Bedrock Gravel Race

The Bedrock race is the centrepiece of a week-long gravel festival in Tochni, a small traditional village in the hills of southern Cyprus, and it sits somewhere between a race and a village party. The loop is unsigned, so everyone navigates from their own device, it starts and finishes at The Feed Zone Cafe in front of the Activate Cyprus office, and there are age categories and a results sheet. Then the afternoon turns into a barbecue with local craft beer and the award ceremony, and the shorter routes are there for riders who simply want a taste of island gravel.

The riding around Tochni mixes stony farm tracks through olive and orange groves, climbs into the hills behind the village and stretches along the Mediterranean, where Gravel Union's Emmie Collinge rode over the white rocks near Governor's Beach above a fiercely blue sea. Much of the island's network of unpaved roads is open to ride, and the festival leans into local life: wine from stony, clay-rich terroir, a basket weaving museum in an 1850s house in neighbouring Choirokitia, halloumi made at a goat farm, and coffee stops in village kafeneia where riders mix with the locals.

Activate Cyprus was founded by Mike Hadjioannou, a former national team rider and coach whose athletes have represented Cyprus at four Olympic Games, and his team has run the Cyprus Sunshine Cup and still produces the Cyprus Gran Fondo. With events manager Eleni Savvidou he built Bedrock as something looser and friendlier, and Collinge's account describes an optional, unhurried programme, dinners in a different village restaurant each night and a strong sense of community among riders who mostly arrived alone.