All the photography in this article
is from the M.O.D crew’s latest
trip to Royal Hills and after seeing
their shots and videos, it’s fair to
say these dudes really make the
most of it!
The joint is run by two dudes
from Belgium: Pieter Bernolet and
Steven ‘Stoica’ Stuyven. Stoica
used to ride for the FMX4Ever
freestyle motocross team, and
now also runs his company
StoicaGraffix from Royal Hills.
Since moving to the open space
of the Midi-Pyrénées, Stoica
has found himself spending less
and less time on the ramps, to
make room for his newfound
love of enduro. This year he
raced some of the gnarliest
enduros in the world, including
the Erzberg Rodeo and the Red
Bull Romaniacs. Stoica and Pieter
are both riders, and this quickly
becomes apparent in the way
everything is set up – you can tell
riders run this place. On my last
visit to Royal Hills, I managed to
sit down with Stoica to find out
a bit more about how this epic
dream of theirs became a reality.
“It probably took us about a year
to fully figure out the concept of
what we were trying to do – and
then how to do it. We kind of sat
down, as riders ourselves and
thought ‘what do we like about
riding?’ Things like when the
owner of a track lets you ride
after hours and you’ve got the
whole place to yourself came to
mind, which is where the idea
to make it exclusively for private
groups came from. We’re still sort
of figuring it out as we go. There
aren’t many places like this so
we never had a tested business
model to work from. The key
factor that makes us so different
is that when you’re here the place
is on lockdown to the public you
know – it’s just you and your
mates. To be honest the place is
too big to just come for one day
at a time anyway. You need a full