We chatted to Manon Carpenter about her day in the slop:
How did the women’s section come about?
It was funny because it was pretty laid back but seeing everything that’s been out so far from British Pie just looked like a lot of fun to be involved with. It was cool that we were going to get a girls’ section and just getting a group of girls together is always fun so I knew it was going to be a good time.
The week before we did our filming, Tom was down with Brendan and Jono and that lot in Surrey and we’d seen the absolute chaos from there so I was a bit nervous. I said when we turned up it was going to be a lot more civilised but it ended up being a really good day with some crashes anyway.
How were the riding conditions?
The very first stuff we rode was super greasy but some of it was ok. Then we went to one section that was deep sticky mud – your bike weighed a tonne and your shoes were like twice the size they would normally be. It got to the stage where we had to start taking wheels out of bikes to clear the mud from the forks.
Where did the baking set up come from?
We just had a group chat on Facebook for organising stuff and I saw Tom said he’d been shopping for props and I was intrigued. The next message I saw said something about aprons and I had a bit of a protest but then i spoke to Tom and it sounded like a really cool idea. It worked really well having Vero as the Brexit import being German and Kiwi. It tied in well with the british Pie and there being a lot of mud .
Was the food fight spontaneous?
There was some planning. We knew we wanted Vero to kick off and we did a run through without any of the ingredients which was quite funny.
We had to re-do one bit when Vero was supposed to start bombarding us and she had some eggs and flour and she threw the eggs but they completely missed us and landed in the grass and didn’t even break, which is possibly stereotypically girly but that was good fun.
Who took the biggest bail?
I think only me and Monet crashed – we both had a good one each. I had one that’s been around social media already that some people don’t seem to realise that I am actually crashing on! I had it just before we went on to the muddy section and that was the first time I’d crashed properly for a while but everything was fine.
What was your favourite moment from the day?
I think it’s right at the end of the day and we’d finished riding and we were filming on the jump at the bottom of the track I was pushing up and all of a sudden Katy busts out a suicide and none of us knew what she was planning. A nice finish to the day.