Lands End (2024) Movie Script
1
There's not a lot left
that you can do in skateboarding
that's like the first time
something's been done,
for him to be like
I'm going to do this momentous
full stretch from
John O'Groats to Lands End,
for this foundation that is set up
in the memory of my friend,
and I'm doing it for me.
It's mental.
It is shining
a light on that really dark situation
that one of Barney's close
friends, killed himself.
With suicide,
it's something
that is so impossibly difficult
to try and understand.
Don't brush suicide
under the carpet man,
this is real.
People are losing friends
and family every day
and a lot of it's men,
because we ain't so good at
talking to each other.
It's our job to
continue talking about
why and what happened there
because if we don't,
he just died.
He didn't take his own life.
He just died.
It's not the same thing.
This is his way of like
making a mark,
and contributing to this ongoing
conversation and this change
that's happening
within skateboarding.
The further and
the harder I push myself
and the longer we're on the road
and if I don't give up
it's just to push the awareness
that much more, isn't it?
Going through an entire country
piece by piece with my friends,
it's hard going
but it's a great moment in my life.
I don't want to take it for granted.
I'll be honest.
I saw Barney posted that he was
going to do this trip,
and two thoughts were,
I'd really like to join him
to like support him and to photograph it.
I think it would just be cool,
and then the second thought was like,
how is he going to do this?
We've heard of people
running and cycling
from John O'Groats
to Land's End,
but how about skateboarding it?
Well Barney Page is doing just that,
skating 941 miles
in 25 days.
I just remember getting in
and Barney looked rough.
I definitely don't feel 100%.
And he was like, "Oh, I was just
in Paris for this shoot."
"You know,
I've been having some fun."
and I'm like,
"We're starting tomorrow."
It's like midnight.
And I looked on Google Maps, and
it was like 3 hours to John O'Groats.
Oh and he was sick!
We wake up at like eight.
We went to some touristy stuff.
I felt like we were kind of
just like putting it off.
There was a plan, as in like,
we're going to Land's End.
I mean, it's like 900 something miles.
Are we really doing
this for like a month?
I didn't think about it,
to be honest.
Can you skate on a road?
Is there sidewalks?
I don't know.
In my naive brain, I think I was like,
there's gonna be a magical sidewalk
the whole way.
I didn't really think about it
until we got there
and I was like,
"Cool we're driving across Scotland."
But I think it was only when I
got in the van did I realize like
I'm literally going like five miles an
hour. So this is going to take, forever.
He had two boards,
two pairs of wheels,
one pair of trucks,
no food.
I think I had a bottle of water
from the airport
and like a backpack of clothes.
I remember thinking like,
there must be another
bag in here that has, like,
the rest of your stuff.
And there wasn't.
It was just like what he had on.
It was insane.
That's 37 miles (59.5 km) wasn't it?
37.6, actually.
It was completely out of the
ordinary and out of character
for Barney to be doing this
kind of like, endurance event.
You know, he's an amazing
skateboarder and he's like
kinda great at skating all terrain.
But I didn't think he would be
the sort of person that would
step up to do
this kind of event,
if you see what I mean?
I was just a bit more kind
of worried about being able
to hold his mental stability together
to be able to get to the end.
So when he hit me up about it, I was like,
"Have you done any training?
Have you sort of pushed
down the road for a
few miles just to like
see if you could do it?"
And he was kind of like, "Well,
I just push around all the time.
That's just what I do."
So, he's been training for it
as long as he's been skating, maybe?
This one I can touch way easier.
Yeah. Yeah you'll always have one leg,
that'll be just, the weirder one.
Generally, it's the one you get
the injuries on, man.
How is he in that van?
I did a run from John O'Groats
to Land's End in 2010
with my friends Mathew
Pritchard and Matthew
Ryan. Barney knew
that I'd done that.
And then when he came to skate it,
he sort of hit me up and was like,
"Oh, which way did you go?" and
"How long did it take, and
how much do you need to eat?"
Pritch, who used to be pro skateboarder.
I turned round to him one day
and I was like,
"Would you rather skateboard for this?"
And he was just like,
"I'd definitely rather run this."
And I was like, "Yeah, me too."
He's actually using a proper board
with big huge soft orange wheels.
Looking back
and seeing the longest,
steepest downhill with a tailwind
and I'm just like, walking against the wind
up the hill, I was just like,
heartbreaking!
And then you just go
around the corner and there's
another hill like as
far as the eye can see.
Love that for me.
It's a perfect day apart from the wind.
Look, it's absolutely beautiful.
So if it's raining tomorrow
that would be shit
because the potential today would
have been great without the wind.
But, what can you do?
It's not a bad thing
it's unorganized.
But it was just like,
we don't have a plan.
And we ended up in like a
full on wind farm, day two.
And then it's going to rain,
like, every day after.
So we're trying to get, like,
as far as possible.
And then
that's when we went over that hill,
and it was literally like,
the longest downhill on earth.
And it was right along the ocean.
One beautiful hill bomb
all the way down. I
could just see him
looking back and smiling.
I think that was the first time of the trip
where it really felt like
I could see him enjoying it.
He was flowing.
I was like hanging out the van.
It was like the most scenic shit ever
We were like, "Oh, my God!"
The entire way down I was like, "Oooooh!"
It's all worth it.
I think when I spoke
to people about it and
said, "Ben's really
good friend of Barney's,
he's skating from the top of the country
to the bottom."
And they were like,
"Ah. What?!"
And even I was like,
"I know, it's actually insane."
Because of having such
challenging upbringing.
We were so close, and
although we used to fight
all the time,
we just had such a loving relationship.
Ben had counseling
when he was really small, and it
came from not having a dad
and his frustrations,
I think that's where a lot underlies
and Ben
put everything into skateboarding.
He had a nice style
and you wanted to watch him,
and not many 12 year olds do that.
Mark was such a pinnacle point
in Ben's life, like
not just his skateboarding career,
his life.
And something that Ben really needed.
Like I met his mum. I
think his mum turned
up and just like talked
to her and just said,
"Oh, this is what
we do. Like, we travel
around, we skate, do
demos and blah blah blah.
