• No entry fee
• No numbers
• No caps
• No tracking
• No mass start
• No post-ride party
• No support
• Just a start, a finish and nine lovely places to visit in between – we want you to enjoy the journey.

Last week, sadly, we decided not to run All Points North in 2020 and reschedule for next May. Even though lockdown restrictions are being lifted at a rapid rate it still felt like too much of a risk to try and run the event in September – still too much uncertainty and the very real possibility of regional lockdowns in the North. We’d hate to get people’s hopes up and then have to cancel at the last minute because of circumstances out of our control.

But since then we’ve been having a think here about all you guys who really wanted to ride your routes in September. So many of you still want to ride and we think it would be a nice idea if everyone could do it in a socially distanced way over the same weekend.

So instead, we’re going to host  ‘Not All points North’. It’ll be completely free and completely outdoors.

Rather than starting the ride from Heeley Institute, riders can start any time they like on Saturday 5th September from our shop – A Different Gear – as long as it’s during our opening hours. Instead of limiting the finish time to 72 hours, we’re just going to leave it open all week to the following Saturday. So ride it as fast or as slow as you want to – take a little tour around our beautiful North rather than rushing to be the first person back.

We’ll still give you a question sheet to complete when you arrive at each of the controls and we’d still like you to photograph your arrival at each.

To be classed as a finisher all you have to do is finish your ride back at our shop, hand in your completed question sheet and upload your ride to Komoot. Once all of the finishers are in, we’ll compile a list of everyone who took part on our website with links to their Komoot ride.

We want to make it all about the ride and the spirit of adventure rather than belting out the miles head down. So to take the emphasis off being the fastest back we’re thinking about the idea of introducing random challenges to aim for, like the longest route ridden between all of the controls,  the route with the most off-road sections, or the best control point photos.

There’ll be more news about how it’ll all work in the coming weeks and for now we don’t want you to do anything other than have a think about whether you want to take part.