Video: Continental - Up from the Slate

The Welsh countryside offers a vast untouched wildness of roaming forest and distant mountains, whilst the towns and cities can be the complete opposite; a thriving and overcrowded environment, filled with bustling businessmen and pencil pushers. Once upon a time, Blaenau Ffestiniog was the latter, a slate industry-driven town, where mining and quarrying were its biggest investments. Over the years, the thriving industrial town has seen a drying-up of many of its resources, with a slow decay in its wake. Business in the quarries is still pushing on, and the slate that comes from this area is still some of the best in the world, but the mine tours and corner shops selling sticks of rock don't bring the crowds in like they used to.

In the interest of driving tourism back into Blaenau, the locals turned to bikes and one man, Adrian 'Bud' Bradley, who took it upon himself to open the darndest, most root'n'est toot'n'est attraction for miles, Antur Stiniog. And boy, did flocks of bikers come!

Antur pricked the attention of the Continental Enduro Team, who felt it was a great place to capture the essence of what this place is: the views, the scenes, the copious amounts of slate, and most of all the riding. Great trails and an all-round joyful day ensued with Rob Scullion and Mike Inman, two of the three-man team. Rob and Mike are looking quick and on form for this year's gravity-based enduros in the UK...crazy how they manage to find time to train around their full time jobs.

Videography: Laurence Crossman-Emms // www.laurence-ce.com