Like if your kid wants to come out."
And she was just like, "Yeah, take him."
And then that was that for
like the next six,
seven years, I reckon he was
with us in the van every week.
It was the right place, right time.
We were local, he was local.
Everything sort of
aligned at that time for him.
And he was a little kid that was
desperate to get out of his situation
With Ben's mum,
like she told me quite early,
she was just like,
"Oh, he's pretty angry."
And it was pretty, pretty clear that
you could be pretty fucking angry
about what situation he was in,
you know, like there was like
four of them living in this little flat,
damp on the walls,
little smelly dog, and not much money,
no dad around,
and basically
pretty much an alcoholic mum.
I think I was running away
from my childhood for a long time.
I was suppressing it
and what I've come to realize is
you suppress something,
it comes out eventually.
You can only run from it for so long.
You just have to, you have to learn
to process these things,
deal with them
and then pick yourself
back up as best you can.
It was an escape, skateboarding,
you know what I mean, for him.
And like it is for all of us,
a lot of the time, it's a good escape
that gives us like somewhere to go,
that isn't in our own heads.
And this place looks nice today,
but it's pissing down here a lot,
this is England.
It's not like this very often.
For this kind of stuff.
Happiness is not 24/7.
Pissing it down with rain.
Definitely doesn't make you want
to get out of bed.
Even if it's just a little lighter,
because it's just too dangerous
to push on the busy A-roads
when it's this wet.
It's a slippery,
and it's hard to push,
it's just miserable.
I am quite nervous on the road though,
I'm not gonna lie.
The log one came through,
I was just like, "Oh my God."
Imagine a log rolling off the side.
Having that role of
being the safety van,
you are that sort of blockade
between him and big truck, lorries.
You'll get a lot of people in cars
beeping their horns.
You got the authority
to be here doing this?
Lorry drivers giving you shit
because you're holding them up.
Just because you're so far back
and if the car's overtaking,
they're going to come in where I was.
You had to be aware, like,
not to be too close to them.
That felt like you were like
just tailing him too much.
But also if you let it go,
cars could come in.
This road fucking sucks man.
I guess with Barney,
because of what he was doing it for,
you know, if he's feeling like shit,
he's probably thinking about Ben
going you know,
"My friend's not here unfortunately
because he went through so much pain.
As far as I'm concerned,
I'm still here,
I'm in a little bit of pain.
Get on with it.
Just keep moving forward."
Hi there.
I'm Ben Raemers.
Ben was probably the sweetest
little kid you'd ever meet.
Actually, at a skatepark,
especially in Essex.
He was powerful
on a skateboard, a joy to watch.
Stylish.
Would do shit good,
but really good.
It was just exciting to skate
with Ben and to watch him
because it was like you didn't really
know what was going to happen,
and neither did he.
He'd be like, "How'd you do that?"
And we'd be like, "Oh, I like this."
And then within three tries,
he's doing it better than you can do.
And that just happened,
like continuously.
And he obviously became ridiculously
good at skateboarding
very quick.
Which was amazing to watch
because it inspired us.
Literally you could see in his eyes
that he was just so excited
and grateful and
just taking it all in.
We were always pushing
him to get better and better,
and then he was international level.
It's mind blowing.
You know, he's just a
kid who happened to be
good at skateboarding,
and was funny to be around.
It was like, you would
have still hung out
with him if he was
shitter at skateboarding.
It was fun.
You were laughing all the time.
Maybe not always with him,
sometimes at him,
but that was just
because he's a young kid.
Growing up, we both kind
of had similar upbringings,
and like both single
parents bringing us up.
Both our mum's had, a drink problem
and we'd talk about that a lot.
He used skating to escape from that,
and like geographically
you could escape it as well,
but I guess that
just follows you around.
It's like you can leave there physically,
but like what's gone on
and what's effected
you is like still sitting there
in your brain like
eating away at you every day.
First clip,
first day,
I want to go home.
Stinking.
Yesterday was ruthless actually,
coming up to this point.
This is the point where
we stopped yesterday.
But the entire day was just
lashing down rain
horizontally across these highlands here.
You're in Drumochter, which is like
quite a beautiful Scottish glen,
but quite a scary place to be
because the weather just comes in.
Sherman and Barney took a cycle path off,
we couldn't go down,
so we were just trying to catch up.
No communication.
And then I do remember,
like looking at the map
and was just kind of like,
I think we went like miles.
Didn't start to panic
because I knew we'd be okay.
It's just I was kind of exhausted and
cold and wet and it was getting dark.
And that's the last position you
want to be in right there, isn't it really?
Just feeling stranded in the highlands.
If we went back, I feel
like we went too far.
So then we just sat there.
It's not like they're
skating through town, they
can just pop in, ring us
at a cafe or something.
They're in the middle
of the Highlands, it's
getting dark, we have
no contact with them.
Got quite scary and quite stressful.
That was the reason I wanted to go
because I remember talking to him
and he was going to do the whole thing
by himself with a backpack
and a tent.
And I kind of thought he was
like over the trip at that point.
Well, when you got back
to the house last night,
definitely wasn't surprised to
see you looking quite disheveled
because that's definitely
what the Highlands weather will do to you.
Hannah is an amazing photographer
and I think I posted
something on Instagram and she was like,
"Do you guys need a place to stay?"
She was such like a saving
grace in the Highlands.
Oh, I'm happy the sun's shining today.
Our new good friend Hannah
and her beautiful little puppy Una
took care of us by the fire
for another evening.
That made everything
all the better after such a strenuous day.
If I gave you these you'd go much faster.
Yeah almost out of The
Highlands now, almost.
That's quite rewarding seeing it
on the other side to be honest.
We entered it and it
was quite overwhelming.
That's a good milestone.
The first couple of days were tough man,
they were tough.
There was definitely a part of me that
was like, "Oh my God, what have I done?"
What's the forecast for tomorrow?
Rain, next day rain, day after rain,
day after that rain,
day after that rain, and so on.
A month back I was like,
"yeah, you know a bit of rain"
Ahh gross.
