to our Winter Series which kicks off in November in Berkshire and we are also well underway with plans for our 2025 Series with four one-day races and one two-day race planned. We will release details of these in October.

Thank you once again for being part of the Questars 2024 Summer Series. The adventure was epic because of you!

Kim and Joe