Words and Photos by Jeffrey Ladd (@jeffrey.ladd)
Ten skaters, two cars, two skateparks, two hundred and thirty-four kilometers roundtrip, 653 photographs and one pulled calf muscle. Destination Dilsen-Stokkem skatepark in Belgium. Among this crew – Joaco, Ignasi, Lemoncatz Mila and Zoe, Unknown, Lara, Till, Ariss, and Artur – Dilsen is a favorite location. The consensus being it is a near perfect ultra-smooth 800 m² of crete transitions laid out in circular fashion for a constant flow. It’s fast and fun centered with a gnarly orange tiled backyard bowl designed to keep even the best of you in check. The park is studded with rock boulders embedded into the transitions here and there and even a snake run pocket with a few meters of river rocks as coping. But if you’re looking for a flat rail – keep driving fool.
On the way it was “decided” to rendezvous and warm up first at Opglabbeek skatepark – another Belgian gem seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The “decision” sat mostly with Unknown who wanted to hit the bowl there but who were we to argue, Opglabbeek is great too. (That is, until a misstep tugged apart the dried out rubber band that was the photographer’s calf muscle. The remaining crew skated for a little over an hour before the promise of Dilsen was too much to ignore.
Dilsen sits in a large field behind a small Belgian suburb. Other than a line of trees that run along a boat canal about 50 meters from the edge of the park, there is no shade. If there’s one drawback to Dilsen it’s that the sun on a clear day can be unrelenting turning the park into a frying pan. So upon arrival the first order of business was a quick post-Opglabbeek session cool down in the somewhat questionable waters of the canal. Once everyone was coated head to toe with a good layer of Belgian parasites glued to the skin with sunscreen, the session began.
Meeting up the party was Rob who was on the crew that designed and built Dilsen. Between conversations where the term “DIY” could be heard about a ten-thousand times, the trifecta of a pool line that took them over the cake was found, shallow deathbox and deep-end deathbox all in rapid succession. Monty over the hip (Rob), Front and back rocks (Till), barefoot Slashers, Double-truckers over the cake (Joaco) long Back 5-0s in the deep (Ignasi)… Lemoncatz flowed over the park’s various hips and transferred over the snakerun to snakerun gap… Meanwhile Artur and Ariss did some bouldering…
As the sun retreated and shadows lengthened, everyone’s attention turned to the rock-coping pocket. Thing about this pocket is, the builders intentionally didn’t make it easy – they chose rocks and set them in ways that you have to fight your way through them. This isn’t some user-friendly superficial gimmick feature to the park – it will happily body the unsuspecting. Crailslides (Artur), Tailblocks (Joaco), Frontrocks (Lara), Hurricanes (Artur), 50-50 slashers (Rob)…
Opossum design !!!
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