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The northern contingent (A.K.A Ash & Nath) decided to split the Journey and travel to Bugs Boarding on the Saturday, spending the night at the centre before travelling on to High Wycombe on the Sunday A.M. The plan was to ride at bugs on Saturday but the combination of a slightly heavier than planned Friday night and a somewhat hungry Nath demanding KFC with extra gravy on the way down conspired against the boy’s meaning the riding plans were cut short. They did however manage to have a blast around doing some donuts on Ash’s new toy (a winter lease e-board courtesy of Bish) before heading off to the pub with Bish, Sarah & the kids in the local village to enjoy a couple of pints of San Miguel (for the adults of course) and a lovely bit of scran with Nina & Buggs at their local – the portions were huge & the food wholesome, we’ll be back there for tea next time we are down at bugs!

With the rest of the crew making their way down to King’s woods on the Sunday Morning, we were in for a treat of a day along with some surprise specials guests (Amon, Emlyn, Sonnie, Ollie and a few more!) lots of action was had from drifty slides, backflips and even a rail jam in a nice leafy clearing. The wet weather sure didn’t stop us from having a blast.

The Sunday started off with everyone meeting up in the carpark, some coming from Bugs,  where they had spent a rather chilly evening camping at the top of the hill, others arriving from the comfort of their own homes. Then the fancy dress was donned by some, even if briefly, the locals were definitely in for a treat (or trick? At the very least a surprise)

While it wasn’t initially raining, the woods were saturated from the previous days so wet and slippery was to be the order of the day. A nice gentle run for everybody to warm up was needed so we all headed into the woods for a slippery, cruisy run down a leafy trail with some gentle turns. This is the point where everybody decided to split and go explore more of the woods at the first clearing so the next half hour was spent following the haunting sounds of mountainboarders hitting trees and general screaming until we were all reunited.

Next we moved on to the drop off/bomb-hole. While this is ride-able for most, a few were actually brave enough to throw down some air time, with Skully chucking some BS shiftys, Seb with a huge switch 180 and Bish trying his luck with a BS 360, after a few failed attempts including making one tree in particular quite angry, Bish managed to get it down cleanly, damn those pesky trees! Seb decided he wasn’t quite done yet so rounded off the session with an attempted switch BS180, which somehow became a lovely little BS tweak, the only problem being once he saw the tree that Bish had previously hit, he forgot to revert the tweak or continue his rotation, he may need a new helmet after that one!

After a few bails, we all headed down to the car park area, mainly for Sonnie & Nath to have yet another rollie but also to set up a rail and ramp jam in the aforementioned leafy clearing. In typical mountainboard fashion this was ready to ride just in time for the heavens to open, but that didn’t stop the guys (and gals) from hitting the rail and MTB hopper. There were boardslides and grinds galore along with some steezy big airs, grabs, 180s and 360s off the ramp, not to mention Bish throwing - you guessed it – a steezy backflip.

Big props to Sarah for hitting a ramp of this size for the first time (in not the nicest of conditions), having really stepped up her game recently, and top marks for that avoiding action on the 2^nd run, most of us would have hit the tree or the cameraman!

Last up was a nice long mass descent to finish things off, a real long and drifty run different to the one we first hit, the perfect way to finish the day off. A quick pint in the local boozer, 2 for some, then onwards home in time to warm up with supper. Check out the video below to see all the mischief, mayhem and mishaps.

Massive THANK YOU to Team Rider & Official Team Chiropractor, Jeff Bond (my name is jeff), for organising the whole meet and all the riders who turned out to help make this a great day’s riding!

The season may be coming to a close but we are not, ATBoarders will be dropping plenty more Articles throughout the winter months and we also have a couple more edits we plan on dropping. The next video out will be the eeb-it edit from late summer, this one has taken a while to put together and it’s a bit longer than our usual releases, keep an eye on our social media channels for the video dropping soon.