A VINTAGE circus attraction will makes its debut in association with a Northamptonshire film festival.
Bicycle wall of death makes its UK debut at Wicksteed Park, in Kettering, on Saturday and Sunday. The vintage circus attraction, named the Bomberdrome, has been hand-built by a team of Northamptonshire cycling enthusiasts, in association with county film festival Film Northants.
Project co-ordinator, Bill Pollard, a member of the Ministry of Bicycles (MoB), has spent the past month building the 26-foot structure from hundreds of individual planks of wood.
The project is being supported by Film Northants, which has commissioned a documentary into the making of the Bomberdrome. The documentary will be screened at the 2012 Film Northants ceremony in September, before being taken to the Leicester DocFest.
Lily Canter, festival chair of Film Northants, said: “We were looking for an unusual and eye-catching stunt to help celebrate our fifth anniversary when we heard about the Bomberdrome. It seemed to be an excellent, eccentric event to partner with and we can’t wait to see it in action at Wicksteed and also on the big screen at our awards night.”
The Ministry of Bicycles will now tour the country with the attraction, on which they will ride four bicycles whilst dressed as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Mr Pollard said: “I had seen guys in America make one of these and it looked like excellent fun. I decided to make the first UK bicycle wall of death and to showcase it at summer events. We have had a few set-backs, like getting the funding together and then trying to build it in the pounding rain, but it has finally all come together.”
George Pollard, another member of the MoB team, added: “We tested it out for the first time the other night and it was really tricky to ride, but after a few hours we started to crack it.
“It is such an adrenaline rush to cycle around it and it is an amazing spectacle to watch.”
The structure was built at the workshop of cabinet making firm The Art of Wood, in Northampton. The Bomberdrome will be showcased at the Wonderful Wheeled Weekend on Saturday 10am to late and Sunday 10am to 5pm.
For more information visit www.filmnorthants.co.uk