Last weekend Olly and I hit up our old home town of South Shields to meet up with Marc Bell and Jamie Whitts to have a chilled ride, see some new spots that are under development and to ride some places we rode many years ago. Northern Child who jumped the Great Wall of China came out for all of an hour before he couldn’t stand the thought of his car not being parked near enough and disappeared.. no doubt back off to China to eye up a bigger trick over said wall.

Anyways it was flippingg freezing at the start of the sash down on the sea front. We met at the skatepark to warm up but efforts against the wind blasting in off the North Sea were making it difficult. We decided to pack up the chat and ride over to the Westovian benches where Marc “all in mono” Bell busted out one of his legendary feeble, nolly bars and here for your pleasure in full 32 colours is an animated GIF that reminds me of the late 90’s internet..

After a good warm up, less wind session at the benches we all got fat and ate chips remembering what the Woodbine use to have on offer back when it was all just flats and not so much fields like certain parts had changed to. Once indulging had ceased we continued on and went to hit up a spot that I hadn’t been to in some years yet we all used to ride weekly ten years back. First off Marc showed me the position I needed to be in for my ice pick on the bank to sub and then the rolls were reversed and he snapped this photo

Next up for the memory lane session Olly took control of my breaked steed and started busting out the abubaca on the bank sub with dreads unleashing hell in the second photo.

I hadn’t rode this spot with these guys in so many years and memories of sessions and good times poured back. Remembering the old setups we used to ride, Olly with a Standard STA but maybe even before that some green painted bike that may have been an S&M Dirt Bike, Marc Bell with a Terrible One Progression and maybe before that his Hoffman Taj, Bic on his S&M and then little old me with my yellow S&M Dirt Bike with scaffolding stunt peg, G-Sport hub with 17mm motorcycle axle on an Alex Fat Rim donated by Bic and Olly.. ah the memories