It’s hard to work out who digs regularly down here, especially on a sunny weekend, I ask Robbo and he gives me a roll-call of guys who have put in the hours, “Deville, Frog, Robbo, Cambridge, Blue, Keith, Matt, Sheen, Shakey, Alex and the youth.” I ask if he’s ever lost any good friends who dug down here, or other trails, who just drifted off after stopping digging? “Milk from Burlish trails and the Harefield locals. Both those places were fucking mint sets of trails.”
Eternal Optimists
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82
I notice on the first evening that Robbo’s the last to sit down. He seems to consistently keep himself busy, often on his own. He’ll sit down for a few minutes then drift off into the darkness to fetch wood. I don’t think the darkness has any effect on him here, I think he could find his way out of the woods on smell alone. I ask him if he’s ever thought of quitting building the jumps, what with the terrible weather in 2012 and previous half successful attempts at ploughing the trails. “No. Never. It’s what I do, it’s second nature.” His answer is honest and I feel stupid even asking such a question. At Brighouse and Epsom there are pauses and sighs, which might simply be down to their older ages, but not with Robbo, I don’t think the idea has crossed his mind until I brought it up. “I’ve been coming down here since I was 14, so 11 years. For four of those years I came down all day, every day.” We sleep out that night around a fire. Everyone is either drunk or stoned or both. “I haven’t slept down here in a tent for about four years.” Robbo tells me, “I feel much better waking up outdoors, especially if I’ve had a drink. It’s just nice, waking up with the fresh air. It sorts you out.” In the morning the fire is still warm enough to cook on and everyone looks filthy from the smoke and dirt. I like it: ‘this is what it’s all about’ I tell myself, feeling surprisingly fresh, as Robbo knows. Later in the afternoon I shoot a couple of photos with Robbo and Frog. Frog tells me he hasn’t been riding much recently, but there’s that flow through the jumps that is almost second nature. You can just tell that they’re his jumps, much like any local at their own spot. Robbo starts on a line called Crazy Kids. The jumps are like spines with transitions pulled apart, which blast Robbo up into the branches, buzzing his wheels against leaves. It’s a treat watching this guy ride here. He’s one of the best riders we have in the UK, he’ll ride anything you put in front of him. But it’s here, at his own spot, the place that he’s put so much time and effort into, that he really shines. Epsom You don’t have to travel far from central London to get to Epsom. The trails have carved out a place for themselves in the commuter belt of one of the world’s largest cities. Even at this distance, land is still priced at premium, which makes their prolonged history in this location seem all the more notorious. I’m there to meet Jon Robinson and Ross ‘Head’ Broughton. The pair have been frequenting this patch of woodland since the mid 90s. “I don’t want to know how long I’ve been coming down here,” Jon tells me, jokingly. If dates are correct, the pair have been building and maintaining trails down here for 17 years, and with that, supporting a scene for countless local and not so local riders. I ask them how they got started, what influenced them to start digging here? “All this was bushes. It was just a footpath, where you’d drop down into that hip,” Ross recalls, “you can see where the old guys sprayed a height pole on the tree. It used to be a step-up with a flat landing. It was just footpaths cut into the thick bush and brambles. I think the first person who made us dig here was Jason Lunn. I must have been 13 and he made us build all this wacky stuff that never ran. He was proper god squad, so it was always a team