Bikes and Black Isle Brewery Beers at The POC Scottish Enduro Series

Bikes and Beers: Meet Black Isle Brewery’s Anita Scott

When it comes to combining a love of bikes and beer, Black Isle Brewery’s Anita Scott shows us how it’s done.

As one of our dedicated team at Black Isle Bar in Inverness, when Anita isn’t serving organic, malty goodness by the glass or bottle, she’s most likely making turns on the local bike trails. Having ridden the coveted Highland Trail 550 – a bikepacking event of legendary status – this year Anita has turned her attention to tracks with a downward trajectory.

POC Scottish Enduro Series

Riding as a Black Isle Brewery Team Rider, she’s been travelling the country and testing out her skills at the POC Scottish Enduro Series. Held by event organiser No Fuss, the round of races cover the country and offer up a mix of technical riding. And who-knows-what when it comes to weather! Bike-mad girls and guys battle it out over mud, roots and the inevitable rain, to stake their claim for the podium top step.

As the rain thrashed down after an endless string of sunny days, dust turned to slop for the third round. Riding on her trusty hardtail bike, Anita took on the category alone, and so secured the win – but impressively made it 8th female overall, and 4th in the senior women’s category.

There’s a lot of women at the sharp end of these events, so a huge well done Anita on the result.

Anita gives us the lowdown from her weekend riding the steep stuff

“After this recent dry spell and the dry and dusty first two rounds, a downpour on practice day at Ae was a bit of a shock to us all.

Ae Forest’s stages offered a mix of natural, roots and rocky single track, coupled with rutty corners and cheeky off-camber bends. Keeping our lungs working hard, they threw in some rough, pedal stages and lengthy transitions.

We were also treated to some big, banked slippy berms and steep descents. These got our heart racing on the not-so-pedally downhill stages!

Luckily the rain stayed away for race day and the trails had a chance to dry out somewhat, leaving us with a bit more grip to play with. I’m happy to have come away with an 8th place overall when slotted into the women’s senior enduro category (despite crashing on three of the stages!).

Competition in the women’s category is pretty strong and it’s exciting to see such a good bunch of gnarly girls in action at the races. Until the next round… in Dunoon.”