Revisiting This Is England: Alex Coleborn's Jersey | Page 3 of 4 | Ride UK BMX

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Revisiting This Is England: Alex Coleborn’s Jersey

The street spots were not perhaps as bad as I originally had thought they would be, and in the end we ended up finding more stuff than we had time to ride. There was definitely enough good stuff here to ride to warrant a visit by folk looking for pastures new. It feels like we really only scratched the surface on what was there, especially in St. Helier, which is the capital and largest city. We found an amazing ledge on the top of multi- story carpark purely by accident that had never even seen a peg before, in any town on the mainland it would have been capped years ago. There was definitely a good mix of new, financial-district type architecture and 50s/60s post-war boom concrete steel handrailed stuff. The construction laws are different in Jersey too and consequently I don’t think stuff gets redeveloped as quick as it does on the mainland. It really was an interesting juxtaposition of old and new structures. I didn’t see hardly any skatestoppers and in general there was no hostility from anyone towards us riding. On one handrail we were riding a Policeman actually held pedestrians back from getting in the way whilst we shot the photo. He said he used to skate in the 80s, bloody nice chap.

Driving round Jersey is an interesting experience. The roads are nothing like the UK mainland, there’s only one small stretch of dual carriage way and the rest are crazy winding country roads. Because of this the speed limit for the whole island is capped at 40mph. Driving along the coast; which is peppered with old battlements, sea defences, fortifications and lighthouses is cool, but venturing off into the middle of the island is where the fun begins driving-wise. Hills, crazy bends, massive drop-aways, long winding tunnels of towering trees and hedges. Clarkson would’ve loved it..well, apart from the speed limit of course…

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