"I'm tough enough,
I'll push through that."
Like soreness,
"yeah, yeah, I got this."
But then when you're actually doing it,
you're like, "man it's not as easy
as it was in my head," that's for sure.
How many miles are we in, like eight?
No, ten.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
So 25 more, lovely.
Okay hey, two more, to lunch.
To be with someone and have that
stress shared between people
is so much easier,
and better for you than to take
the brunt of it on your own.
Yeah, you need a little help
from your friends, don't you?
Like, if you guys weren't with me
for the last couple of days,
it would have been horrendous
because pushing through The Highlands
by myself would have just been, torturous.
Oh, this is nice.
What Barney's doing with this massive push,
and pushing through to meet people
and to hopefully get them to talk
about their experience in a way,
or get people to open up
by seeing what he's doing.
It's really needed.
Whoa!
Rainbow!
Suicide's very high in the Highlands,
and I personally have friends
that I've lost to suicide.
And it's so common now that
to still have to raise awareness for it, it
feels like we're living a bit behind times.
Like it is,
is it not the number one
killer of young men in Scotland?
And it's like,
how is this not discussed more freely?
All I really saw was like,
a friend doing something
for another friend.
I really liked,
and was touched by Barney's
just like huge gesture
and what it would take to do it
and how sure he had to have been
to do it, you know what I mean?
Like, that takes a lot of guts and focus.
I wasn't shocked
the idea of him undertaking that.
I kind of understood
and it made sense.
I first met Barney through Ben,
when Barney was young, and
he was like a Happy-Go-Lucky kid.
Like my mate Ben,
he kills it, he does.
It was in the context of him and Ben, too.
And they're kind of like
two peas in a pod, you know, like
especially because they're
both skating for a US based company.
And they both had their
English banter going on.
So we like, kind of like
we just laugh at them,
just their antics together.
It's honestly crazy that we get to do this.
It's honestly crazy that we
are just like given money
and then are just like,
let loose into the world.
And it's awesome.
It's kind of what makes
skating so rad is that,
yeah, it's so irresponsible.
I mean, skateboarding is so
heavily lifestyle based.
Like it's unique in that way where it's not
a sport like other professional sports
and it's not like you're
training for anything,
you're kind of just doing
what you feel like doing,
and that satisfies your career
for a long time.
The best thing about skateboarding
is that it's structureless, right?
To a certain extent.
And then you get a situation like Ben,
and the worst thing about skateboarding
for Ben was the fact
that it was structureless.
I remember him always saying that like
every day to him is like a Saturday.
He can kind of do anything he wants.
He can drive around, get breakfast
and a pint, every single day.
You can be a professional skateboarder
and be drunk a lot of the time.
Absolutely fine. It's normal.
You go to do a demo,
you finish the demo,
everyone wants to take you out
and go and have a party.
If you do drugs or you
like getting hammered,
you can do that
and no one's looking at you going,
"Whoa, what are you doing that for?
You've gotta do this again tomorrow."
He's like,
"Nah, that guy's fucking rad.
He came out and partied with us,
and then tomorrow's at the demo,
hung over and still ripping."
You know, and that's cool.
Like, he's even cooler than he was
the night before.
Do you know what I mean?
The way that skateboarding
lets you live in sort
of an alternate reality is wonderful,
but it's also super detrimental
to like, your development.
All the attention you know
can really, like, mutate you.
For Ben, that would have been really tough
because he just loved skateboarding.
But then when you're in a position
where every single time
you pull your skateboard out and
step on it, every kid with a skateboard
is like, "that's Ben Raemers."
Phone's out.
"When's he going to do something?"
Skateboarding changed
from what Ben initially started with.
He was, you know,
quite young and he was just loving it
because it was him with his mates.
It wasn't this big pressure of being pro.
So if you get hurt and you're out
for six months, you've got six months
of looking at kids coming up going,
"Oh my God, my time's numbered."
And that's a tough thing to deal with.
I think when Ben turned pro,
things started to become
a problem because
a lot of the stuff that he did
wasn't good enough for him.
It takes so much
thought,
and focus,
and faith,
to experience so much
repetitive failure.
That made me dislike skating so much
that I would constantly
have sort of crises
about what I was doing.
I'm fucking over it man.
Because I was out shooting photos
with Ben, it would be most evident
to me that he was having
a bad time at that point
because he would just get angry
super quickly,
snap his board, smash stuff up,
and that wasn't kind of normal Ben.
Wasn't fun.
Quite an awkward position
when you're out there shooting photos.
Almost like
insinuation that you're kind of
somehow complicit
in making their life a misery.
But with Ben, it was kind of
that was when you felt like
maybe he's just getting like
over skateboarding, right?
Which I suppose what I'm equating
with like poor mental health
is like he's not finding it fun anymore.
That something's changed.
Skateboarding is so intense.
It is such an intense activity
and intense lifestyle
that you just shut off.
I mean, how could the most important thing
in your life
not have the potential
to like, ruin you?
It's pretty cold.
Like really cold.
Just I wish the weather
would give me a break.
My feet are soaked now
because of some of those puddles.
I couldn't feel my face when we were
bombing down those hills.
It just makes the miles
seem a lot longer.
Saturated wet, it's not nice anymore.
Difficult day again though.
I'm a little bit behind,
but I'm confident
I can make up the miles
on the good days.
If skateboarders can really
understand anything,
it's like, going through
something completely miserable to try
and reach some kind of goal,
you know what I mean?
There's this thing at the end
that you're envisioning and
to deal with the self-doubt,
is probably cushioned a little bit
just by being a skateboarder because
you know, what we do by nature is
so difficult and arduous.
We've got two of my good friends
that I grew up with
coming to Edinburgh today, and
they're going to be joining the crew
because we're losing two men tomorrow
Keep us motivated, keep us moving.
So, yeah, we've had
a bit of a pickle this morning.
Drove over a big screw.
So now we've put him to work,
fix it, see?
He's coming along nicely.
How's your first day
on the trip boys?
Don't know, haven't had it yet, boy.
Hopefully it's
going to be a good one.
