Blog
Freeride Junkie - Buckstones (Oldham) DH - Freeride
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
After having such a crackin day at Delamere on Saturday I arranged to meet up with some of the guys up at Buckstones on Sunday. Unlike a few wet weekends ago when we called up the conditions this time were as buff as you like!
The big bike was dusted off for this occasion as I hadn't been on it for a while. It's an original Kona Coiler Delux from 2004 that I've built up with 7" front and rear with the best thing about the build being that the frame is a small so it's really agile and easy to chuck about.
Buckstones is a great place. The main run is a long DH run which starts out on open moorland before diving into a small wooded section then back out into the open before entering the final wooded run. The whole trail is littered with jumps, gaps and drops (some of which are huge!) and it all flows really nice. We met up with Bod, one of the maintainers/builders of the trail, who even told us of plans to build another trail in the main wooded area. From what I can tell he seems to know what he is doing with a shovel so this should be one to look out for in the spring.
After pushing up to the top of the DH trail we decided that the 20ft step down gap wasn't on the cards today (it looked much bigger than I remembered!) so we hit the new step up instead that Bod had built next to it the day before. We then ran the main trail a few times and then moved camp into the main woods and sessioned a new 10ftish low level table top Bod had just been reworked. At this point one of the local lads (Richard) turned up on his hard tail and started running a nice line which consisted of 3 dirt jumps with the last being a decent size step down. I'd had my eye on this line since last time I was here but had never done it. As always it's much easier to run something if someone else does it first! So after watching Richard do a couple of runs I spent the next hour or so just hitting these. The last step down was really sweet as you could get some serious air off it before plummeting down onto a tight tree lined single track landing that went straight into a left hander. Just check the pic of Richard above!
At some point late afternoon our energy levels dipped and adrenaline alone wasn't sufficient to keep us going. We called it a day at our new found favourite spot around 4.30pm and set off back down the M62 wondering when the weather would be kind enough to let us return...
Click here for more info on Buckstones DH/Freeride Area
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