The “Rouer“

words and photos, Nicolas Bouvy

The “rouer”, the pipe as they call it in Luxembourgish,

is a kind of a fullpipe, a ditch that stands under the highway in the southern part of the Grand-Duchy. My good friend Dan discovered it around 1990. Its main purpose is, actually, for the farmer to drive his tractor from one side to another to go to the fields. At the same time it’s part of a national green path for people walking their dogs or biking between villages.

 As you can imagine in early 90’s, a young teeny Dan would only see this in the mags. “It looked like the stuff I had only seen in 80’s videos from the USA: vertical, concrete and gnarly”

 A very special concrete monster for sure, you can spot some pics of similar ones in Japan and Spain on the web.

 When I dragged my ass down there in early 2000’s, He invited me to skate and really quickly also brought me to his little secret rouer. In those times, yeah, it was kind of a secret location! Nowadays, with the damning internet, you could find it as easily as beer in my fridge. But in those times people were just asking around and didn’t always succeed in finding the spot.

Ain’t no lying when he said the spot is freakin’ gnarly, usually for starters, you gonna spend already a good 20 min sweeping the part you gonna ride. Somekindof dry/wet mixture of mud, dust and of course on some days good cow pies, all of which can be frozen during winter time too. So always be equipped with a good brush.

In the beginning, when I rode the mother of gods “rouer”, it sure was hard, I wasn’t really familiar with vert concrete transitions like that one.

It has a small flat and the transition turns vertical real quick, after that be ready for oververt, so don’t expect anything like dreaming, anyone ever full loop that.

The connections between the transitions and the flat ain’t that perfect, in places you gonna see a 2-3cm gap in between the sections. All of these have 4 big holes in each corner. So it makes it very special. You like to eat shit for breakfast, then this spot is for you for sure. Without counting the holes and the normal damage of time to the concrete and it’s gonna torture your wheels and make them cry for nice smooth concrete transition. If you think nothing gonna stop you from there, beware, your lazy 20 min sweeping has always forgotten some evil little gravel stuck in every edge and a good face plant according to the rules, is gonna be your next trick at best. Some bones have been crushed by this old lady and she ain’t done with it yet.

Somehow, the spot ain’t too popular around, people usually go once in the summer and then leave the spot until the next one. For me ‘t was a real winter spot, always possible to clean up enough to ride, even when the mercury goes to minus.

Living down there for 15 years, the spot is a special one to me, great memories, like heavy late summer sessions flooded with beers and some others less, like driving your buddy to the emergency with broken bones. You can imagine the pure feeling of your highest carve there.

This last October we had a good reunion at the spot and a great session with Dan. Plus the gods were kind to us and brought us the late “été indien” weather with a 24 dg celcius, so we found our old moves back real quick.

So if you felt like you need to have the suitcase full of cash to go visit that country, be sure there’s so much more there and that spot is a real deal so a good reason to drag your ass down there!