Last weekend on the 30th December we travelled to Baal, Belgium to represent the RideforCharlie Foundation in the Sven Nys GP.

Hoping to leave the bad weather at home, we made the 9 hour journey across to Belgium to find out it was just as bad as in England.

We made the decision to travel down to Folkestone and stay the night before catching the early eurotunnel the next day , New Year’s Eve to enable me to ride the course in the afternoon. The course was, as expected, challenging, heavy and muddy due to lots of rain. I rode the course had a look at the lines and went to the hotel to get a good nights sleep before the race.

Race day , weather was on and off rain, got a good park spot, signed on and started to prepare for the race.

I was gridded at the back , but had a relatively good start and started to make my way through, had a good race with no real disasters , finished 23rd, not where I’d liked to have finished but respectable.

More importantly I enjoyed this race because I was riding for Charlie in the RideforCharlie jersey.

Charlie would have loved this weekend , it was a great experience, I felt honoured to be there in his memory, thanks to Sarah and Nick and the RideforCharlie Foundation.

I hope this will help inspire other riders to race in Belgium as it is completely different to racing in the UK.

Matt Taylor x