Having not had much of a summer in the UK, and a great deal of offshore winds at my local spot, I decided to head over a few days early to spend some time at the local beaches - where the wind is onshore when it is offshore at home!
Thursday morning I loaded the car up, packing all the kites I could find and set off for the trip to Belgium. On arriving at Flexifoil Europe HQ (Mellow) in Belgium I was met by Mr Stones who had been travelling around Europe for the last few weeks! We were both dying for a session. With the tide in I opted for a kitesurf session but Richy decided to hold fire and let the tide go out before going out for a buggy.
Friday morning we woke to very little wind and drizzle, far from ideal so we just waited it out. Richy headed off to do some sightseeing and I popped into a local town to get some hardware for the buggy.
As I was sorting out my buggy the wind started to pick up slightly and the weather soon cleared. I headed down to the beach loaded with a Blade IV 8.5 and my buggy for a nice little session. There were loads of young kids out kiting. One girl took me by surprise, at around 12 years old she was throwing a buggy around! She was fully in control and having a lot of fun! This was great to see and something that we need to do in the UK - get more youngsters into the sport!
Waking the next morning we were greeted by sunshine and wind! This is not normal for the morning of an event! We were stoked. The van and trailer was quickly loaded with all the gear and we headed down to the event location, a few miles down the road from the Mellow shop.
On arriving at the beach the tide was out leaving plenty of hard packed sand to be ragged all day long! The wind was blowing a steady cross on 25mph. Richy and I put up the Blade IV 4.9 ideal for these conditions. We soon started boosting some massive airs and kiteloops for the public to enjoy! Very quickly we started doing some sweet rotations with kiteloop landings! These felt so smooth and were great fun. Richy and I were soon eyeing up a wall that separates sections of the beach and before long we were boosting over it! On the other side were small puddles filled with cold water, something we did not really want to land in! Using the 4.9 we cleared the wall with ease and adding a kite loop into the landing meant we travelled a vast amount of distance!! Sadly the lifeguards were not too sure about us doing it so quickly asked us to stop. As the morning went on Mark Berry and Tom Beaton from MBS arrived, sadly the beach was getting a bit soft and ragged. Both went out landboarding but soon found the conditions very hard to ride with wheels digging in and getting stuck! As they were not able to landboard safely they opted for a kitesurfing session.
The wind started to drop slightly into the afternoon so Richy and I put up the Blade IV 6.5 to cope better with the slightly lighter winds. I love going out on the 6.5 as the float this kite generates allows you great amounts of confidence when hurling yourself into tricks. Now equipped with the 6.5, which boosts rotations and gives so much time in the air we could really show what freestyle buggying is all about – it went down very well.
The following morning was very slow and relaxed. With no wind the riders were in no hurry to get out of bed! Richy headed off to the ferry for the trip back to the UK. Mark, Tom, Peter and I headed down to the party tent to help dismantle all the equipment.
Sadly for the whole day the wind did not show so no kiting took place, just plenty of chilling out. That evening we all headed to Peter’s house to have a meal with his family.
On Monday morning as there was some wind and sunshine Mark, Tom and I opted for a land session at the local beach. Annoyingly the wind was ever so slightly off-shore and coming over a mammoth dune making it not great for freestyle. Seeing a lot of other riders out on the water further down the beach we went back to the shop. We all kitted up for a session on the water. After a few hours we were all pretty achy so packed down. In the evening we went back to Peter’s house to have a meal with the family once again.
Tuesday morning I headed back to the shop to unload all of my gear from the van and trailer and loaded it into my car for the journey back. After a few hours of travelling I made it home!
Having all had a great time we are already making plans to travel back out to the X-Beach 2009 event. A huge thanks goes to Peter Vanden Busche from Mellow (Flexifoil European Distributor) for his excellent hospitality, it was greatly appreciated by all.
Huge thanks to Peter @ Mellow for looking after us - Click here for his website
To view the gallery of this event - click here
A wallpaper from this event is available to download - Click here
