Mojo Fox Trail Video Diaries: Episode 1 Part 1

Behind the scenes shooting a new Mojo Suspension All Mountain Series... Episode One with Danny Macaskill, Joe Barnes and Rowan Sorrell

MTBcut have been shooting on the downhill race circuit for a few years now. Having filmed with some of the top international racers and teams its always awesome to see these riders on World Cup tracks and then beam the video across to Pinkbike for everyone to catch up with the action. But towards the end of last year we got thinking about the scene a bit closer to home.

A few weeks ago we released the First Video Diary and we wanted to tell more about how the film came about. Inside you'll learn all about that project,Personally, I now spend most of my time on UK trails riding my 5 inch travel bike with a bunch of mates. Everyone has different backgrounds and styles of riding, but we all ride the same trails and have a blast doing it. So together with Chris at Mojo Suspension we came up with a plan to recreate this with a bunch of different riders in a series of videos from different locations throughout the year.


Here's the line up we got together for Episode 1:

Danny Macaskill - You Tube trials phenomenon
Joe Barnes - Top UK and World Cup Downhill Rider
Ed Oxley - Bearded Bloke and XC whippet who also runs www.great-rock.co.uk MTB coaching
Rowan Sorrell - Trail Centre builder with his company www.back-on-track.org and Former World Cup DH racer
Aimee Dix - Top UK Female rider and suspension guru for Mojo Suspension

The plan was to hit some trails in the Yorkshire area for episode one and document the trip and the trails on camera. 3 days in total, consisting of a different venue and style of riding each day.

Day One-

Once Danny had managed to take forever to stick his new Fox 36's on his bike (he's a perfectionist that lad!) we headed over to Lee Quarry in Lancashire. This is a brand new 'Trail Centre' recently build by Rowan and his company. I use the phrase 'Trail Centre' pretty loosely as the venue isn't so much big xc loops, but shorter freeride style riding with rhythms and berms. The weather was pretty, grey but the riding was going off. Macaskill in particular was buzzing on riding his bike after spending all winter injured (he tripped on a kerb you know...) and was showing the DH boys a few things on smashing berms.

Officially this was a Fox test day with Orange Bikes, with the riders giving some feedback on suspension setup to allow the stock components to be tuned up to perfection, however the attitude on the trails was anything, but serious. Danny has this weird habbit of giggling everywhere when riding on mountain bike trails, as most people know him for his mind blowing street trials he was loving throwing down the gauntlet with the DH riders on the trails. Lee Quarry is an awesome place to ride though, I managed to use the headcam as an excuse to get some riding in and I'll be going back, a great day shredding with your mates is to be had there!




Day Two-

For day two it was Ed's turn to show us around. After spending a few minutes in sheer awe of his beard we headed out to some of the best Yorkshire trails around the town of Hebden Bridge. The trails were completely opposite to the previous days riding, with big rocky singletrack being the order of the day. From the moment we hit the first trail Joe Barnes was beaming from ear to ear, his smooth style on such rough terrain is just unreal. As you'll see in the video he pushed Macaskill hard enough that he took a pretty hard smash in the stomach! Joe was nothing short of awesome at these trails, riding a short travel bike with Fox 32's and 36's was pretty tough down some of this, but Joe made it look effortless.


Ed was loving this, seeing these guys tear up his own trails, and he was holding his own in amongst all the testosterone. Similarly Aimee had Danny speechless at the speed of her riding. I guess being a street trials rider who rides and practices by himself most of the time he'd never really seen any of the top women riders.


The stepping stones at the bottom created a load of hilarity, with Ed being local he mentioned no-one had ever ridden them. Before he'd even finished the sentence Macaskill was half way over the river, laying down the gauntlet that was only taken up by a certain camera man...

Check out it all in this 12 min epic vid... The 3rd Day's action coming up in a few days...it was the most epic day too, so stay tuned! Keep up with us by following us on Facebook or Twitter



Big shout out to Mojo Suspension for making this all possible!

Photo's by John and Ben Chennels.. Vid by MTBcut

Posted In:
Stories Reader Stories