Straight to the flat tire.
Gwolsh and Shooter
are my good luck charms.
Welcome home,
Barnaby.
We're far from home.
I feel pretty motivated, still.
I thought at this point, I'd be
a lot more mentally drained than I am
actually, to be honest.
In my head I thought I'd be like,
kind of just,
having enough.
The only thing that's bumming me out
is just the weather.
Pushing in the rain
and having the wind against you,
and it just lashing in
your face for hours.
It's just not the best motivation.
The miles go slower in the rain.
You know, and the slower the miles go,
the longer your day feels.
Feels like your board's getting
dragged backwards
and you're trying to go forwards.
Well, that's been a thing.
It's like, well,
you can either hate your life,
and just be completely miserable
the entire day,
or you can be like,
"Well, it is what it is.
There's nothing I can do about it
other than push now.
So I may as well try and enjoy it,
even when it is
ridiculously hard work."
I want to get to the bottom.
Like, I want to get to the bottom.
If I don't complete it,
there's got to be
a good reason why I don't.
Each day, I've just been
setting myself small goals.
Even when it's like,
ten meters down the road.
It would just be like, hit that goal and on
to the next one. It just keeps you going.
Because if you're thinking about
everything as a whole, it's overwhelming.
And then you're just gonna start,
getting in your head
and telling yourself you can't do
something when you know you can.
It's not going to be forever,
and it's not going to
continue on with this rain
for the entire skate.
Maybe most of it,
but not all of it.
Scotland, England, Scotland,
England, Scotland, England,
Scotland!
Good job Barn.
Thanks man.
Twenty four!
24 miles?
Yeah.
I might just keep going.
Huh?
I'm just wondering, do you guys
have somewhere to stay tonight?
Yeah.
You don't sound very keen.
Yeah, we've booked something.
That's converted as well.
Oh, we've got a big house up the road,
I didn't know if you'd want to stay.
- We can have some pizza.
- Wow.
We've got six bedrooms.
Oh, really?
Nice warm showers,
and that's the address.
Thank you so much,
I really appreciate it.
We're only up the road.
Okay, I've only got
ten miles to go as well.
No, it's cool cause we can drive back,
thank you so much.
- It's warm and dry and hot.
- Thank you so much!
So nice of them.
Oh, look dogs!
We're going.
They said six bedroom house,
but they didn't say
six bedroom castle, did they?
It was so nice of you guys
to stop for us earlier,
because I didn't know how to react.
He said, "We could wait for them"
and I said, "Just turn around."
They can always just say no.
1430, the tower was built
It was built by Robert The Bruce
for his sister.
Four foot thick walls.
Shoot arrows out of and that.
Apparently this used to be a booby trap
where they'd pour hot
oil on invaders and that.
Supposedly they brought that back
from a crusade
and there's six stones in Scotland
with this carving on them.
There's loads of history.
We're just trying to take it all in.
Yeah, you know when I said to you
about that time
I thought about killing myself.
I was driving up a motorway
and I was just going to drive
into the concrete embankment.
The only thing I can remember
is that feeling of euphoria,
and that frightened me, you know,
I just went really warm
and didn't have a care in the world,
but I didn't do it.
And I had two children at that time.
Two young children.
Sorry.
And that's probably
why I didn't do it.
Deep down inside me,
something said don't do it.
But you've got to listen to yourself.
You gotta listen to that little voice
in your head going, "Stop.
You know, this isn't good
you've got to stop."
Well as I say, without that dream,
I'd have given up.
If I thought that was it,
and that was my life,
I would have just thought,
"nah, don't want this."
It's important to have a dream,
have hope
and cling on to it with
everything you've got.
Everything you got, you know.
I definitely had a lot
of time to start thinking
about my own mental
health, like my life
or a lot of people that skate.
Everything's quite uncertain,
nothing's set in stone.
Nothing's secure.
And I think that has
a massive part to play
in the skating community
with mental health.
Just because you know,
you don't know when it's going to end.
The whole skate career,
the whole sponsorship life,
the route is kind of like a mountain.
It goes up you climb,
you reach a peak,
and then it just tapers off
or plateaus or something.
But it goes up and it goes down.
And it's a cliff when it ends
for a lot of people.
And that's pretty drastic
and scary for a lot of people.
If your life doesn't figure
itself out along the way.
So many skaters
at the end,
they're fucked up.
It takes a lot to learn something
to be professionally good at it.
A lot of hours of your life,
a lot of years.
So it's quite daunting
thinking that you're going
to have to go through
the entire process again
to try and get somewhere
on a professional level again.
If you look at kind of transition areas
in life from a psychology
perspective, they're quite
a risky time in people's lives, right?
But usually they happen
with like emerging adulthood.
So like 18 to 25, that kind of age
where transitions are coming,
you're leaving home,
you're going into study or work
or you're starting a family,
if you're starting a family young.
All of these kind of things.
That's a really difficult point
in someone's life.
And I think for
a lot of skateboarders,
maybe that gets deferred a little bit
because if you're really good
at skateboarding, maybe.
Because you're kind of getting sponsorship
and you're traveling the world,
and it's not a time to kind of engage
in those transitions.
So you maybe,
experience it differently.
And I think over time,
the realization sets in that like,
there's a transition coming,
but you feel equally
unprepared to manage it.
But society expects
people of 30 years old plus
to kind of got their shit together.
And I think skateboarding
maybe doesn't prepare for that.
It's not like when you're having
beers with your friends,
you can definitely
go into this kind of
thing all the time.
Especially if they didn't
have the same experience as you.
You know it sounds very,
I think, sometimes it might sound
a little bit unappreciative
if you talk about it in this way.
So add all those factors into someone
with the complexity of like Ben's
upbringing, where he didn't have
like a stable situation, really,
and then he's on his own.
He's out in America,
living this life that is dreamed about
and I know he had a great time
with a lot of that.
But also at the same time,
there's a lot of pressure
coming to that.
Back on me beaut,
we're back on the road.
On the road again.
There's a tractor.
They're like really leaning to one side.
The trucks was a mental issue.
He was like I can't skate straight.
