Zach Sanford: Catcher On The Ride

I file this report from the stinky bog passageway of a lightning quick Virgin train. I am so enamoured with this passageway and its well-worked stench that I “volunteered”, much like Scotty Lago “volunteered” to leave the Olympics, to pay for it twice. This unforeseen expenditure and a slew of others have left me with mixed feelings about my admittedly ill-advised journey to Tamworth Snowdome.

Even knowing that I’d be without a plausible prospect for a return journey home when the freestyle session and its component Burton Blowout jib jam ended at 1:30 am, I wasn’t deterred from making the voyage. The promise of a stair set with a down-flat-down and a fat round down bar was enough for me to throw caution, and apparently my few remaining banknotes, to the wind. After a few hungry minutes in Nuneaton, I was Tamworth-bound with an hour or so to spare before the start of the late night session.

One of the strangest things about snowboarding in Britain is the appearance of astonishment that comes over the gawking faces and prying eyes of onlookers when they spot a shred on the move.

Certain pockets of the country, Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes amongst them, have citizens who have become rewired and accept the common sight of shreds regardless of the weather. In other places though, such as Rugby where a woman suggested when I asked for a walking distance eatery that it wouldn’t take me long to get to the nearest pub with that skateboard thing, the sight of a man and his snowboard is too bewildering to bear.

The Tamworth population was well-accustomed to confused travelling snowboarders though, and as I made my winding way from the station to the dome itself, I enlisted the help of a few citizens to guide me.

Arriving as I did, on foot and on the wrong side of the place, my introduction to the scene at England’s oldest fridge came when I saw the slew of rails and launch ramps still positioned outside the dome only an hour before the session was meant to begin. I was pleased to see all this metal, but well confused as to why it wasn’t buried indoors already.

Once inside, that confusion turned to astonishment and then to acceptance as a team of roughly 20 yellow-coats and three tractors whipped up an entertaining 10-feature jib park in less than 40 minutes. For the next three hours, riders of all ages and sizes dismantled the set-up with technical rail trickery and general midnight madness.

You got to love snowboard parks with ceilings

The motivation of my mission. 5-0 on the trick tube


My own time eating shit on the slope may have been better spent in the bar however, as my limited charm and limited effort failed to secure a free spot to lay my head. As I entered the cold night at 2:00 am, I had a couple of cans, and all the fixings but no Rizla. One hotelier offered me a hot deal but couldn’t get me rolled up, so I rolled out.

After scoping another inn and even pondering scoring some papers from ASDA – thankfully it wasn’t open as I’ve travelled far and wide to avoid the rapacious tendencies of my home country’s entrepreneurs – I was befriended by a group of young English girls who saw to it that I ate, and a gracious snowboarder who provided some rolling papers and a pinch of tobacco.

Back to the first hotel I went. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of expenditure but my body was wrecked, the train – for which I lost my ticket and for which I would eventually pay twice – did not depart until 1 p.m. and I was filled with a joyous sense of mischief at the thought of paying through the nose for ten hours rest. Pathetically, I, at 25, still feel like Holden Caulfield when let loose in my own hotel room, especially when smoking is permitted. It soon became apparent why nobody had invited me to sleep on a floor: my tattered shred costume was everywhere; there was beer, and smoke, and rock and roll.

As I counted my pennies over continental breakfast and hoarded necessary provisions to secure my safe passage back to London (although I must say that this croissant is, by now, a bit stale), the thought my struggling to eat in the coming weeks couldn’t have been farther from my mind.

I thought only of the enjoyment gleaned from Burton’s down-flat-down (from this point a permanent resident at Tamworth) and the many stoked shredders who also made the, albeit somewhat more direct in most instances, pilgrimage from far and wide. I shall certainly be visiting Tamworth late on a Saturday night in the future.

Only next time, can I sleep over?

By Zach Sanford