Roger Swannell tells us about the joys of freeriding in Janaury

"Brrrr, who's idea was this?!? What are we doing riding in Macclesfield Forest in January when its minus 4 and the tracks are covered in two inches of ice!" Blame JC. It was his idea. He chose the place, and the date. When asked to explain himself, he said, "After me recent trip down to sunny South Wales to see Joe Gatley and others we collectively decided that we need to ride more. So we came up with the idea of doing a freeride trip every month to locations all over the shop. Its my turn to sort Januarys out, so here it is." Yep, here it is. Seven of us turned up to the first monthly freeride meet, coming from Sheffield, Manchester, Leicester, and Oxford, and after the usual padding-up-in-freezing-conditions fun we set off into Macclesfield Forest.

We started with a long hike up the longest track. Not normally a good thing, but given how cold it was we were all glad to be moving. We considered riding the track back down but since none of us had brought ice skates with us we figured we'd go look for something that wasn't covered in thick sheets of ice. And after checking out a couple of lines between the trees we followed JC down a nice little track with a ninety degree corner, rocks, frozen mud ruts and more ice. That woke us up!. Then came ‘The Corner', so called because, well because it's a corner. But what a corner! A steep run-in takes you into a tight left-hand bend that requires some serious grip to ride at speed. At the bottom it's another sharp turn onto the main firetrack or go over a little drop onto a footpath. It's the kind of run you could session for hours. The day had only just started and we had more riding to do, so we headed back up hill again.

Having scrambled up a ten foot mud bank we dropped it, turned sharp and just about held enough speed to make it over the flat section before stopping for a game of ‘eenie meenie mo' to decide which order we should ride the rest of the track. One after the other we straight-lined it down the firetrack and came to a screeching stop with powerslides on more ice.

 The walk up gave us chance to talk about more freeride meets, and whether anyone would come to a freeride comp, where should it be, and how it could be organised. But by the time we got to the top the talk had turned into the need to ride down the nice little footpath we had just walked up. It started nice and easy, it had a few drainage steps to jump, but nothing too challenging. Then it quickly picked up speed just before a sharp left bend that required all your scrubbing and sliding, dipping and diving techniques to make. A turn to the right and we were out to where the path widens and mellows as it reaches the bottom of the hill.

At the top of the iciest firetrack (I don't know why we continued to call them ‘firetracks,' it was still freezing.), whilst the rest of us took it easy, Matt Gaydon had an ice sliding competition with a little dog. He was doing 360's on his knees but the dog beat him with a front flip. On the way down the rest of us were putting in some drifty four wheel slides on the ice while Matt, not to be outdone by a dog, had a go at a front flip by riding into brambles at full speed. Our plan was to link up this track to the footpath we had ridden earlier, but that idea was scuppered by us having to stop to have a nice chat with the very friendly warden. So we decided it was time to call it a day and cruised down to the bottom. And then we walked back to the cars.

After quick little race between a dirtsurfer and an atom (predictably, the dirtsurfer won) we braved the cold again to get changed and chatted about next month's freeride. February is Joe's turn to pick, so we're all going to Cadwell Park, in Lincolnshire for the Lush Longboard Track Day. Everyone is welcome at the monthly freeride meets, so if you can't make February come to March, or April, or May.

 



Pictures copyright JC, Matt Gaydon and Paul Butler