And I was kind of like fobbing it off
like, "ah he's just complaining."
It's like it's dropped on this side
and the board is just stuck like that.
When I left,
because I had to go back to L.A.
for like four days and I was like,
"Are you sure you don't need anything?"
Because everything's way cheaper in the US.
I'm like, "Do you want trucks,
do you want wheels?"
And he's like,
"No, I've got everything."
And you messaged me and you
were like, "It's gone downhill.
We have no trucks."
Oh my God.
I just noticed
that's insane.
His truck was like
grind down to a nub.
I've never seen that
happen to anyone.
Yours are quite bad as well.
He had your trucks,
but they were like, smaller.
I hope this works.
They're too small.
I'm going to get wheel bite savagely.
The roughness of the ground.
And I think it was just rattling
so much for so many hours each day.
It was just grinding away.
You learn to value smooth ground more,
that's for sure.
It was hard work to
skate down that hill.
You alright, Gwolsh?
A bit bummed?
Haven't seen you
smile in a little bit.
Missing it, you know?
I was there for my driving license
and my companionship I'm sure.
I kind of treated it
like a little job, but
probably the funnest job
I've ever had in my life.
I guess my role
was predominantly like navigating.
When we come off the motorway,
we go down there.
Just keeping an eye on
where Barney's gonna be going,
and if we have to split,
where we're going to meet up.
- What way would we be on the bike path?
- We were kind of taking the route
as it came because the route
that Barney had originally planned,
you know, there was a big bit
where it was all gravel
paths and can't really skate on that,
although he did a bit.
So what should we do?
Well we can go a different way.
Trying to convey to him while
he's in front, got his head down,
just trying to skate.
Beeping the horn and just being like,
"Go left, go left."
But then it was like, "Oh shit,
we've actually got to go right."
Right up here.
You have to turn back down there.
It became really difficult,
to even communicate with him
because he'd be a bit further
away from us,
so we couldn't signal
him from the van.
We'd have to call him
and there wouldn't be any signal.
Quite a few moments where we ended up
kind of losing him in way.
He was doing this big thing,
and I didn't want to send him
the wrong way.
We'd go somewhere and I'd
look on the map and think,
we'll get there before him.
We'll just wait for him
when he gets there, but like
we'd basically pull up and he'd
already be there waiting for us.
And I was just thinking like,
"How is he going so quick?"
Where am I going? Right or left?
It's more of the pressure
in the situations.
Go left.
No Right!
At certain points, it was just like,
"Oh, my God.
Where's he going?
What're we doing?"
Barn!
Go to a different place.
There was a low bridge, yeah.
Thanks for bringing that up.
One of the greatest
achievements in my life.
From inside, I thought it was like
the top of the van
just got peeled off like a tuna can.
It sounded so crazy.
The plastic box on his van
just shattered.
Full of sleeping bags
and camping gear all over the road.
Oh, someone drove over
my sleeping bag.
Yeah, it was scary because I thought
we were going to get wedged.
- I'm sorry.
- Nah, it's alright.
If you second guess a tunnel,
or something again just check.
Next time, we'll speed up.
Ben fell out of love
with skateboarding,
but it's all he ever knew.
And on top of that,
he had no routine.
So he had hours and hours of,
when we were at work, of just sitting
there in his head thinking "that's it."
He wanted to move
beyond skateboarding.
You know,
and he was trying to get jobs.
He was always saying he was jealous
of his mates that just had jobs.
"You know, he wakes up in the
morning and he goes to the shop,
and he works in the shop,
then he comes home and he's got
his misses, and you
know, that's their life.
And I can't have that,
because I'm expected
to go to Australia
at the drop of a hat or whatever."
And I think that he started
to see skateboarding
as robbing him of the stability that
he probably craved at that point.
So he would always
mention his relationship,
not having a father and taking care
of his mother and all these things.
But I kind of feel like
what stood out to me more was,
like his kind of personal dilemma
of not knowing what to do with himself.
And the last time I saw him he was talking
about going back to school to
study underwater photography
something like completely off topic
from anything he's ever
expressed interest in.
And I don't know
seemed like he was really struggling
on what to find for himself.
There's a lot of anxiety that kind of
happens internally, like
worrying about
what's going to come, or what's
going to happen, or what's going to be?
That kind of worry
it's pretty insidious, right?
Because the more you feel it,
the more anxious you get,
the more you start noticing it,
the more you start kind of paying
attention to it, the more anxious you get.
Well, a lot of people look at Ben,
he had like a very successful career.
You know, he was our like poster boy.
And then you kind of almost
don't want to think that
all this other stuff is happening.
And that's always been
the thing is like,
"Oh, you know, you've got a dream job.
You're doing what you love."
But then you see like,
okay, sometimes doing what you love
for work kills what you love,
and how do you deal with that?
You know? And like,
that's a real struggle
a lot of people go through.
You always hear about artists
or musicians, or whatever,
and they just disappear for a while
and just they can't handle it
or whatever.
I just understand what it means
to be completely burnt out,
by something that seemingly is
perfect to the outside world.
It's tough, it feels lonely.
You feel kind of like isolated
because of it.
And I think like,
all the things that
skateboarders have to go through
emotionally can really isolate them.
Generally,
it ends up in an alcohol
or drug fueled
situation where that is in another escape,
whilst you're in there.
Do you know what I mean?
And that's what happened with Ben for sure.
He was basically an alcoholic at the end,
but he grew up with that situation.
It's normal for him.
I was guilty of it,
like knowing Ben had
an alcohol problem,
but not really addressing
it with him.
I didn't want to do it because
I didn't want him to feel bad or anything.
But really looking back on it, is it more
we don't want to feel bad by saying it,
and put ourselves
into an awkward situation
to like help someone?
Well, that's it. You can't really
trust the forecast in England.
It'll say 100% rain for a month.
Nah, but even for like a weekly forecast,
it'll say rain everyday
and it's like you know,
100% chance of rain all day today
and it's dry.
This place, you just gotta look out
the window in the morning
and then, go by that.
I'm sure it will rain at some
point today though,
but if it doesn't,
it'll be really nice.
