By Duncan Archer, Business Manager, Ourea Events

At Ourea Events we pride ourselves in creating and staging world-class events that inspire participants to take on challenging and life-affirming adventures. At the top of the tree are our highest profile events like:

Dragon’s Back Race®, a 6 day stage races down the spine of Wales
Cape Wrath Ultra®, an 8 day expedition race to the NW tip of Scotland
Northern Traverse®, a 300km continuous race across northern England

*Northern Traverse: Experience the beauty of the Wainwrights coast-to-coast trail ©No Limits Photography*

We continually strive to deliver the best possible participant experiences. Sadly, it is an inescapable truth that professionally delivering complex events like these to the highest standards in the industry is costly, and we acknowledge that entry to these races is not inexpensive. We have always looked for ways to make them more affordable, and we are excited to announce a range of new measures to lower the financial barriers to entering these big races:

Monthly instalment payments – we’ve always offered instalment payments for our expedition races and up until recently, Dragon’s Back Race and Cape Wrath Ultra have had instalments due every 2 months (for example, DBR 2025 has payments of £400 on the 1st of December, February, April and June). In all cases, the amounts are several hundred pounds, which we recognise could pose a barrier for people wishing to put their name down for these bucket list challenges. Therefore, we have made the decision to change to monthly payments, which means lower amounts per instalment. For example, DBR 2026 is set to be 12 monthly payments of £150.
Opening entries earlier – previously, we opened entries for major events around the time of the previous year’s event. We are now opening entries earlier to spread payments over a longer time and make the monthly amounts more affordable, aiming in the long term to be 18 months ahead. For example,

DBR 2026 is opening in July 2026
CWU 2027 is expected to open in Oct 2025
DBR 2027 is expected to open in February 2026

Final balloon payment – currently, if you entered after some instalments had become due, then those instalment amounts must be paid up front, in addition to the deposit. Now, on entry, you just pay the deposit, then pay instalments on any remaining instalment dates, and only pay the missed instalments in a final “balloon” payment. For example, for DBR 2026:

If you enter in July 2025, you’ll pay the £99 deposit, then 12 instalments of £150 on the 1st of August through July (and no final balloon necessary).
If you enter in December 2025, you’ll pay the £299 deposit, then 7 instalments of £150 on 1st January through July, and then a final balloon payment of 5 * £150 = £750 on 1st August. The idea is to support people who may need to budget for any final payments.

Lower penalties for deferral – to date, the deferment scale has started with 100% [of payments minus the deposit] able to be deferred up to 10 months before the event, and decreasing by 4% each month down to 64% able to be deferred within 2 months of the event. As you can appreciate, this is to support the complex infrastructure and final commitments of putting on events to this scale, but we also recognise this could be a disincentive to entering if you are not confident of your ability to do the necessary training and preparation, alongside the risk of injuries or illness. Therefore, we have made the deferment scale significantly more generous, with;

100% [minus deposit] able to be deferred up to 2 months before
80% [minus deposit] able to be deferred up to the closing date
The final date for deferments is 2 weeks before rather than 3 weeks before

We also continue to offer various other payment policies to lower barriers to entering:

Instalments due on 1st of the month – To help managing finances for those who get paid at the end of the month.
Pregnancy, IVF, adoption and military deferment policies – To manage life situations that may not be anticipated at the point of entry, which can be a year before the event

There will always be more work to do here, and we hope by collaborating with organisations like Into Ultra, refining our existing policies and making new changes, we can go some way to making our biggest races as affordable as possible, so more of you can take on challenging and life-affirming adventures at our events.

Opening the Door to Adventure: How We’re Reducing Barriers to Our Biggest Races

Creating A Path ‘Into Ultra’ Running