It’s a year or so since Dirt Factory successfully raised investment for an indoor bike park, and since then they’ve had an eventful time trying to find a suitably sized and located building. There’s no permanent Greater Manchester facility just yet, but in the meantime they will be running events.
How often do you get the chance to ride this kind of thing in a city centre?
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On the 29th and 30th of April they’ll be setting up a pump track and airbag at the Great Northern Warehouse, on Deansgate right in the centre of Manchester (you know you’ve always wanted to hit an airbag! Just don’t let it instil you with artificial confidence when you’re back on the trails, dirt is much harder…). As well as that, there will also be demo bikes, competitions, coffee and food. Tickets are for one hour sessions where you get to ride the facilities as much as you like, which sounds like a great laugh with your mates. More details on their blog, and tickets are on Eventbrite.
It sounds like the atmosphere will be a bit more festive than the video shoot looks!
David started mountain biking in the 90’s, by which he means “Ineptly jumping a Saracen Kili Racer off anything available in a nearby industrial estate”. After growing up and living in some extremely flat places, David moved to Yorkshire specifically for the mountain biking. This felt like a horrible mistake at first, because the hills are so steep, but you get used to them pretty quickly.
Previously, David trifled with road and BMX, but mountain bikes always won. He’s most at peace battering down a rough trail, quietly fixing everything that does to a bike, or trying to figure out if that one click of compression damping has made things marginally better or worse. The inept jumping continues to this day.