Sun's shining right now
but it's looking very grey.
I had to kind of
make a decision about
whether we're gonna go through
the middle of the Lake District
or not.
And I mean, at the end of the day,
that kind of stressed
the whole situation out a bit.
It's the wind that's more annoying
than anything, to be honest
I think this was
the wrong route to take.
Definitely.
Made it ten times harder
for myself, I think.
I think I'm over it.
Can't even push in a straight line.
Fucking dumbass road.
I think it's too dangerous
to push down this.
I'm over it for the day.
I can't even
fucking push on that board.
It literally just leans to one side.
Should not have come this way.
Aww, Mum's washing.
The roads are flooded.
You got a headwind, you just
got rain lashing in your face.
Above all that, you get to this peak
up these winding hills
and then you can't even see in front
of the van because there's so much
fog and it's freezing cold.
There was just like no hope.
Oh, my God.
And I was just dripping.
The board was leaning to one side
and those pot holes,
then the cars behind me.
And then I was like,
I actually can't see in front of the van.
I was like, this is so sketchy.
I don't know what we're doing.
It had to be called,
it was dangerous.
I don't know how early on
I recognized it
because we did have discussions
probably around 2013, 2014,
where we talked about like,
he was struggling with
certain things and, like, events
that happened that he couldn't
get past and this, that and the other.
And like, I did suggest
to him on a couple of
occasions, like, you
know, we need to get help,
but then didn't have a clue
where to turn or who to speak to.
And then I never
followed through on that.
I mean there were
definitely classic signs
I think, like giving stuff away.
Just getting rid of belongings.
Continuously drinking is a sign.
Shutting off,
not talking to people or
people you are close to
and then hanging out
with other people that
aren't as close,
and not gonna realize
something's up with you.
Actually, Ben got to a place
where I thought he was better
and that's a huge sign.
You know, he struggled for so long
and then he got to a place
where he'd moved into his own place
and he seemed better.
I was having kind of calmer
conversations with him,
but then that was a sign in itself,
I think you notice big changes
in their behaviors.
He'd always get drunk and he'd
always be like, "I love you so much Lucy."
And I'd just be like,
"Aw, I love you too Ben."
But I think that was him
preparing, knowing that
he needed to say it because,
he was going to take his life.
I remember getting
the phone call from Mark,
and him just being like,
"Ben's dead."
I was like, "Fuck off, no way."
He was like,
"No, no. Ben's dead.
We think he's taken his own life."
I think it's hard, man.
Life's a lot harder than it looks
on the outside, isn't it? You know?
And especially from an outsider
looking at Ben going,
he's got everything.
He's a pro.
He travels around the world.
He looks like he's having a great time.
At the same time, you know,
he's drowning his sorrows
in getting pissed every day,
because he's on a trip,
most of his life.
Also, he's watching
the whole skate world
getting better and better and better,
putting more pressure on him
for being this guy.
And he's not the egomaniac guy
that he needs to be to step up
and go, "Right, I'm going to be better
than all these. I want to be that guy."
He's just wants to do his thing.
You know, and some people can handle
that and other people can't.
And that, that's...
it's not an excuse, it's like
you know, with life
I had a minimal toolset.
I'm learning now through counseling
and other stuff over the years
that I've done personally,
like you get more tools to deal
with the shit that comes your way,
and if you've got minimal tools,
you can make pretty shitty decisions.
What pain must he have been in
to even contemplate doing that.
That's the most upsetting part
is that he did that because
he was hurting so much.
It wasn't because he
wanted to leave everyone.
I don't believe he wanted
to leave everyone.
I just think he didn't want to
feel that bad anymore.
He wanted to be relieved of the pain.
And he was probably sticking around
because he loved everyone so much.
You can't necessarily blame yourself,
but you do
because Ben could have
done it regardless
of what any of us could have done.
But yeah, like, for me,
I would definitely never
not say something ever again now
because I didn't
want to feel uncomfortable,
or I didn't want to make them
uncomfortable.
Really questioning, like thinking
you know somebody
but not knowing the full person,
you know?
And even though I know all these
issues and all the problems,
but not ever believing for a second
it would ever manifest itself this way
and dealing with that,
I don't know, it's like
just can't believe it.
Years go by
and you still can't believe it.
In hindsight, you're like
if we'd have known he was further
down the road than any of us thought
you would have tried harder.
But then, you know,
at the same time, you're
juggling your own stuff
as well and you're like,
no one really knows where anyone is
because everyone's quite good
at hiding it, aren't they?
Everything is fucking soaked.
Is that thing dry?
Quite,
quite dry.
I'm going to take the miles I pushed
through the Lake District yesterday,
convert them down a different road,
and that takes us to Kendal.
I'm going to use that
as a starting point.
Kind of had to call it quits
on 20 miles yesterday,
which was quite
disappointing actually.
That was by far the least amount
of miles we've done.
But you know,
after like collecting my thoughts
for a little while.
I feel quite good again today.
Today is a new day, the sun's shining,
we'll try and make up the miles.
It's about all you can
do really, isn't it?
Hey.
No.
I don't have any make up on.
You went to a castle.
The castle man.
A lot's happened
and I'm a little frustrated.
I don't think I got enough time
to swap those trucks right now,
to be honest.
- He's never going to do it, is he?
- Huh?
You're never gonna swap 'em.
Yeah I am, it's horrible
It's actually horrible now.
I got to do it now. I'm going to do it now.
Let's go ahead and do it.
I feel like he wanted
to do it all on one
board with one pair of
clothes with one shoe.
I don't know why, but it was like this,
I don't know if goal's the word.
Ahh beautiful.
How are the trucks?
Oh, my God.
You don't realize how much of a struggle
it is until you put something new back on.
I was dragging the board because
it was leaning to one side,
and it was like hurting my leg.
Now it's gone.
He's always been like that,
I think he always likes to complain.
Every day is the same thing, really.
Wake up,
stretch a bit,
have breakfast,
laugh with your friends for 5 minutes
and then push for 6 hours,
day in, day out.
