The first thing we did on arrival was to swap the front tyres of both the boys bikes from Wet Screams to High Rollers. It was another warm, dry day and they were still equipped for damper conditions. Amazingly we were the first car in the car park at around 10am.

Once we were ready we paid our fiver each admission (the site is now fenced and gated!) and went to check out the trails. First up was the dual course. It now has an extra couple of bends instead of the drop and jump near the top. It is also two seperate lanes most of the way down except for one corner where you have to decide if you need to give way or not! We had a couple of steady runs to get our eye in then had a look at the 4X track. It also has an extra couple of bends in it and a new double.

Both tracks were very sandy because of the dry weather and it took me a while to trust the traction of my tyres. After a couple of runs down the 4X Sam got the very last jump a bit wrong and crashed into the berm after it. He hurt his side. He obviously hadn't broken anything and there was no broken skin but he said it was hurting and he wanted to sit it out for a bit. In fact after a while he decided to go and get changed and watch.

Tom and I headed over the other side to see what the score was there. There is now no north shore style stuff left that is ridable :( Even the two wooden drops are closed awaiting demolition/replacement. We played around on the easy hip jump for a bit then did what used to be called the "log drop" though its not been built out of logs for a long time. Tom had never done it before and scared himself a little by launching off it a bit quick and landing well down the slope. We then had a lunch break back at the car.

After lunch I got out the cameras and we played with some camera angles. I had wanted to try out some different ones for a while from some ideas I had so we gave it a go. See what you think to the results in the quick edit below? Initially Sam wanted to play cameraman but eventually he went and got changed again and got back on his bike.

By mid afternoon we were all getting tired so decided to head off. I'm not sure the changes have improved the dual and 4X tracks but they haven't made them worse. The rest of the site definitely needs some work to make future trips worth while for us though. Replacement for all the demolished shore in some form please?