After five editions looping the south-west, Wild West Country is heading somewhere new. For 2027, the route crosses into Wales, reaches the sea at Aberystwyth and comes back again. There’s much less West Country than before, but it remains wild – arguably wilder than ever.
The route
The start and finish stay at The Bike Drop in Brimscombe. From there, riders cross the Severn Bridge and enter Wales via the Tidenham Tunnel (lights off, for the sake of the bats). Gospel Pass delivers the first of many memorable Welsh climbs and the highest point of the route, before a descent to Hay-on-Wye and on towards the wonderfully named Painscastle.
Continuing west through Builth Wells, the Devil’s Staircase warms the legs up for the road above Llyn Brianne and the quiet lanes of the Green Desert. The westward journey ends on top of Constitution Hill above Aberystwyth, around 300 kilometres in, before the route snakes back inland via the remote Nant-y-Moch reservoir, Devil’s Bridge and the beautiful Elan Valley. Rhayader sits at roughly the halfway point – the perfect spot for a staffed checkpoint (location to be confirmed).
Heading back into England, there’s an out-and-back excursion up Clee Hill, with its lunar landscapes. The Shropshire Hills are followed by the much more benign Malverns, before some rolling riding leads onto a finishing circuit through parts of the Cotswolds that Wild West Country has never used before.
It’s a similar distance and profile to previous editions: around 750 kilometres and 11,500 metres of climbing, almost all of it on quiet roads. For all of you hoping for a flat edition, sorry. Pack your dinner plate cassettes.
What stays the same
Everything else that makes Wild West Country what it is: the five-day cut-off, selfie checkpoints, one staffed checkpoint, live tracking, registration and dinner at The Bike Drop and a stamp for your t-shirt waiting at the finish. Pre-booking beds along the route is still allowed, and plenty of first-timers make use of it.
Applications
As with previous years, places are limited and allocated by a weighted lottery. Applications open at 12:00 on Friday 23rd October and close at 12:00 on Friday 20th November.
Everyone who applies goes into a draw with three pools: new riders, returning riders and riders with one or more characteristics that would make the start line more diverse. Everyone is in one of the first two pools and some people are also in the third, which effectively gives them two tickets. Nobody is excluded. The odds are simply nudged. Since we introduced the lottery in 2024, the number of women and non-binary riders on the start line has roughly doubled.
If this would be your first ultra, or your first ride with us, apply. New riders have a pool of their own and we firmly believe that finishing is a realistic goal for most cyclists with the right preparation, gearing and mindset. Everyone hears the outcome within a week of the draw. If you don’t get a place, you go to the top of the waiting list before it opens publicly.
Full route details, the provisional route map and how to apply are all on the Wild West Country page. If you have any questions, just message us on Instagram or drop us an email.
