Castleford Last Friday

Castleford on Friday night was excellent. I ended up going with my brother, Arran, and we had a wicked time.

The park setup was quite good, although I must say that the kicker was quite small. I think there was more space where they had it to put something a little bigger; but then again I'm not the one who has to set it all up and shape things.

What about the rails? Man, I really enjoyed them! I'm going to repeat something that I've mentioned here before: if you want to progress your rail riding this is the place to be. Starting from the top of the park there was a short down rail with side kickers (so you can't just ride on), followed by the long, flat, 10m rail that they have. This one is set up so that you can ride straight on if you want to. I love this rail. Next comes the long slide box and then finally a beginner rail. The beginner rail is short, wide and low to the ground.

Granted these rails and boxes aren't super technical/difficult, but for the likes of myself they're perfect for progressing. I should also mention that I have at times seen some more challanging jibbs - down flats, rainbow rails etc. In fact, on Friday night they had a nice setup with three picnic benches where the middle bench was step-up; for example you could gap the first bench.

So I'm hitting 4 rails each time down... I did more rail riding in one night than I have all season. It's perfect.

• I work on boardsliding the two more difficult rails
• I start to frontside boardslide the beginner rail
• I do one or two half-decent nose presses on the box (mixed in with a bunch of complete rubish)
• I begin to 180 onto the box and then rotate another 180 while on it

And amongst all of that and more was a supreme face plant on the down rail :-)

Excellent! I've got to add that I'm always impressed with the vibe at Castleford. Everyone's friendly - they're just there to have fun. Not only the vibe, I'm also impressed with the standard of riding. There was a young rider there on Friday night, I don't know his name but I'm sure I've seen him in some of the British snowboarding magazines. He was killing it!

Front flipping off the kicker. Super smooth and styled. Hitting everything switch. Switch lipslides: frontside and backside. Nice!