Building work.
Today Tim ‘Livewire’ Shieff came over to train with us again in Nottingham. We warmed up at IBM hotspot, doing the usual precision jumps with the rest of the Npk community. Mike spoke about some rooftops that he wanted to check out which we had all seen across from the top of the Royal Moat House (now Crowne Plaza) the car park while out scouting for new locations. The building in question was the old Co-Operative building before it closed down and was turned into a casino/restaurant and apartments. While it was being slowly gutted the building was barricaded off and looked as if it was ready to be demolished any time soon. It had been abandoned for months, with the builders slowly gutting it, it was an empty shell with no building work being done to it, at least from what we could see from across the car park. There were no workman working on it at weekends and it made it a perfect time to explore the building if we wanted to see what Parkour was there for us. Mike told us he had quickly been in and up there the other week exploring and we should check it out today, but away from the main group as we don’t want to attract any unwanted attention to ourselves if we did go up on the rooftops.
We broke away from the main group so we could storm the building like a military operation. We had to first pop over a metal fence barrier to gain access to the building. Climbing over it one at a time which was hard enough with the amount of people who walked back and forth down the same street. Adrenaline pumping through our veins once over in case of getting caught. Once over the fence we were all hidden from public view by the barrier and green netting, no one could see what were were doing. We walked around the side of the building and pop wall climbed up a wall and over to the main entrance of the building. We started to ascend the steps of the building, passing various floors in the pitch black, it was hard to see anything at all. Mike told us all to wait a second and he ran back down the stairs and flicked a switch which turned on the work lights lighting up the stairwell which made it much easier to see where we were now going.
The plan was to walk up to the very top floor leading out to the roof, passing each dark empty floor as we went. The plan was short lived though as the steps didn’t lead up to the roof and instead were all collapsed and in a rubble state, leaving us a few floors below. There was also no work lights on that floor and so we had to walk through the pitch black, holding our phones which emitting next to no light. We had to be careful not to fall through any of the holes in the floor or trip over the rubble scattered all over, walking over to the beam of light the other side of the building where there were some steps leading up to the rooftop. Once up on the roof the bright daylight hurt our eyes as we came out of the darkness we had focused so hard on to get across, it was great to be able to see everything again without straining.
Livewire – Handstand.
The roofs were a Parkour paradise, it was like no other spot we had come across before, it was perfect. Now I can see why roofs are depicted in such a glorified way in movies and some of the professional videos on the internet. There were many different ledges varying in levels, heights and distances. You could do most vaults, precisi0ns and catleaps between them all, it was hard to know where to start! It looked awesome to train on and the best part was no one would say anything to us as most wouldn’t even know we were up here at least from the public down below who are all to bothered about going on there daily business to even bother to look up, not that they would see us anyway. At first we were worried about people staying in the hotel across from us, thinking what if someone glanced out there hotel window. Seeing us that they might then call the police and then how would we explain ourselves being up here. Mike said it’s highly unlikely and even if it did happen, the police would have to find a way in and by that time we could have easily got out before they arrived through a side exit not to mention we could see or hear them arriving from the rooftops.
You could see all of the Nottingham skyline and it was great for taking photos (which can be seen below) while everyone trained. The doubts and fears of being up here had passed and we had now broken up into smaller fractions training as we pleased anywhere we wanted. Precisions jumps over drops, running precisions from one roof to another, climbing and scouting the other areas were all things we were doing. The vibe from the group was inspiring and we all had something to try and inspire others to do. Due to the new location everyone was buzzing and wanting to try most movements before the day ended. At one point in the day we saw some kids across the road at the top of the Continue reading ‘#43 Roof Jumping.’
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