The Boom Boom/Adria Motorhome Tour 2024 – Part 1
Hello! Firstly, thanks for clicking on this. The title may have you wondering why you have clicked on it, but the title will become apparent over the next blog or two!
It’s an exciting time for me and Dethleffs and we hope you enjoy the stories that we will be bringing you over the next 18 months.
My name is Scott Beaumont and I am a Pro Mountain Bike Rider. My best friend, partner and fiancé is Holly and we have a 2 year old daughter called Astrid. My parents are Mike and June and we all make up Beaumont Racing. My self-named Mountain Bike team that travels the World. For 2018/19 Dethleffs have become a partner of my team and I will be blogging on our travels throughout the UK and Europe. They will be exclusively found on the Dethleffs website so keep checking back to see where we are and what we have been up to.
It’s hard to know where to start with this one. There’s a lot of background information that is going to be useful to understand what we are actually doing in our Dethleffs 7877-2 for the next 18 months. Let’s have a go at briefly filling you in with some detail. In fact, let’s do this over two parts.
Part one. 1978 – 1996. ‘We Race’.
The story starts back in 1978 when I was born in Northallerton, a small town in North Yorkshire. Of course, mum was there, but dad. Well dad was in Germany racing motorbikes! As one of the best grass track, Speedway and Long Track motorcycle racers of the 70’s and 80’s weekends were all about racing! So I was born into a race family and by the age of 2 months, there I was in the back of a transit van driving through France on our way to the next race.
Fast forward to my 4th birthday and it was time to start my career. Redditch BMX track was hosting a race and it was time to give racing a go! Now it’s not the perfect story. I finished 2nd in my first ever race, but it did set me on a path that I haven’t looked back on. A shiny gold plastic trophy was all I needed to be hooked on BMX racing.
Obviously at the age of 6 I raced in my first European Championships in Spain. Placing 5th was ok, but it was this taste of international racing and travelling that really set me on a course. I remember camping at the track and riding my bike until the sun had set. All day every day it was playing on my bike with kids from all over Europe. I liked it and wanted more.
At the age of 9 I finally won my first National race. Up until then I had finished on the podium loads of times, but the win had eluded me. That is until
Farnham National in 1987. Strangely I don’t remember a whole lot about it. But that day was the turning point. From then on, I gained so much confidence and I went from strength to strength. Winning national races and then international races, my sights were set on the World Championships.
Now. For all of you who are avid campers, you’re probably wondering, what the hell has any of this got to do with Dethleffs. Well don’t worry, we are coming onto that in a moment!
So here we were. 1995. I was 17 years old and obviously stood in Bogota airport with armed guards all around me. As you do. It was the BMX World Championships and they were being held 4 hours away from Bogota, South America. A 5 rider GB team had been selected to go and the expectation was simple. Medals from everyone. We had armed guards travelling with us. The bags and bikes had armed guards. Our hotel had armed guards. A helicopter crashed outside our hotel. We were advised not to walk outside of the theme park gates where the race was being held. I cut into a bread roll and it was full of ants. And I won the World Championship. It was quite a week.
July 1996 and the next BMX World Championships were being held in Brighton. Quite a different place to Bogota believe me! We were there to defend the Championship that I won a year before. In Brighton I raced in two different classes. They were called Cruiser (24” wheels) and 20” (20” wheels). I can’t tell you why cruiser is called cruiser and not just 24”. I’ll try and find out and update in a later blog! Anyway. Cruiser was on Friday and 20” on Sunday. Things could not have gone any better. I won Cruiser on Friday and set up the chance to hold both cruiser and 20” titles in the same year. But, it didn’t happen. A huge mistake in the semi-final meant that I unfortunately did not make the 20” final. It was a roller coaster of emotions filled with winning and losing that weekend, but one where I learnt a lot about how to do both.
I must also add as a small caveat here; my schooling didn’t never ever suffered throughout my BMX career! Seriously though, racing actually helped me through school. The rule was simple. If your homework isn’t done, we aren’t going racing. Homework was done, GCSE’s and A Levels passed and then the Mountain Bike world came knocking, but I’ll go into that in the next blog.
So, what has this got to do with Dethleffs. Well as you will recall. I started racing at 4 years old and between 4 and 18, I believe we only stayed in a hotel for 2 races. Every other race we camped. In a tent, then in a tiny fiat camper van, followed by a converted Toyota Hi Ace and then onto a fiat ducato with awning. Initially it was just me and my mum as Dad was racing at his events. Then it was the three of us. We raced and camped all over the UK and Europe. We won, we lost, we met people and we had adventures. It was ace and gave me the kind of upbringing that Holly and myself will be looking to do with our daughter Astrid.
Dethleffs is ‘a friend of the family’ and our family love the places and opportunities that camping has brought to our lives. This is a relationship that we are thrilled to have secured and we hope that you find our story interesting over the next 18 months.
The Boom Boom Tour – Part 2
Hello again! I’m back to fill you in with part 2 of my story and how we arrived here. If you remember from part 1, we paused at the end of 1996. I had just won my 2nd BMX World Championship title and life was good.
It was at this time that BMX riders were doing really well in the new sports of Downhill and Dual Slalom Mountain bike racing. Mountain Biking historically was all about Cross Country racing. An endurance event that remains to this day. However the new sports of Downhill and Slalom demanded bike handling skills, nerves of steel and an ability to make quick decisions and cope with in race pressures. Everything that BMX riders have in abundance. So, after winning the World Championships in Brighton, I was approached by Kona Mountain Bikes to ride for them in 1997. At this point I had never ridden a Mountain Bike before but here they were and they were offering me £6,000 for the year plus expenses. At that time I lived at home with my parents so had very few outgoings. £6K plus all my travel, hotels and car hires was easily enough to survive a year and so after much deliberation I decided to change sports and start a new journey in a new sport.
It was a decision that I have never regretted and to this day I still have the chance to occasionally race BMX and train at the tracks.
So, I’ll fast forward my Mountain Bike career to give you a quick highlights review. I have been National Champion 11 times, National Series Champion 12 times, European Series Champion twice and ranked in the top 3 in the World for the last 6 years. I was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 2015 and we are focused on trying to be the first male rider to win both BMX and Mountain Bike World Championship titles. It is a career that I am extremely proud of.
So how did Adria and myself bump into each other.
Well, our races take place at ski resorts during the summer throughout Europe or in remote Forestry Commission areas in the UK. Hotels are normally a fair drive away and are sometimes closed for the summer season. So most pro Mountain Bike riders have a motorhome for their travels and to give a great base on site.
After talking to Adria at the NEC Caravan and Camping show in October 2023, we all agreed that there were huge benefits to both of us to form a partnership for 2023/24
My team name is Beaumont Racing. It is a family team where everyone has a role towards me reaching my ultimate goals. My mum, June, is the team manager at races, my dad, Mike, is my mechanic and travels to all events with me. My fiancé Holly and my 7 year old daughter Astrid are then at every race as my support crew! It’s a great set up and I love racing with my loved ones trackside.
