Ben Leclair, Antoine Allaux and crew are on the road again! Last year it was “Somewhere in Europe” and this year Ben’s got a deal with Mercedes that is taking them all around Europe once again in search of winch spots and hitting some events along the way. Each week Ben and crew are going to be checking in with us with a few photos and a little write up of where they’ve been.
Week two of our road trip started off with a pretty crazy winch spot in the middle of Malmo.
After scoping the whole city, Antoine wanted to try and go under a super low bridge with a waterfall right after. We weren’t sure if it was possible to go under but Antoine pulled out a ninja move and got it first try. It was so easy to set up with the electric winch, strapped the little thing to a tree and in a minute we were ready to hit it. It also doesn’t make any sound, so he was able to hit it a bunch of times without getting kicked out. Luckily we also didn’t have any problems flying our drones at the spot except for a couple of close calls when losing signal between the buildings.
Next spot we wanted to hit was two minutes beside where we were staying. It was a dock with two flat sections and a long flat at the end. We didn’t want to put the winch on the bridge to pull us because it attracts more attention and the police station was right around the corner. So we strapped a pulley to the bridge and hid the winch behind a tree on the side and we were good to go. We were pretty lucky riding for at least an hour before the coast guard showed up on jetskis. They didn’t really understand what we were doing so they called the cops on us.
I was already starting to pack up our things to leave when the cop showed up, and he turned out to be super cool with us. We explained him the situation and told him we were only hitting the kicker beside the docks to have a nice background (haha). We had Antoine jump off the kicker without touching the dock one time and the cop was stoked.
After he left we did a couple of hits and our pulley melted, so we had to put the winch on the bridge. Because we had the OK from the cops, we were able to keep riding until dark that night. Everyone got a photo on the spot and a couple of video clips. It doesn’t get much better than this when you’re winching.
After two cool spots we wanted to go check out Copenhagen a little bit more, so we hopped in the van and drove over the bridge separating Sweden and Denmark to join the crew at the cable park. We had a sick private session all morning riding and filming out there with Oli and Joachim. The park is situated in a harbour opening on the ocean, so they warned us about riding in choppy conditions. Luck was on our side again with perfect conditions, no wind and not a cloud in the sky. After riding we tested out the legendary burgers at the cable before driving back to Malmo.
Antoine’s girlfriend showed up in Malmo for a night so it was perfect timing to test out the bars. Alexander brought us to the first bar to get some beers, and next thing you know we had the whole section of the bar signing Bob Marley songs with us.
After a good night out, we weren’t too pumped on going winching that day, so it was perfect to take the day and sort out all the clips and photos we had since the start of the trip. At that point we had about 50 gigs of footage to sort out. It’s crazy how quick it stacks up when you have two drones and two cameras at all times. So we emptied all the cards and got ready for another week of winching.
Stay tuned for more next week.
