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Farmer Johns Session April 2009

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Well, thanks to Ian at Upgrade Bikes (DMR), with his beyond the call of duty customer service, my freeride rig is back on the road again! So where better to test it out than at Farmer Johns in Cheshire.

It had been a good few weeks since we last attended Farmer Johns for a dig day and even longer since we actually rode there. So with the sun blazing down we were well up for a good session!

As we did the usual walk across the 1st field we noticed that the north shore supports that we put in hadn't changed but in the 2nd field about 25m of ladders had been erected with a very skinny high line and a sea saw on the low line. Just realized that I didn't take a photo...whoops...I'll get one next time though.

The forecast said showers so we thought be better session the wall ride early doors before it got too wet. It really is a great wall ride as it is high and long so plenty of scope for going big. The picture above is of Paul getting some decent height on the thing...this was the first time he'd ridden a wall ride!

After the session on the wall ride we decided to push up to the very top of the dh course and session some of the hits. Last time we were here it was wet and we had real trouble keeping our speed up for the jumps...so this time we thought we'd make the most of the buff conditions. After a run down we homed in on a really nice hip jump part way down the trail. It was a real 100 mile an hour type of jump as the take off was pretty steep. Here's a bit of footage of it...admittedly the jump is pretty lame as I was trying a one footer and so didn't quite get the height I was getting when straight airing it...

After the hip we had a play on the north shore gap and then the gaps below it. There were three to go at...the one you can see in the shore gap video below is the smallest. There was also a bigger one that was a hip step down, which we spent a good hour sessioning as it was so good. The biggest one was about an 18ft gap transfer step down. We all made a point of doing a new line that day...that was mine and it scared me to death! Just waiting for the video footage of that one to come through from Gav...

After this we spent a bit of time on a bit of shore on one of the dh lines. It was a shore drop onto a very rooty off camber steep which took you straight into a tight left hand berm. We had a session on this in the winter and it was very, very sketchy. Today though it was running very nicely indeed...

We called it a day after this as we had been riding for about 5 hours and were all feeling the heat...as always we checked out the hut jump on the way out but once again the usual excuse was used...too tired! Luckily we manged to film a rider doing it although the camera ran out of memory just at the critical moment...although it did us quite a nice still. Check it out at the end of the footage below.

Farmer Johns Session April 2009