If I remember correctly...

...this would have been the final trip I went on whilst completely skint.

That's not to say money is great right now - but if we're out of milk these days, chances are I'll go buy a bottle and not hope someone else will take care of it. Know what I mean?

Excuse the blandness of this post. I'm ill as...cooped up on the sofa filled with medicines.

All of the edits use Small Faces songs. Vans have this list of songs they've already got cleared. It's actually a pretty fucking good list. I think it contains all of the good Maiden albums and plenty more. Trouble is, the fun we we're filming didn't exactly suit Maiden. Any tour which avoids the pub in the evening needs something other than metal set to it, right?

Part 1.
Oh - that Vans mention a minute ago wasn't random. I should point out that this was their little UK team 5 day trip around the South East of England. I think this was also the first time a lot of the team met Dave Watson. We got to hit up a few of his local spots before travelling out to these odd places I had previously pretty much only hit up with Si Skipp and Tom Ball.
Ste Roe's Alley Oop Disater Wallride thing ended up as his last trick in Savoir Faire a year later. That came out of nowhere...One of those sessions where it was all winding down and then someone gives something 5 tries only to up all that came before it.



Part 2.
The second part has a little session on the now defunct Rainham kicker. I hated that spot. You can't see the kicker on the run up, you need someone on it to spot for the lorries doing 60mph on the run out - and the kicker wasn't much more than board width. Chris' Backside 360 ended up in Savoir Faire, too. It's pretty much the only one he's ever done. Not a bad effort.
There weren't any photo's from this session (nor the Dagenham and Skipps Ditch sessions in Part 1) as Silent Will and Grove had been out the night before in Sheffield and forgot that they had to drive down the country the next morning. Truly professional.



Part 3.
The Sound Mirror. Chris Oliver and I had been up to the other Sound Mirror on the east coast a few weeks before the tour to film some bits. He ended up with a Kickflip fakie which was in his Kingpin interview as well as his Savoir Faire part.
With the Vans team we decided to try to hit up the ones a little further down the coast. They were far bigger, and far harder to skate. I'll put up the footage from Chris' session soon just so you can see the size difference.



Part 4.
Okay, illnness is returning fast. I need more medicine, so I'm going to get this post done fast.
I'm amazed we got to spend all day at this spot. There is still so much to do there...We tried to go again but got the boot by the police after 5 minutes, which sucked. It's a long way to drive from my place just to get the busted.
I don't think we were meant to find it again, actually. We were told it was in such-and-such-a-town and were driven out there. I remember someone sitting in the car and saying that "We've already driven past that hotel once already". We were also taken down a lot of back roads. Fairs fair. Those guys didn't know us for shit and they were giving up their gold. The only reason I feel comfortable writing this is because everyone ended up being really good mates with each other afterwards (James even ended up travelling the world for a year with Pas).
The thing is, that place is huge and blue and so long as we knew it was by the sea, we'd be able to find it on Google Earth.

Check Dave's Nollie Flip. Amazing.



Part 5.
The vert/mini deathtrap. Joe Sandland took us there. The place was wrong. One fuckup and you'd slice a hand off under that tired sheet metal surface.

Theres not much to say about this stuff. Broadstairs, Margate and thats about it. Tyreman came into his own here. When he knows what he wants to do, he gets on with the job. He had so much coverage around this time and it's no wonder.
Grove's double set ollie was the last thing we filmed on this tour We saved it for Savoir Faire. Ollie Ollied the double set (Woah. Weird sentence). I should dig that out. I think Ben was eyeing it up and Ollie thought he'd try it. Not only did he do it first shot, he also shinned Grove by zooming his board at him just beforehand. Clever move.



More shit when manflu passes...