ORGANISERS of a new cycle event will be hoping for a muddy good time when it pedals into action in Dunfermline this weekend.

Pittencrieff Park will be the venue for the inaugural Squirrel Cross event on Saturday, a cyclocross race that will take place over a 1.2 kilometre route featuring grass, tarmac and woodland.

The sport consists of timed races of up to an hour long over an enclosed course, and a similar event took place last November at Fife College's Halbeath campus during round four of the Raleigh Scottish Cyclocross series.

Hosted by Dunfermline Cycling Club, it attracted more than 500 riders and those behind the event in the Glen are focused on encouraging newcomers to cyclocross, and bolstering the women's scene by offering a separate female race.

Velo Fife's Kirsteen Torrance and John McComisky, assistant cycling development officer with Fife Council, are behind the venture which will also feature a men's and children's race, the latter in association with the Carnegie Cyclones cycling club.

In 2014, a closed road criterium race - called the 'Squirrel Crit - was held in the city centre, with the route including the Glen, Dunfermline Abbey and the Maygate.

Widely hailed as a hit, it returned in 2015 and featured High Valleyfield's two-time British National Circuit Race Champion Eileen Roe and Dunfermline's 2010 Commonwealth Games silver medallist Charline Joiner, who retired from the sport last year.

For more information and to enter, visit https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/events/details/165896/SquirrelCross-.