A few days ago, I went a walk to a place I've not been for 20-odd years, I'd been visiting some folks and I had a camera so I walked to the place that all the kids from my neighbourhood gathered to ride bmx in the summer of 1984.
I'm a bit cack at computery stuff, I can't manage a google earth view or owt like that but these co-ordinates should get you to the right place; 53°23'00.26" N 1°31'07.68" W
You should see a patch of trees between 2 lots of allotments, next to a cemetery chapel. This piccy looks up towards the coloured houses which are at the top of Stannington view road, at the junction with Mulehouse road. The grassy area in front was used for the footy practice scenes in the film "when saturday comes". Riding down towards the camera would be the first bit of downhill I hit on my way to ride "THE CEMY"
A few streets north-westerly from here, less than half a mile really, the council were busy demolishing the "monkey bumps", an area about 1/3 the size of a footy pitch on a flat lower plateau of a former quarry-turned recreation ground, and turning it into the bolehills bmx track.... That place formed a huge chapter in my life, More of that later.
In this next pic, I have turned 180 degrees from pic one and headed up the lane to the allotment dumping ground which became our track..
Pedalling up here I would begin to hear the shouts, skids, freewheel clickings and clashes of frame to fork of whoever might be riding that day.
And here, now only half it's former width is the place that we started our races. We'd line up at the top of the picture in rows of 2,3 or 4 , depending on how many were racing, and ride towards the camera, bearing right just before the tree behind the small white sign.
After you passed the first tree, the path narrowed to pretty much single-track, you went down a dip, about 2 feet high, then a couple of bike lengths long before you rose up 2 feet again and kinked slightly right...
Then came this bit, you rode through the largest gap, between the two left-most trees, down a dip of about 3 feet, then up the other side and banking right...
As you got round the right bend, you rode parallel to the cemetery fence for about 15 metres with the path gradually widening out and turning right as you approached the top of the main drop, just beyond the tree in the centre..
Unbelievably overgrown now, this is the top of the main drop, the shortest "race" path was to go over at the bottom left corner of this next picture, the drop was abot 9 feet, down a 2-3 foot wide path and about 50-60degrees steep..
Further to the right, next to the tree, was an elevated area known as the "Death Drop",
It was about 2 feet above the main drop summit but way steeperfor the first bike length or so, it fed into the main drop slope about halfway down.
As soon as you got to the bottom, you kinked right, went over a tall, steep single roller about 3 feet high then immediately up a steep bank which was a 180 berm to the right with zero camber..
This bit had changed a lot, imagine riding up from the left corner of this picture, up and around the back of the tree (which I don't remember being there - perhaps it wasn't at the time.....) and exiting the picture at the bottom right corner
You then dropped down about 6 feet at 45 dgrees into this last straight which is now part of a re-routed public footpath.. The tree which looks to be in the path at the end, is the one next to the white sign from the earlier picture..
Right in the centre of the straight we built a jump, just a mound really but it got looked after and eventually became a double. I liked to ride up the final drop and go as far up it as I could before stopping, turning round and going flat stick at the jump and going as big as possible. At the back end of the school holidays in 84, I got prank'd here, at the end of a days riding, when most of the strattons, burners, zappers, elswick flyers, pirhanas etc had gone, just me and a few of the older kids remained. They had laid a sheet of thin metal behind the last straight jump, a 6 by 4 sheet of corrugated ally that were commonplace among the allotment fences, and were trying to clear it, unsuccesfully. I reckoned I could have it and let the older kids know. As I made my leap, I noticed that the bastards had bent up the last 2 feet of the sheet of metal at 90 degrees
Thankfully, on my puch turbo with cheap upgraded 3 piece cranks (it came with cotter pin cranks!!) and copy skyways, I cleared it.
When autumn came, the first incarnation of the bolehills was ready and the "Cemy" got used less and less. I could ride from home to the bolehills track in under 3 minutes, The cemy took about 10 minutes to get to. I went to the bolehills track a few weeks ago and could've cried, I moved to the other side of town over 10 years ago but still visited the bolehills about once a month until about a year ago. I rode there so much between 1984-1999 and got up to allsorts of mischief, the place means so much to me but has now become unmaintained by the dirt society, the council or any individuals, I fear that in a few years or less it will be unrideable and end up like the cemy..
I will never forget the buzz of arriving there and scoping out who was there and what they were riding. I would go there in a group of between 3 and 6 people, there were over 30 kids there somedays, never took drinks, drank straight from the allotment taps!!
Long live the cemy, I might go dig there this spring and re-create the old place...
