There was even a rumour that Esher local legend (and star of pinkbike videos) "Hot Carl" would join us, but more of that later
First of all, we caught a train out of London Euston down to Bletchley, and had to contend with this monster spider which came crawling out of a dustbin looking for some snacks
After arriving at Bletchley (a miserable post-industrial town next to Milton Keynes), we caught a local train for the 10 minute trip to Woburn Sands
Woburn Sands is a very pretty English village, and holds one of UK freeride's best kept secrets - Aspley Woods
Run by a local trust, the woods are open for mountain biking in a huge bowled out area, with steep cliffs above - an old sand quarry at one point in the past
I took my Wildcard and Keith took his AMP, but there was a fair bit of bike swapping going on, as we both wanted to try the bikes out on all the various short course downhill runs, freeride stunts and dirt jumps
Woburn's dirt jumps are something of a legend in the South-East DJ scene - originally built by Elliot Eveson (who now lives in Cornwall and writes the "Dead Sailor" column for Dirt mag) , Sam Johnson, Div (ex-DMR team) and a bunch of renegades, the DJs have been taken over by a new group of locals and were in fine shape
The main line starts small, and gets big pretty quick, with each pack having its own quirk, and the 4 in particular having a very thin take off and landing tip which makes it important to be accurate
The hip line, as seen above, is very tricky with a small technical step down into a bombhole followed by some roller bumps and then the first hip, it took us quite alot of attempts to get this dialled
To the right of the main line is the "Jam" line which is absolutely huge, and we left it well alone for good reason ha ha
Well both the AMP and the Wildcard rode very well, with both bikes withstanding numerous lip casings due to our rusty DJ skills, but we both started getting through the lines and having a proper blast through the jumps
Keith stepped up to the challenge of riding a hip to the right, his opposite way, as seen above, and got the job done despite a few runs into the greenery
I did my best to plough through the main line with style, and got through half of the hip line but left the third alone which was basically, a huge hole and a sheer face...scary!
We both had a great ride, and Hot Carl showed up about 4pm and had a session on the numerous DH tracks above the DJ area, and after getting his head around the loose sandy riding surface and pinecones, started enjoying himself and even pinned a cool gap jump into a long chute
Keith is returning 'up North next week, and then off to Whistler in a few weeks, but has promised to return and next time we will try Chicksands and take more of our motley crew along for the fun
cheers!
Rob C
