The Raddest Indoor DJ Park in the UK?

It's all going on in Sunderland. Which is a sentence that I have never, ever used before. Especially in relation to riding bikes.

If you live in Sunderland you don't have much to celebrate and if you like riding bikes on interesting trails of any description, then you'll be getting in the car and leaving your hometown far behind. Today though, I bring exciting news from the post-industrial provinces of Wearside. We now have what is possibly the only indoor, all weather, commercial dirt jumps in the country, in spitting distance of the City Centre.


Derek Milligan and Chris Todd wanted a skatepark so they moved into an abandoned factory with 26,000 square feet of space and had the bright idea of dedicating 12,000 of it to an indoor dirt section.

Derek and Chris recruited Mike Hill to oversee design and construction of the jumps. When Mike's not designing and fabricating hotrods and motorcycles at his Survivor Customs workshop in Middlesbrough he's an extremely capable dirt jumper and trail builder. Mike and a small team of volunteers have shaped 1400 tons of rubble and clay into what you see here and they've done it fast.


The initial construction should be finished by the end of March. After a month of fine tuning the official opening jam is scheduled for the 26th of April.

Oh, did I not mention the enormous outdoor section yet?


That's right. Sometimes when you buy yourself a factory it comes with a bit of free outdoor space. If you had an outdoor plot like this and were given 17,000 tons of hardcore and soil by a local skip company, what would you do with it?


Correct. You'd build a motorway of jumps in all different sizes. You'd have a 360 degree dirt bowl and a massive hip in front of a haunted house.

The outdoor section is scheduled to take a little longer to complete and is being overseen by Cycle World in Sunderland. Two men are currently responsible for the whole site and they are crying out for volunteers. Weekend dig days are coming soon. If you'd like to help out, get in touch.

Well that's your sneak peek. I'm off to the classifieds to find a DJ bike.

Look for updates here- www.facebook.com/dexxne