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I let out a slight gasp of horror that quickly turned into a gasp of disappointment as it slipped from my grasp. As it fell in an almost graceful way, I could only imagine what could be running through its tiny mind as it hurtled earthbound. It pitched and span its way towards a sea of rolling black waves, to only just brush past them at the very last minute and continue its descent downwards. It carried on passed a gigantic wooden structure. The bright sun on its malleable black stalk illuminatingit until it finally fell into the shadow of the wooden beast. As it hit the floor, a dull “thud” rang out and a spray of red lumps coated everything near by.

I looked down, saddened by what I saw. “Shame” I thought to myself, “I was looking forward to eating that cheesecake”.

To help me recover from post expedtion blues, I’ve decided to take up being pretty active. So the past few days I’ve been running, some may say that’s boring but it’s been good bar one horrendous stitch which left me throwing up. But, one day a text message came my way asking if I wanted to go climbing at our local spot. Naturally with nothing to do I obliged and my adventure would be with me the next day.

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So, I went to the Alps Kayaking with my Uni, (University of Cumbria). It was fantastic, lovely paddling, swimming down fast moving rivers and retrieving paddles. Awesome. The days were fantastically hot, which meant dry kit the next day and when you got too warm all you had to do was dip your face in the river. The lake at Embrun was a good end to a good paddle. However, I didn’t manage to get many photos so here are just a select few to tickle your fancy.

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Ok so if you check the forum regularly you’ll have noticed Chris has posted a pretty horrendous picture of me so now it’s time to get a bit of payback well slight payback because what they’re doing is pretty awesome but their facial expressions are pretty horrid. Anyway, these photographs are of the boys doing swallow falls.

More can be seen here and here probably tomorrow

Enjoy.

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Not technically demanding but fun kayaking in North Wales on swallow falls and surrounding waterfalls.

This was shot mainly as a test for the GoPro Cameras being reviewed in this coming months Xsport International, as you can see the video quality is really good (although this has been heavily compressed for web use).

Loz Crossman-Emms is a friend of Xsport International by association. I know a guy who knows a guy who knows him (6 degrees of separation in action there). He is an awesome video editor with some great shorts under his belts (some of which have been awared the much coveted “video of the day” award at the première MTB website Pinkbike

This is one of my fave videos that he has done, a neat little edit of some fantastic park and play BMX action.

Enjoy!

Loz had this to say: (continue reading…)

Would be really good without the blinking buzards… Who ever heard of a hanglider having his wings nicked by a buzzard? Lame…

Now if Xsport International designed games! Then things would be different

For a while now I have been checking out the group calling themselves projectMTB, partly because its an interesting idea for a video but mainly because they have had some good clips of some hot MTB action flying around their facebook page. Wonderful!

Becki (the projects creator) reciently sent me this trailer for the full video which she says “will be out very soon”. As always we will keep you updated and as soon as we see it on-line we’ll pass on the information to you, the faithful readers of Xsport!

Enjoy the trailer!

Becki had the following to say

Someone once said of mountain-biking ‘if you can roll down a hill with a smile on your face it’s doing its job.’
For a group of people from the south of England, mountain-biking is not only a hobby or job, but a way of life!
Together they have formed what has become known as Project MTB, creating a film (of the same name) about the sport they are so passionate about. With the locations of ‘UK Bike Park’ and ‘Puddletown Forest’ of Dorset, including Lordswood of Southampton, Project MTB have spent the last six months training, riding, filming, and documenting their lives in the world of mountain-biking.
Inspired by films of The Collective and Billy Savage’s Klunkerz, Project MTB aims to be an informative piece of entertainment - appealing to people of all ages and interests, not just mountain-bikers.

For more information on the film and its riders please visit the website, or find us under Projectmtb Page on Facebook. Alternatively you can find all this information and more about BumbleBee Pictures on the creator’s website.

With the help of the Xsport team we have been working on an extreme sports video featuring a multitude of sports but mainly mountain biking, base jumping and kayaking.

The other day we took out the helmet cameras and one of the video cameras to shoot some test footage at a secret location currently being built by Mr’s Tom Elmore

and Duane Walker

(who appear in this following video). Anyhoo Tom took some of this footage and put it together in this video short.

It includes a load of GoPro helmet hero footage (a product we are currently testing) from a few different angles so I thought I would post it up here so you can all see the quality of the camera.

Test shots from Tom Elmore on Vimeo.

That’s not all the filming I did that day though. I also went down to a little town in North Wales to film some parkour and during this we developed a new camera … the crotch cam! Continue reading, to check out the footage we got from our jockstrap cam! (continue reading…)

This month we featured an article on Nicky Rudd the top class kite boarder. As part of our follow up research we decided to check out the people she trained with as well as her sponsors.

BUK boardwear the clothing company were her first sponsors (see her interview in the current issue of Xsport) and as well as supporting Nicky they also sponsor several wakeboarders (including Ellie Taylor - Check out Augusts issue).

Anyway a bunch of their team riders put together this video and we liked it so much that we decided to stick it up on here for you all to enjoy!

To check out BUK’s great line of clothing and gear have a look at their website

This month we received a few words from Love it Live it’s very own Sam Ward, for those of you who didn’t see last month’s issue (check out the back issue page on the website) we featured the LiLi website as the first article from our “stuff from the web” feature. LiLi Is a coaching and guiding company who offer trips all around the world, they always have a good story to tell and their website is full of great videos and features.

Anyway… to get back on the point, Sam has written an article on their fantastic trip to Thailand for next month’s Xsport which makes for a fantastic read full of waterfalls and golden elephants! We’re so excited about this feature that I thought I would flash up this quick “coming soon” notice for all who are interested! Take a look at this selection of photos from their trip report… it’s a good sample of what we’ve got coming next month!

For more info check out the Thailand page of the LiLi website and while you’re there check out the responsible tourism and environment pages! It makes for a really great read!

Me and Mr Stone went kayaking yesterday while my other half took some photos. Was at a really nice level and was a great final test of the Dragorossi Madboy (which Callum paddled).

Great day out, Callum had to buy lunch!

Getting ready to paddle the drops

So after the the slightly unsuccesful trip of the Caldew in Cumbria, I was out yet again today. I was feeling ever so slightly sorry for myself that I didn’t manage to get too many sweet shots when I received a text message. It was from Joe asking if I wanted to photograph them on Aira Beck. Anyway within the next 10 minutes I was in his car speeding off towards Ullswater and the final destination, Aira Beck.

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I received a phone call from Joe, typically he hung up before I got to the phone meaning that he wanted me to ring him back. Anyway, he asked if I wanted to go take photographs of them potentially paddling Glenridding Beck near Ullswater.

After further inspection, they decided against it and we head off to check out Aira Beck, followed by the Caldew. The Caldew didn’t look promising although we were delightfully surprised. There was only one rapid worth photographing but I didn’t mind. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get my winning shot or better still Kayak for the first time since the beginning of term.

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