...THE DUDES OF HAZZARD
The Dudes of Hazzard – what an interesting bunch. A group of quirky individuals who love riding sloppy ruts, eating baked beans and filming their antics, but get some impressive race results too. When they aren’t travelling in the Landship (their camper van), they’re in Fort William riding tight, awkward trails, training and making videos. We asked our inside man, Brodie Hood, to find out more about them.
Who are the Dudes?
Joe Barnes is the main man behind the Dudes, and his personality is portrayed perfectly in the videos. ‘Top Chief’ lives in a luxurious static caravan next to the Shed (their log cabin HQ), has a lovely Reliant Robin and spends his evenings writing rap songs, training or watching Strictly Come Dancing.
He’s joined by Liam Moynihan, a Dude since the early days. Liam has just moved back to the Highlands after eight years at university in Glasgow, deciding that life as a PhD student in the big smoke wasn’t for him. He’d been studying the micro-scale mixing of fluids using elastic instabilities – it’s hard to even remotely contemplate what this entailed, and it’s quite a contrast to the other life we know him for, of travelling with the boys to races, living out of the van and backflipping off bridges.
Fergus Lamb, or ‘Fergy Babes’ to the boys, is another original member of the Dudes. As quick on a moto trials bike as he is on an MTB (he won
a round of the Scottish series last year), he can often be seen jumping off bridges in the Dudes’ videos. He actually broke his back jumping 90ft into Scotland’s Monessie Gorge and, after being winched out by the local mountain rescue team, spent a year in a brace.
Craig Miller spanners for the crew, and then there’s the little scamp, Lachlan Blair. The new boy fits in perfectly, being an impressive rider (he’s perfected the beloved ‘enduro tweak’ and is committed to racing the full DH World Cup series this year) and loving nothing more than hanging out with Joe in his caravan, drinking Barleycup, riding ruts, eating beans and doing gym sessions.
When it comes to food, these boys stick to what they know. A strict varied diet of beans, potatoes and fish fingers is all they require. At races, instead of relaxing and sampling the local cuisine with Joe’s Canyon Factory Enduro Team teammates, you’ll often find them inside the Landship munching on fish fingers and mashed potato while watching an episode of [Scottish sitcom] Still
Game. They like to keep it simple.
How did it all start?
The Dudes have become well known in the mountain biking world for their entertaining videos, impressive
riding and all-round quirkiness. It all started in 2005, when Joe and a school friend got their hands on a £50 Flip camera and made a video for the Fort William Mountain Film Festival. That 15-minute clip set the tone for the dozens of ‘edits’ to come over the next 12 years. “Nobody was really documenting their random happenings at the time so we snuck in (or pioneered) the lo-fi MTB video blog,” says Joe. “They went down really well, and as people lapped up the blogs, we started to get more and more ideas for trips and sketches. The rest is history, and there are now over 60 videos to peruse on our Vimeo channel.”
The Dudes have also released a self-titled movie, made a music video ( Standbyyourbike) and founded an annual enduro race with nearly 500 entrants (the Kinlochleven Enduro, which was originally called The Dudes of Hazzard’s Spirit of Enduro and had its own petting zoo with Shetland ponies on hand to welcome the riders at the