Kye Forte Roadtrip Episode 1: Gawton Gravity Hub and the Forest of Dean

Jamie Edwards·

Features News Video

·Wednesday 21 October 2015

EPISODE 1:

Kye Forte, a camper van, his Nukeproof Pulse and 1 week of downhill!

Join Kye and crew as they explore some of the UK’s best downhill uplift venues. In episode 1 Kye hits the road for Gawton Gravity Hub and the Forest of Dean with Flyup Downhill.

Made possible by Nukeproof and Mud Hugger

Packing the van

In Kye’s words …

The race season is always so busy that it’s hard to get time to just ride and to explore new trails. I’m pretty new to downhill and whilst I’ve ridden lots of race tracks I haven’t had a chance to really get out and visit some of the other great places to ride in the UK.

With a quiet(ish!) spot in the season we packed the camper, called up a few uplifts venues and hit the road. My mates Cal Earnshaw (film maker) and Ian Lean (Wideopenmag’s race team photograher) joined me and we trucked on.

Day 1 – Gawton

The first stop was a local one at Gawton with Jay Williamson and Greg Berry – both fast local riders that I enjoy riding with. Jay used to ride on the Wideopenmag team and has moved on to race World Cups on the SPSyndicate to is always a good one to go for a shred with. We spent a load of time on Super Tavi and on HSD – both are just really fun and full of jumps and features to play around on. There was a great corner, double, double combo that we had tonnes of fun on.

Rolling out the big guns

After our day at Gawton we dropped back to my place, swapped the truck for the camper van and rolled on to the Forest of Dean and some uplifts with Flyup Downhill. Day 1 had been so easy going that we’d expected a short drive up and a day of shredding … then the camper’s exhaust fell off and we sat in traffic for two hours. The best layed plans, right?

Day 2 – the Forest of Dean

After some emergency repairs and plenty of motorway queuing we finally met up with the Widoepenmag team at FoD and got cracking. Tight on time we sectioned some of the best trails near Pedalabikeaway and ran some trains through the trails. Rich Thomas showed us his best Bubba Scrub impressions and we had a blast, albeit a bit of a rushed on.

Lesson learned – on a roadtrip things will always take twice as long and be twice as faffy as you’d thought!

BBQ’s and trails

We topped off the day with a trip over to my buddy Aliano’s place in the Forest’. He’s got a great setup with some awesome dirt jumps in his back garden. We fired up the BBQ, got the camper parked up by the pond and ran some lines through the trails as the sun went down.