THE WALL OF DEATH
Building the Wall |
Crashing on it |
THEY SAID 'YOU WILL NEVER DO IT"
Ok, I'll start at the beginning. It all started in the pub after the burning of The World Biggest Bonfire and talking about the 200 left over pallets (see bonfire video page for reason). Burning them just seemed pointless, a better solution was to use them more constructively. The Idea for The WALL of Death was born! Many said we would not be able to do it, building it is one task, but riding it would also need some practice! The only research we did was finding out the internal diameter of your standard Wall of Death, and that turned out to be 30ft. I visited a traveling performance Wall of Death and watched them riding round it too. On January 2nd 2007 we hammered a post in the ground and marked out our inner circle and just started laying down pallets.
SIMPLE ???
In a word yes this was simple, it took 17 pallets to complete one revolution and we just nail gunned them together, the most tricky bit was that the pallets were not all the same size and thickness and the bit of field we were on was not completely level so every few layers we had to pack some pallets up or swop them for different size ones to get it back on course! To help out with lining the inside we broke up some pallets and nailed the planks at 2ft intervals so we would stand some chance of finding a fixing point when covering with ply. At full height the wall stands 16-17ft (its taller one side as field not level) and took a total of around 850 pallets.
Hmmm A BIT SKETCHY
The one question I'd be asking now after seeing all that ply is 'HOW MUCH DID THIS ALL COST?" Well I was lucky as when I was trying to blag a haulage firm to pick up pallets for my world record attempt for the biggest bonfire, they said they had no spare lorries but had just refurbished a warehouse and had loads of scrap wood to get rid of. I expected a lorry full of wood to burn, however they turn up with what must have been a 1000 sheets of 6mm ply. Quite a lot of the sheets were split or cut in half, but there was plenty that were fine. My first thought was "WE ARE NOT BURNING THAT!" The ramp at the bottom was at start a curve, but the wood just wasn't strong enough to take the weight of the bike at speed. You can hear it on the crashing video snapping as I ride round, so a more simple 45 degree bank was created.
HOW DO YOU GET IN ?
Ha! This isn't one for the faint hearted! No door, no lift, you have to ride the bike up the ramp, which got called The Wus's Causeway (as some people didn't even want to walk up it). Once at the top, STOP immediately otherwise it's a drop down the other side! Then, we just lowered the bike in with ropes and I'd go down a ladder. So what happens if I crash and can not climb a ladder? Well I'm in trouble, but as a safety precaution I always took a chainsaw in so I could be cut out, now theres a risk assessment! When I was in the wall, it had its own atmosphere and vibe. It was slightly echoey, but also had that smell of fear, it was the sort of feeling I used to get before a BMX competition. People are there to watch me ride it and there was that added pressure to silence the none believers that said it could not be done.
WOULD THE MOPED DO IT, AND WAS IT THE RIGHT CHOICE OF BIKE?
YES, YES, YES, a moped believe it or not is perfect! There are no gears to worry about and as all the engine and drive is low down and around the wheel it has a low centre of gravity, which is what you need. When riding the wall you're not at a perfect 90 degrees to the side, you're slightly more upright, therefore a high bike like a motocrosser would want to fold back to the wall more. The speed you need to reach is probably around 25mph I tried to look at the speedo while riding but that nearly ended badly! As you can imagine our wall was not that smooth and just staying on the bike took all my concentration, I couldn't even string sentences together as when I tried to talk to the camera while riding all I could say was "YEAH!" Learning to ride the wall of death was bizarre , when I explain the feeling I say it must be the closest thing to committing suicide. As everything you have to do to ride the wall goes against everything thats natural to keep yourself safe! You ride up, but force yourself to not ride down. My first few goes ended up with a bent bike but had i have stopped and looked at the footage I would have seen that I had ridden in the vertical position and therefore done it, but was obsessed with getting to the top. On my second visit a crazy photographer called James came up with me. Having someone else there who wanted to ride it was good, as we pushed each other on and it was on that day I rode it properly. I was able to sit on the bike and just go straight up with very little run up and without doing several laps. The main thing I had to deal with was the sickness feeling. If I looked to far ahead I got very dizzy and disorientated so I aimed for about 2-3meter ahead, but still needed gaps between runs.
THANKSThanks to all that helped as i did not build this on my own.
Rick Simpson David Smith Andy Goodacre Mark White DJ Rico Pony Club Gaz AND A SPECIAL THANKS TO THE HILUX |
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WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WALL
The wall stood in place for 12 years! Within that time others such as Ian Usher (the guy that sold his life on ebay to complete his bucket list) rode the wall, it made it into Motorcycle News, I took the drift trike around it and even super fast remote control cars have whizzed around it.
It began to become quite fragile and sadly the farmer needed the land back.
Therefore in December 2018 the wall came down. Sad times as the wall marks the beginning of the Colin Furze Youtube channel.
Of course it went up in Furze fire style and I filmed it!
Check out the video below.
It began to become quite fragile and sadly the farmer needed the land back.
Therefore in December 2018 the wall came down. Sad times as the wall marks the beginning of the Colin Furze Youtube channel.
Of course it went up in Furze fire style and I filmed it!
Check out the video below.