Text: Effraim.
Photos: Effraim and Matti Hemmings.

Day 1 of the Wheels and Finns today in Joss Bay, Kent for the UK Flatland Championships organised by Matti Hemmings and myself. Matti was already on site a day earlier to check everything was running according to plan. I made the trip over to Broadstairs via London on the train, the weather was not looking too good on route.

For all of you who are not here, the festival is set up on top of hill overlooking the coast (see photo above). Matti kindly picked me up at Broadstairs train station which is about an hour and half from London St Pancras, Dino Jeffers was also at the train station. As per usual, plenty of jokes going down whenever we get to hang out, we went and got food by the contest site and discussed the final parts of the event so we are ready to go tomorrow at 1pm with AM flatland.

After food, it was time to ride and test out the floor. The dj music set up is amazing (see photo above) and as soon as we started riding the DJ started playing the tunes and people started wandering in to watch in the tent and escape what was left of the rainfall. Myself, Dino, and Matti rode for around three hours. We also shot a few photos from the session that you can check out in this Day 1 repo, Matti was pulling a nice spinning two footed death coming out straight to no footed death (see photo) despite having a lot of problems with his back, I was working on cowboy flip combos on my second session back after summer working, and Dino was getting his runs dialled for tomorrow’s contest. We have a few tweaks to do to the floor in the morning, but that shouldn’t take too long. A massive improvement on last year’s floor, already stoked to see what get thrown down over the weekend here in beautiful Joss Bay, Kent.

As well as the UK Flatland Championships, we also have the UK Mini ramp championships going down right outside the flatland tent, really looking forward to checking that out when we get a break from running the flatland contest. Day 1 was a lot of fun, check back tomorrow for more updates from the UK Flatland Championships here at the Wheels and Finns Festival.