Raced this for the first time in 2018, having not completed a full distance for over 6 years.  

Started with camping, this was 200m's from the event village, making registration super easy the day before.  Thoroughly recommend doing this.

The race briefing on the Saturday evening was 90 minutes long and included a walk around, super thorough but really helpful as there are some technicalities to the race that are worth learning about.  Brian, the race director did a fantastic job of this, ably supported my his swim, bike and run co-leads.

Onto race day, we had been told that it was likely going to be a wetsuit swim however the water temperature on the day was simmering 26C, so this meant wetsuits were banned as per the rules.  Nothing the race organisers could do about that.  The actual swim was beautiful, the lake / river does have a fair bit of duck weed in it, but the team do a great job clearing this as best as they can.  The swim up the lake is a great start to the race and allows everyone to settle into their rhythm before you head down the narrow river.  This is absolutely stunning and you won't have many race experiences like this in your time.  

There are parts of the swim course that are really shallow / some weeds to contend with but otherwise a really incredible swim, and this from a none swimmer!

T1 is nice and simple, plenty of space in there to find a seat, get your kit on and track your bike down.

Onto the bike course, definitely mark this as a tough course, I clocked it at just under 2,600m of ascent over the ride.  3 loops of the course and whilst the roads aren't closed they are almost completely traffic free up until the 3rd lap.  

On the 3rd lap you do start to encounter racers from the other events that are taking place on the same day, but they do a great job of staggering the races so there isn't much if any delay other than occasionally getting held up by cars looking to pass cyclists.  

At the end of the bike course they have a bike catcher ready to take your bike back to T1 as you then head into T2, this works well.  

From there the run is without a doubt a hilly course.  I did track the route but was told that this is in the region of 160m per lap, of which there are four laps.  95% of the course is off road, running through fields and forests.  This does a great job of breaking the run course up as you can rarely see more than 200m ahead of you.

The support on the course from the volunteers is absolutely brilliant, everyone of them cheered on each passing lap, so that was great.

All in all a lovely event set in the beautiful grounds of Hever Castle.  If you are looking for a challenging Full Distance triathlon then this is definitely a race worth checking out.  Not just for the seasoned triathletes though, there was (which I couldn't believe) at least two or three folks that were using this as their first ever triathlon.  A true baptism of fire.