Today, Saturday, saw the 14th running of the Heaven of the South (HOTS) off-road bike event, which has raised more than £160,000 for charities in the Stroud District since its inception in 2011.
Before the event the Chair of the committee, Barnaby Beere, told Stroud Times: “This is our 13th full event – we’re calling it the 14th because during COVID we missed a HOTS.”
The event, including camping, food, drink and music, is centred around Kingswood Village Hall near Wotton-under-Edge.
“We’re trying to make this a really inclusive, non-competitive event. We want people to come and have a great weekend and enjoy riding really challenging trails. Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the views and then come back and eat lots of food and drink lots of beer.”
The event offers a choice of two courses, either 50 or 75 km (30 or 45 miles). “We’ve got at least 350 riders taking part – we had around 400 registered but some people drop out due to illness or injury.”
The name is a response to the ‘Hell of the North Cotswolds’ (HONC) event, a classic reliability trial that started and finished at Winchcombe School, previously run on the same day as the classic race, the Paris-Roubaix in April, won this year by Mathieu Van Der Poel. In a change to tradition, this year’s HONC has been scheduled for August 31st and starting at Sudeley Castle, north of Cheltenham.
HOTS is now a three-day event, with riders arriving in Kingswood on Friday evening, completing the event on Saturday, and heading home on Sunday.
The route tackles extremely challenging terrain, including a steep climb to Ozleworth, then negotiating Westridge Woods and the Stancombe Valley near North Nibley, and later Lampern in Uley. More than half of the course is off-road. The recent dry conditions mean that some fast times will be recorded.
“It always astonishes us how fast some people are,” said Mr Beere. “The fastest riders are averaging 25kph off-road.”
Supporting organisations in the Stroud District has been a central mantra for organisers since 2011: “We support lots of charities and good causes including organisations like Access Bike,” added Mr Beere.
“We try to support organisations that are promoting community activities outdoors, so we’ve provided a lot of support for dementia groups, and equally people supporting youth groups and sports teams.” The Air Ambulance in Bristol is another beneficiary.
“We’ve tended to raise about £15,000 a year – COVID did have an impact but not as much as we feared. We have fantastic support, we make money from ticket sales, and we sell food and drink at the bar, and we have our famous raffle where we’ve been really good at getting fantastic prizes – lots of bicycle related stuff – custom shirts, all sorts of bike bits.
“We’ve even had some bike cameras as well – anything and everything we can beg, borrow and steal from cycling shops and suppliers.”
The first event attracted around 100 riders and numbers have grown ever since: “We started off with relatively local riders but now we’ve got people coming from as far as Cornwall and Norfolk, and we’ve got some people from as far afield as Scotland – so out of the 350 riders at least 100 of them will be from more than 100 miles away.”
For more details, and to book your place for 2026, visit Heaven of the South – Heaven of the South
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