Groningen Bikepark

So I'm slowly catching up on all my recent adventures now I have the Scotland photos out of the way.  The last weekend of my holiday coincided with the Dutch 4X championships which if I was in Amsterdam, I would've gone to watch.

The 4X track is a couple of hours drive from Amsterdam so that's why I'd never been before.  I prefer the Filthy trails in the opposite direction, but fancied something new so I went to check it out on Sunday 2nd September.

It's a pretty big fast track on quite a steep hill in Groningen in the north of the Netherlands.  There's whoops, a step down, big fast walled berms, a step up, some monster tables and a nice hip at the end.  All of which I was soon to realise too large for me!  I am certainly no racer but enjoyed watching some locals style it up.

As much as I tried I did not have the bottle to fully open up and go for it.  Speed is key here and I think I left that at home that day.  So I concentrated on the short slopestyle section that was recently built.  At the top is a choice of 3 lines as shown below:

Two ladders and one piece of shore.  Both ladders also were droppable and I comfortably nailed the smaller of the two drops on the right.  The middle drop was above my comfort zone on that day.  The picture below should give you an idea of the size:

The shore line on the left looked awesome.  It's two small gaps, followed by the ladder berm which cuts short then you have to jump off an into the dirt berm.  I was intregued as this is the riding I love.  I prefer a nice challenging line, man made or natural, to hurling yourself as fast as possible at a 20 foot jump!  So I watched the locals make it look easy:

After they left I gave it a go myself and was surprised how easy it was. The difficult part was letting it all go in the beginning so you were fast enough to clear the two small gaps but then easing on a smidging of brakes so you were able to land safely in the dirt berm and not in the bushes!  I was pretty chuffed so got the camera out to capture some footage.  I only managed two recordings before it started to drizzle but here you go anyway:

The rain put me right off the shore but I'd had a good session so it was a good time to hit the road home.  I have a few more photos here or view them in slideshow format here