But it's really daunting before
you start the day in the morning,
because your like, 37 miles,
you know exactly how long it takes.
Oh, God, there it is.
I think the weirdest thing for me
was like,
you know, we do like a 40 mile day
or like a 50 mile day.
He was tired obviously but
it was kind of like
water off a duck's back
in a way for him.
It takes a kind of
certain mindset, right, to
want to put yourself
through the mill like that.
It's not like pushing
is a technical challenge, right?
But doing it 25 days straight,
you have to have some determination
to kind of succeed in that, and what
a better reason, to raise awareness
about something that's killing people.
The only thing I knew
he was thinking was
he was pushing for his mate.
That's what drove him every day.
He would just think about Ben.
So my daughter and I have been to
Raemers Park plenty of times.
The first time
she really asked about,
you know, who he was,
she was probably about five years old.
Dad, why's that there?
Is it because
he skates here a lot?
Is he the best person here
or something?
And then I think she asked
a question like, "Has your friend seen it?"
And I'm like, "Oh, no."
I had this point with my daughter
where it's like, right now
there's kind of a fork in the road.
She can learn right now
whether or not it's okay
to ask certain questions.
We've had conversations
about the cat dying.
She was very close with the cat.
They laid together and watched TV
or they slept in the same bed together
and actually like this idea
that the cat died.
As she pointed out to me,
it was all okay
because the cat
had had fun times.
That conversation was tougher on me
than it was on my daughter.
It opened up a conversation,
which I never thought was okay
to speak about before Ben died.
It's there to remind people
that that's what happens
and that we need to have
these conversations,
and if we don't have
these conversations,
this is what happens.
It's cool that Victoria Park
became a really kind of important
place that was associated with Ben.
Beats the shit out of a gravestone,
you know?
Way more fitting.
And he fucking killed it as well.
I do kind of volunteer work
in suicide support,
provide a space for them
to talk about it,
and I wish Ben could
have accessed something like that.
And when I talk to my
kids, you know like, I
disappear on a Sunday
morning to go and do that.
they know what I'm going to do.
You know, I don't ever want them
to get to a position in their life
if they're struggling to think like,
well we don't talk about this.
You know?
So to be able to kind of
have that open and honest conversation,
you know, "What happened to Ben?"
"Well, Ben was unhappy and
you know,
he killed himself."
It's a really horrible thing
to have to tell a kid.
Like to them,
death's this kind of vastly difficult
to grasp concept.
I mean, it is for grown ups, too,
I'm not suggesting kids are unique, but
unfortunately for some children,
they probably grasp it.
You know, children, who
are having really difficult lives.
Why do they kill themselves?
Well that's the conversation
that's important, right?
The fact is, neither here nor there.
People die by
car and
alcohol and
cigarettes
and diabetes,
and all manner of things.
You know, it's like, do we
educate our kids that sugar is bad?
Yeah. Duh.
So it's like, well you know
is mental health dangerous?
Well, if you don't talk about it,
then yeah.
It's the same with suicide, right?
Suicide is dangerous
if you're not having a
conversation with someone about it.
It's when it's not discussed
that it's dangerous.
Regardless of who you are
an awareness that
people feel like that is a
really important thing to learn.
And the younger you learn it,
the less stigma there is attached to it.
The more the conversation can happen,
the more prevention can come from it.
I'm super fucking over
pushing today,
it's so boring.
And now this is hurting,
it sucks even more.
Yeah, just had this like
all of a sudden this pain came
and it just felt really tight.
The last couple of
days as well, I've pushed
like a lot more miles
than I have done
the entire skate so far,
and I didn't really
stretch stupidly in the night.
Crossing the Devon border today
and getting to Exeter is
one of the biggest milestones,
purely just because it's where I grew up.
It's in the Southwest,
so it's the last leg of the journey.
Some of these roads
aren't even big enough
for like two cars to come by
and then people are driving like,
I don't know there's no speed limit.
I guess there is a speed limit.
Everyone's going
so fast around these corners.
I don't even like driving down
those roads.
I thought I was gonna go through
that dudes windscreen.
It's national speed limit
on those roads
it's so dangerous.
So far to Exeter.
It was like getting dark that night.
We were like,
"Should we just call it?"
But he was just like,
"No, we've got to make it."
And he really pushed for that.
And that really gave him a lot of energy.
When we met up with his family.
Bridgewater to here is quite a ways.
Yeah, it was like 50 miles today.
Bloody hell.
Yeah, just so happened
that their house was on route
at the mileage of the day
where we completed everything
and they watched me
skate up the road to their house.
It was quite a magical moment,
to be honest.
I said to Granddad,
you're very lucky
because I inherited his legs
and you inherited mine.
Yeah, that's right.
To see him even get this far
was just amazing.
Yeah you'd never believe it.
He seemed so fit
after all the miles.
Yeah, yeah.
Bright and fit and happy and...
Yeah.
Maybe that was to see us too, dear.
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Probably about six years ago,
my brother, had...
Yeah, her brother committed suicide.
Nobody knows what anybody else
is really thinking.
Even if they're depressed.
For me, I think the main thing is
talking.
I think you've got to be able
to express what you feel.
Because most people
keep too many things to themselves
and if they're private,
they don't want other people to even...
I mean, some people are
ashamed of the way they feel.
If everybody could talk about it,
it probably would save a lot of lives
Keep up the good work!
Obviously,
I know it's a big issue, you know,
but you don't realize
how many people it actually affects.
It was pretty amazing to get support
from people like that along the way.
Every day,
we'd raise a little bit more.
And so you didn't
think about the big picture.
And then all of a sudden you're like,
wow, that is a big amount of money.
15,181!
No way.
You did it.
Oh, my God.
All the things
that people do to fundraise.
It's like the money is great.
It's lovely. Thank you.
But it's also that process
of doing something.
And it's symbolic in a way, isn't it?
It's like people want to get involved
because it's something
that resonates with them.
It's something they care about.
And maybe that's their way of
supporting and addressing
and using their skills
and their abilities to deal with it
themselves as well.
You know, you don't do
physically challenging feat without
being engaged with what
you're doing it for.
