Brockham Trails on the other hand have managed to amass a collective of individuals that turn up even on the wettest of days. Depending on who you ask, I would say there are ten regular people on average each Saturday. Ten! Double figures. All of whom are almost driven to insanity from the cause of building jumps and stacking berms. It’s something that is ingrained in every one of our minds. You question yourself as to why you haven’t done as many barrows of clay as your buddy and almost reach the point of disgust at your lack of effort – even though you woke up at 7am to get here and now it’s getting dark.
Where does this level commitment come from? What motivates a person to dedicate their lives to one location? We’ve finally had a good summer, and days filled with barbecues and dust add to life’s stoke. On the other hand it might be a view that’s been passed from person to person that there is nothing else in life apart from building something.
The crew is pretty large, but the foundations were originally formed by Dom Haigh, a mainstay of the mountain biking community in the area. He was later joined by Jonny Faulkner and Christian Kile before the group grew to the number it is today. Luke, Tom, Dan, Matt, Sam, Adam, Jamie, George, Si and Willson should all get a mention too.
The trails were started around 2003 or so. Dom tells me, “it was me and four other guys who got chased out of a spot called the Nower by the police in around 2000, because of BSE or something. Then Si, who we’d just met, told us about this spot called BK that had like two tiny jumps. But me and a guy called Gill said ‘f–k this’ and started sorting out this place to the point where we had 50 jumps”. But then the council ploughed the whole place. Dom was pretty cut up about this, especially as the amount of building he’d been doing meant he’d all but failed his A levels.
After digging in between someone said they had found a patch of land that would be rad for trails. The right slope, good soil and well out of the way of any passing traffic (people or otherwise). “I was so jaded on trails,” Dom says, “but I could see it was an amazing space”. In the beginning there were around six jumps and they didn’t really develop past that for a number of years. Mountain bike trails were being built and people change… they go to university, move away or even just stop riding all together for whatever reason. Dom split his time between this new spot and helping out near–legendary trail builder and dirt jumper Jimmy Pratt at his own spot nearby. But then he and two others (Si and Wilson) went back to that patch of land and started digging. There have never been problems from neighbours, apart from when the second was being stacked. A local came out and declared he had called the police because he thought someone had committed murder and a body was being buried. No blue lights ever appeared.
It wasn’t long after though that Dom would be left alone, last man standing. He was able to re–recruit Gill and others, but then in 2008 he set off on his travels – Whistler and Queenstown being the key locations. On his return 
back to the trails he’d find that someone had been doing some work of their own. “I didn’t know whose spot it was, it looked abandoned,” says Jonny, “We started digging there, but what we had done sucked. I started building with Dom around 2007.” Dom had met Jonny at another spot before. “The year before Dom re–did all the shit we had done at Wyvale and it was awesome.” At around the same time Christian had joined in. “I met Dom at Horsham skatepark and I’m pretty sure the day after we went digging.”
This is how it was for the next three years. Just Dom, Jonny and Christian putting in the hours, upping the tally of jumps to eight in the mainline and four in the small. I can’t imagine how they stayed together for so long without actually killing each other. No more recruits were enlisted until a group of kids were found digging just around the corner. From there more were invited and vetted. Of course some then discovered girls and the wild times of underage drinking, but what was different at Brockham was that this was the minority. The manifesto had already been instilled in the youngsters and for them it wasn’t about being good on a bike – it was about being good at digging. I still can’t quite fathom how this is possible, but it means that now there are more than 40 sets, including something pretty special.
Ahh yes… the 11th. A jump that shot to Instagram stardom and is ingrained in online folklore. At 36.9’ long it is one of the biggest in the UK. Dom often reminisces about the amount of work that went into it. “We camped out for a weekend and dug for two days straight and got the bulk of the landing done. Jimmy encouraged Ralph and Digs (another trail building legend) to come down and help then too. It took two years for it to dry out.” Photos of it started getting re–posted all over the internet and there was always talk that it couldn’t be jumped. “I was on holiday when Jonny hit it for the first time. I must admit I was surprised. I mean the 11th is bigger than anything he’s hit on his downhill bike, but fair play to him – guts to glory. I’m just stoked it has been hit and wasn’t a massive folly.” Christian has also made it over the chasm, but didn’t land rubber down. We’ll see in time if he launches it again.
I asked everyone what the trails meant to them and there was a common theme in the answers. No one really knows where the drive to build comes from, but it’s clear this has evolved from a deep rooted past in this small pocket of the scene. Nothing beats building with your friends and it’s what these guys live for. It’s a privilege to be a part of it – these piles of dirt have changed my life too. Long live Brockham Trails.
