Questars Adventure Race - South Downs
Questars Starts the Year in the South Downs
Questars / 15.01.2026
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 .
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