It was a seven-hour drive from our base in Hertfordshire to the town of Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries in Galloway, where The Gralloch, Britain’s premier gravel cycling event, was celebrating another year on the hills with OGT as a headline sponsor.
Our team stocked up on travel lozenges, aligned our Spotify playlists and packed both raincoats and sunscreen - we were headed for the Scottish lowlands, after all!
The Gralloch is a three-day festival for gravel devotees, and we know that the saddle-sore and weary masses of athletes pounding the pedals need a fast fuelling solution that tastes great, hits the macro must-haves, and is easy to eat on the move. That’s why we come back year after year, and why the organisers of the event are always eager to stock OGT at the en-route pitstops for riders to grab and go.
Our preparation for this year’s event started weeks in advance as we started producing the wrapper-free bars we’d be taking to the start line. Our production technologies and processes are so unique that they’re “patent pending,” and they underpin a world-class product that is truly the world’s first wrapper-free energy bar. The hardworking team at our Hitchin headquarters cold-pressed thousands of our squares, using all-natural ingredients like oats, date paste, honey, sunflower seeds, organic cacao and Rainforest Alliance certified chocolate. Then they had to be coated in our groundbreaking beeswax-based layer, a solution which is drawn from nature and delivers all the barrier properties of a plastic wrapper whilst still being tasteless, imperceptibly thin and easy to eat.
After the long drive northwards came the set-up day, in weather conditions that can be charitably described as changeable. Our 6x3 gazebo, an assortment of flags, and a static training bicycle for our “Max Wattage Challenge.”
That challenge pitted everyday riders against Gralloch winner Matt Holmes, competing to produce the maximum possible wattage over a thirty second sprint. Plenty of people had a go at the challenge and there were signs of inter-family rivalries reminiscent of the Jacobite risings. The winner? Steven Templeton, with a max wattage of 1,176, who has won himself a three-month supply of OGT.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof that OGT bars work is in the feedback we get at these events from the thousands of punters we share samples with. Come rain or shine the good folk at the Gralloch came with open minds and left pleasantly satiated - many of them telling us that they’d heard of us before but had been waiting for an opportunity to give us a try.
Our co-founder Mike Bedford placed 20th in his category and qualified for the gravel world championships in Australia - a challenge that he’ll relish almost as much as the challenge of scaling a start-up innovator with his son and business partner.
After the festivities came to a close on Sunday, there wasn’t a single oat bar left to sell (and we don’t think there was a single attendee who left without chomping down on the energy bar that’s starting a revolution.)
Supplying the Gralloch’s feed stations meant we could ensure that no gel packets or plastic wrappers ended up in the knolls and kerbside; just One Good Thing we can do for the planet.
To the Gralloch, thanks for having us. To the visitors, thanks for trying us. To the gravel racing Gods, thanks for an extraordinary course. And to you, thanks for following the journey.
On to the next one!
