LAST weekend saw the TweedLove season kick off with the Endura Whtyte Vallelujah mountain bike enduro race coming to the Tweed Valley.

Over 400 riders raced over five stages in the forests of Glentress and Cademuir.

Vallelujah is part of the Triple Crown series, which includes TweedLove‘s other enduro events, the Shimano TweedLove International in May and the Whyte Endura Scottish Open Champs in August.

Despite horrendous weather conditions which saw the event village destroyed by gales on Friday night, and riders dealing with hail, snow and torrential rain, the trails held up and there was some exciting racing over the weekend.

The overall winner was Christo Gallagher who took the Senior title too, but notable performance of the weekend came from young local rider Calum Grant who as well as winning the juniors title came an impressive second, only 19 seconds behind Gallagher.

Another local man Stuart Nicolson took the Masters title, with Chay Granby hooking in the Vets victory, while local legend Dik Hamilton captured the Supervet win.

Junior woman winner Abigaile Lawton came in fourth overall, with Eilidh Wells conquering the Senior Category.

Local woman Sarah Mulligan took the Vets title.

The Shimano TweedLove festival runs from May 14 to 30 this year, and encompasses all sorts of bike events, from balance bike races to sportives, film nights to urban cyclocross.

The festival aims to bring two weeks of biking and good times to the Tweed Valley.