War of the Thistles 2009 - An Eyewitness Account

So, here I am again - sat at my computer feeling very much worse for wear from an amazing weekend and now I have to try to convey the events that took place through the medium of the written word. This should be fun. Well, to be honest, if it's half as much fun as this weekend was then it'll be a blast - lets get started!

The War of the Thistles event has become something of an annual tradition over the past few years. Spawned from the inspiration of the success of War of the Roses, the Scots decided to get in on the action and the weekend has gone from strength to strength each year. Much like War of the Roses the event is held over two days at two parks - Dumbarton (just west of Glasgow) and Aberdeen (Proper up north - I'm a Yorkshireman and it's still a six hour trek from mine!) and is attended by skaters from all over the country. So, we thought this year we'd get in on the action!

As you may well be aware, the Route One team consists of skaters from all over the country and I have to say that I pitied Amir the most. Travelling from Brighton to Aberdeen is one hell of a trip and props to Amir for being his usual jovial self and not letting the (literally) thousands of miles get to him! The rest of us still had fairly long journeys (Leyden excluded) but I don't feel I could complain when Amir never did.



Basically, we all met up at The Works skatepark on Friday afternoon. By this point a number of the team had already been travelling for over 6 hours, so we all got straight in the van, onto the
M1 and began our journey north. I don't know if you've ever driven to the west of Scotland before but the picture postcard scenery of the border towns is just breath taking. HANG ON - this is a skate article and I'm gushing about how pretty little white cottages surrounded by mountains are. Sorry! In future I'll stick to hardcore tales of shredding and the like. Ok?

So, we made the journey in reasonable time and arrived in Glasgow at around 10pm, bound straight for the Etap Hotel. Etap Hotels are amazing - dirt cheap and uber basic without being ghetto - can't go wrong. Now at this point I could start to detail the ensuing evening and had it involved strippers, drunken brawls or coppers then I would have done. As it was we went to Nando's and then to bed. A feat that was to be repeated the next night, although Nando's was forsaken this time for a traditional Glaswegian Chip Shop - Ooh, we're such hard partying rockstar types us you know!
Probably better that I just tell you about the two days of skateboarding then eh? All right, go on then...

Saturday, as I said earlier, was held at Dumbarton's Unit 23 skatepark. You may well have seen footage of the behemoth of a bowl that resides there - well, to be fair to the guys that run the place, that is far from all that's on offer. The place is jam packed with all sorts of random and traditional obstacles and this led to people skating everything - quite hard to film! The early part of the day saw the usual tech heads warming up on a relatively small flat bar - well, if you call flip crooks and tre flip lips warming up, Whilst the more transition based skaters tried to get to grips with the bowl - or in the Scots’ case just rip it a new one right from the off.


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As the day progressed, various sponsored and unsponsored best trick jams were held around the park. Although the skating was ridiculous and shed loads of cash and prizes were handed out, this isn't what the day really seemed to be about. Basically these events are just a great way to get very large portions of the UK skate scene together in one place and let everyone skate together. If you watch any of the videos made of this event (or WOTR) you'll see sessions going off on obstacles that never had a best trick comp held on 'em - it's more the buzz and the lads feeding off each other - basically the best skate session you've ever been to - the prizes are a bonus! Not that I should belittle them as Avid, Lynskey and Amir all won multiple prizes over the weekend but the rest of our guys (and every one else for that matter) still skated hard and had a blast regardless of whether they won cash or got filmed - true hardcore skate rats!

The Sunday, held at Aberdeen’s Transition Extreme, went of exactly the same as the day before. The park is absolutely amazing and the skating was going off everywhere. Rye Gray was filming an amazing looking sesh over the big hip with Tom Harrison, Mike Wright, Dave Davies, Lynskey and the like putting down proper tech manoeuvres with frightening consistency. Meanwhile I was busy filming Avid, Stu Graham, Benson and Ronnie Callow session the brand new wippy bank to wall with gap (confused yet?!) contraption. The thing was hard just to rock fakie (and I love skating this kind of thing) yet these lot knocked out some bangin' tricks that just shouldn't have been possible. Soon they were joined by Mark Burrows plus a load of others and an impromptu session became a big spectacle - ace!

With a park called "Transition Extreme" you know the place is gonna have an amazing mini ramp and bowl and boy, does this place deliver. The mini is, well, far from mini (Over vert capsual anyone?) and the bowl has to have it's own set of safety instructions! Not that these things mattered to Stu Graham, Benson, Kerr McLaughlin, Teabag and just about anybody else that has Celtic blood running through their veins. I mean, trying to describe the carnage is just not gonna happen but I'll try. 100mph fs smith grinds, switch frontside rock and roll boardslides, near crashes, Rob Smith attempting a 540 and landing sat down on the coping! It was amazing. Sadly it finished on a sour note with Rob appearing to break his arm attempting a "round the world" to fakie (that weird early grab trick Daewon does at the start of the third section in Cheese and Crackers) in the deep end of the bowl. He completely had it and it's a real shame for the lad as he'd skated his proverbials off all weekend and that would have shut down the event a treat...


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At the beginning of this article I said I had to try to convey what had happened over the weekend through the medium of the written word and I have to tell you that I think I've failed. Not because I'm particularly poor at writing but more due to the fact that without the vocabulary of someone in the region of Will Self or Stephen Fry, it is just about impossible to begin to describe just how ace WOTT was. To be honest, I should probably precede the word "ace" with one beginning in "f" and ending with "ucking" - you'd definitely get the picture!

All in all I'd just like to say "GET YOURSELF TO EVENTS LIKE THIS". Not only are they the lifeblood of British skateboarding but they are such a good laugh to go to - just try and get a second set of eyes so you can witness the beautiful chaos in all it's glory! Props go out to Skateboard Scotland and everyone who made this event possible,
I'll see you there next year...

Alex Winstanley - Route One Team Manager.