Tom Cardy Attacks Chelmsford - Video
Chelmsford... A city that many mountain bike riders will have never heard of... Located roughly an hour from London means the busy, stressful lifestyle rubs off on Chelmsford. It's far from a mountain bike rider's paradise, with its lack of elevation, very few trails and the majority of woodland is swallowed by the ever-growing concrete jungle. However, if you look beyond the negatives, I believe that mountain biking is only as restricting as your imagination. The concrete jungle can become a vast playground stacked full of endless lines and possibilities, objects that have never been considered for a bike let alone ridden before. To go with this the atmosphere is unique, doing something so different in an unexpected environment makes it stand out from the day to day activities within the city.
Radical bikes is located just outside of the city center, the creation of the bike park has not only given us a perfect place to practice our dirt jumping skills but has created a strong local scene amongst jump bike riders and BMX riders. The bike park does suffer from a lack of elevation and flowy mountain trails, however with a dream, big line, a smaller trails line, foam pit and a resi ramp Radical bikes is the perfect training ground for a dirt jump rider.
As for creating this project, it has been great fun, from building all the little ramps and the big line at Radical bikes during the winter to filming, editing, and planning throughout the whole year both myself and Joe have pushed our limits with this project. It was made difficult by trying to find time slots when the city wasn't busy as you can't rock up in peak times with ramps and start filming, unfortunately! This combined with trying to capture perfect lighting, perfect angles, perfect shots, perfect riding, Joe traveling lots for work and myself traveling for as many shows and FMB stops as possible made MEGALOPOLITAN the hardest project yet, by far! This doesn't go to mention trying to compete with the weather here in the UK! I would like to shout out to Radical bikes, Mick Mitchell, Darren Eastall, Alex Dunbar and everybody else that helped to make this project happen! Thanks!
Video: Joe Simkins
Photos: Chris Greenwood, Darren Eastall
Words: Tom Cardy
MENTIONS: @joesimkins
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- a small suggestion for the audio at the beginning - pull the volume of the audio narrative track up next time and when you record the narrative don't make the person read/talk super fast because then it's very clear that he is reading or the text has been manicured before recording
My buddy Stuart Terry rides at Radical on a Cotic, you shouldn't talk to him though as he'll try and touch you up