Strange stuff kids do. You were a kid. We know.

[andrew_s]

Which moves us onto tree climbing then trying to get to the next tree on increasingly thin and bendy branches.

I managed to get up to 7 or 8 different trees in the woods behind my gran's place (Silverdale, Lancs), which were much more suitable than anywhere near home. Not terribly big trees, but that did allow putting enough of a sway on the tree to grab a sufficiently strong bit of the next tree to pull it closer.

 

[slowmotion]

I used to crawl into the hen house at the bottom of the garden to be with the chickens. They left as soon as I arrived.

 

[Toshiba Boy]

We had a great bike track in what we called "the spinney" just up from the local park. Around a 200 yard circular mud track trough the trees, with some good drops. Standard 1960/70s bikes, long time before the likes of BMX etc (no Choppers, my dad being a racing cyclist wouldn't let us have such "frivolities").

Anyway, one day, the gang decided that we could make some interlinking paths across the circular track, only problem was the huge swathe of stinging nettles filling this area. Ah, look, there's an old oil drum there, let's roll a path through the nettles with that. No good, too light. Little sister, yes, you the one with your arm in a plaster cast, jump in and we'll roll you round and get the new tracks made, job done......just don't tell Mum (we did let her know some 30 years later ). Great times.

 

[derrick]

It's a strange thing, complete turn around since i was young. we have three boys in the street aged about 9, one girls aged 9 who has mate comes round pre covid, the girls have a lot more bottle on the bikes than the boys, The boys will not do the jumps or get more than one person on a bike at one time, the girls are so much more fun with the BMXs than the boys.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I used to crawl into the hen house at the bottom of the garden to be with the chickens. They left as soon as I arrived.

Were you egged on?

 

[Paulus]

Or you’d take two skate boards you’d sit on one, your mate the other, facing each other. Then you’d link up and hurtle down the steep hill together and hopefully make it round the bend at the bottom.

Skate boards hadn't been invented when I was a kid, but we used to use a a skate with a piece of wood across it to sit on and away we went down the road leaning left or right to steer it

 

[Ming the Merciless]

We had a company near a mate whose business was cables. So they had these big empty wooden reels in their back yard. We’d climb over the fence and run on top of the reels till we ran out of space.

 

[Tripster]

Catapults wars in waste land. How no one lost an eye I don’t know.

Was it black widow or diablo those catapults they had in the late 80’s 90’s
I remember getting one from sports shop in Bradford called Carters. Sold air guns and the like. Trying to hit each other in fields ended with some nasty injuries... if my son did it now I would go mad

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Was it black widow or diablo those catapults they had in the late 80’s 90’s
I remember getting one from sports shop in Bradford called Carters. Sold air guns and the like. Trying to hit each other in fields ended with some nasty injuries... if my son did it now I would go mad

I was post University by then!

 

[Tripster]

I was post University by then!

I was not smart enough for University hence shooting each other with high powered catapults Didnt start college till 1991

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I did start a snowball fight at University just as students across the road came out closing bar of the college other side of road. Turned into massive snowball fight with about 100 either side of bridge over road . A stray snow ball hit a car passing below. He stopped and got out. Took one look our side, one look other side. Saw 200 students going for it. Decided to get back in car and get out of there!

 

[AuroraSaab]

Beyond the bottom of our council estate were the huge grey slag heaps that were left when the pits shut. You rode along the cinder track of a disused railway to get to them. It was like having a huge bmx track, before bmx was even a thing. There was one with a massive steep drop that only the bravest older kids went down. Unbelievable now, really. They were so dangerous it's a miracle no-one was seriously injured. They've been levelled and landscaped now.

My junior school had a large playing field. We came back one day to find that an old mineshaft had opened up and there was a gigantic hole on the upper field. They just put some stakes and tape round it for a couple of weeks till the council capped it off.

 

[gbb]

I used to build bikes for tearing round the woods. Cowhorn handlebars were a must. I went through a customising period. I would remove the front forks and hammer them straight. Then I would cut three foot lengths of the old chrome dress rails, hammer one end flat and cut a notch to fit the front wheel axle. Bash them on to the straighten fork legs and reattach to the bike. Da da! One chopper! I seem to remember making heath robinson brake lights as well using those huge square batteries as well. Must have looked a right knob! They were rubbish cycle on any hill as they were inclined to wheelie all the time. Still, it made sense in the 70's.

Pretty much sums up our years except we had the local blacksmith who seemed happy to make up the extensions for chopper style forks.
Ridiculous really but they used to work.

Our other pastime (military base housing) was to cycle headlong into enormous privet hedges(which were actually quite soft and 'spongy') preferably build a ramp and launch youself at them.

 

[Bazzer]

With hindsight, the potential consequences of some of the activities were not thought through.
We would cycle to a disused mine and after an explore of the site we had visited many times, would play on the slag heaps. - This was pre land restoration and other than sealing the shaft and dropping the tower, the rights owner just seemed to have walked away from the site many years earlier. Find a sharp, rusting sheet of disused metal, bend it a bit and then climb one of the heaps. Sit on said sharp rusting metal and slide down.

Or riding to a wooded area we knew where there were mature trees on the side of a steep hill. On one of the branches, someone with even less regard for their personal safety than us, had tied a length of rope of around 6 metres. Due to the steepness of the hill, the size of the tree and the length of the rope, with a decent swing out, it was easily possible to be 10 metres from the ground. It paid to hold tight as the nearest road, should an ambulance have been necessary, was around half a mile away.

 

[matticus]

With hindsight, the potential consequences of some of the activities were not thought through.

That could be a polite summary most of this thread.
(and most of our childhoods)