Saturday 14th October, and with the car loaded up with all the necessary equipment for a weekends racing Ben set off to Bridgnorth in Shropshire for the inaugural Bridgnorth Downtown, a race through the streets, down flights of steps, over the jumps and cobblestones.
Unfortunately the car broke down after 5 miles and had to be recovered back to Ripon, where a hire car was picked up and the journey re-started. After arriving 5 hours later than planned a quick walk into town revealed nothing, so everything was left until the following day.

After a hearty breakfast on Sunday morning we made our way to the car park, where we set up camp for the day. With everything in place it was time to go and walk the track which was a good 10 min walk away at the other side of the river.

Disappointment seemed to be the order of the day at first when it was discovered the there were no jumps and no wall ride and the track basically went down 2 long flights of steps.

Ben made sure he was one of the first in the queue for the practice runs, a move which paid off when the track turned out for Ben to be a mere 35 seconds long. With nearly 260 riders and the race official setting riders off at 20 second intervals this caused long queues at the top of the track.
Ben managed 3 practice runs before taking a short break for lunch and a quick check on the bike before racing got underway.

Racing commenced at 2.30pm and by this time around 2000 spectators had gathered wherever they could find a vantage point to watch this spectacle provided by amongst others some of the UKs top riders in Dan,Gee & Rachel Atherton, Marc Beaumont, Dan Stanbridge and Martin Ogden.

Timing was always going to be close and with only one race run most riders were split by the merest tenths and even hundredths of a second.

Ben came down in 35.739 seconds and into 18th place in Youth and 72nd overall.