Jumps for Dads Skills Course from Ed Oxley on Vimeo.

Here are some of the guys from last week’s Jumps for Dads course demonstrating their new Prosolution drop off skills on the Hope Line at Gisburn Forest.

There are details and dates for this course up above in the ‘Skills’ > ‘More Advanced’ tabs.

I was really happy to take part in the making of this video made by Tim Royle from Whitenosugar Productions. The trails in the video are the ones that I use for lots of my courses. The Hope line, sponsored by Hope Technology, is used for ‘Jumps for Dads’ and the ‘Flow’. The tight woodland singletrack of ‘Homebaked’ is used on ‘Stop Crashing 2’, as well as ‘Flow’ and is a brilliant place for developing better cornering and pump technique.

The other riders in the video are Dan and Ben Hemmingway, riding (and building) the Hope Line. Tim Gridley, from Gisburn Bikes AKA The Dog & Partridge and Dart from Hope are the other two.

Only 3,429 to go

I’m starting doing skills days at Gisburn on Saturday this week with a privately booked session where we’ll be looking at downhilling skills including drop offs and crazy ass rock riding. Open group days start in November and are listed over in the sidebar.

In the meantime I shall be getting busy with the rubber stamp to bring my “Stop Crashing / Start Riding” postcards up to date :-/

Looking down “The Slab”

Nicola on The Slab

Had a sunny day up at Gisburn Forest last week on the new trails with Nicola, Steve and Alan. It’s massively improved from the pretty dull loop that used to be there thanks to the work of Rowan Sorrel and his trail building crew. Like the sections that he designed for Lee Quarry, the new stuff at Gisburn is challenging and technical. Lots of berms, big roller coaster banked wall rides, tight wooded singletrack, rocky jumps and lovely flowing blue graded trail all add up to a fun day out with plenty of chance to progress your riding, especially if you repeat sections and get your lines just right. The downhill tracks, off the main loop, are well worth trying as well, with their intermediate level drop offs, kickers and berms.

Nicola shows the “limp wrist” as a comment on the riding of the boys.

I’ll be running skills days up at Gisburn, see the contents page over on the right of here for details of group days or get in touch for one to one or bespoke group days.

There’s always hope….and beer.

Good beer, accommodation, parking and food is to be found at the Dog and Partridge in Tosside, a really nice pub and cafe run by mountain bikers. Check them out here.