When people did stop
and have these moments
to share with us.
That really, spurred him on.
You could tell that
if he didn't raise any money
and you know, even didn't finish it.
You know, just the fact that we were
impacting people in the moment
and they were opening up about it
made it worth it just for that.
Thank you so much.
No, my, my partner's
brother killed himself.
- Oh, man.
- Yeah.
You're going down one road and
10 cars pass you,
and one of them stops
and shares
an experience like that,
and you think, you know, you've
just gone through a town of like,
50 to a hundred thousand
people in it and
probably one in
ten of them have experienced
something like that, but it just
doesn't get spoken about enough.
Until you're really immersed
in that kind of thing and doing
something about it and seeing people
that it effects daily like,
it really hits home
like the extent of the issue.
You've got to look after people and
you got to look out for foundations
and resources and things
like they don't come out of nowhere.
You know, you kind of
have to fight for happiness.
Here's a way where a bunch
of awareness was created.
Here's a way where money was raised
and Ben's name was kept
at the forefront of
everyone's thoughts.
And just because he's passed away,
that doesn't mean
that should be left behind
because his name can be used
for good.
I will never fully
wrap my head around that fact
I've lost Ben to suicide, but
I can do something to try
and help with that,
and that's the foundation.
Our mission was just to create safe spaces
within the skateboarding community
and now, I guess wider,
to get them talking about suicide and
and not being
afraid of the word suicide.
When we set out, one of the things
we wanted to do was,
as you just said, give people tools
in order to have these conversations
with their friends or loved ones.
And then one of the things we thought
was to sort of try and train
people in skate shops, team managers,
people in the industry,
people who are around skateboarders.
So like for me
particularly, like the local skate shop
was where we just went and hung out.
And if people in the skate shop
have the tools to spot signs
in the community, then they
can help get those kids help.
It's just giving people tools,
resources, and to be
comfortable with asking
someone close to them
or even a colleague, you know,
are they feeling suicidal?
I guess it's just important to listen
to ask the question
and then maybe ask it again
because everyone's going to say,
"Yeah, I'm fine."
Ask it again and
just be open to listen. Like you
probably don't even have to say anything.
Sometimes it's the first time people
have said this thing out loud, right?
It's been going around in their head
ruminating like in this negative way.
And it's like oppressing them.
Sometimes they've never said it out loud
and they say it out loud
and it's shocking to them, right?
I mean, if you've heard it
a hundred other times,
it's not so shocking to you, but
there's something about
that conversation, right?
It's not necessarily giving advice.
It's not necessarily
being able to fix the solution.
Sometimes it's kind of
it's otherness comes out in conversation,
and it becomes this thing that
"Whoa, I actually think that."
And that's like a part of the process
of kind of mending as well, right?
It's about accepting
or acknowledging that you feel it.
And sometimes we can convince
ourselves that's not the truth.
Now, looking at the younger generation,
it makes me so excited and hopeful
for them that we've created this,
there is something there for them.
It isn't just like they've got to
go to a GP or, you know,
somewhere really clinical, which is
something that Ben would have hated.
We've got something
for the skateboarding community
to open up that conversation
about mental health.
If we talk about it,
within the skate community,
skateboarders will approach mental health
in exactly the way
they approach skateboarding.
Like they'll take it quite seriously
but also approach it in a way
that is like, you're not going
to solve this like that.
You're not, it's going to take time
because you don't get good
at skateboarding in 5 minutes.
It takes time.
The whole trip we we're just
looking at the scenery,
super nice but in our ways,
we were just like,
"This ain't as good as Devon."
Aw Devon's beautiful though,
isn't it?
See these rolling green hills,
don't get these anywhere else boy.
Thanks for putting up with me.
That's alright.
Thanks for putting up with me.
I'm going to take a piss,
looking at it this.
Did he slam?
Only once?
I actually nearly hit him.
He like went under the van.
In my vision,
he was under the van.
I was like rushing
because of the cars.
That was such a good hill.
- Was that fast?
- No, I'd like to go faster
because I didn't know how long
the hill was gonna go on for.
Since I'd never skated down it before
and I didn't know how sharp
the corners were going to be.
It was pretty scary being in the van
when he was sort of going downhill
because we'd start at the top and
he'd start going like pretty fast.
And obviously then we have to pick up
speed in the van to stay close to him
but if anything happened,
I was really worried about us
hitting into him.
And then obviously some of
these roads were just crazy,
sharp bends,
and pot holes everywhere.
He's got a certain kind of
gung-ho attitude to skating
and to, I guess, just life in general.
Basically to a certain point,
I think you almost need to have that
to do some of the things
he's done on a skateboard.
So I can imagine him doing some
of those hill bombs and being like,
you know, a little bit careful,
but kind of throwing caution to the wind
to a certain extent anyways.
You'd enter the Moors
and you'd go over cattle grids.
Questioning myself, "Oh, is there going
to be a cattle grid any minute?"
God, those hills
in Dartmoor were insane.
The road's full of holes and stuff
and I'm just like, he's going
35mph or 40mph right now.
And he's just like dealing with it.
He just stays on its board
like he always has.
Going down hills that
you didn't know what to expect
around the next corner
when you're flying
and then thinking, you know,
"God forbid
there's like a tight corner,
a car, or a lorry or something
coming around that corner
when I get to the bottom."
It's kind of stupid for one.
And the only way to really stop
is kind of jump to your ass.
But the road's so rough.
So if you fall and I'm in shorts,
this is going to tear me up.
But, it's really fun.
That was fast.
I want to do it again.
89 miles left.
Under a hundred.
So I went to this rehab,
did some stupid shit.
Got kicked out.
Came back home,
woke up to my stepdad saying,
"Oh my God, oh, my God."
And I went in there and she,
my mother was overdosed
with a needle in her arm dead.
And that's when I
really clicked in my mind.
You're done with this shit.
So I went to rehab again.
The Smile films.
Well firstly they're named after Ben's
funny upside down tattoo.
And I guess it's the theory
that if you see your heroes,
or people you look up to
talking about something, then they can see
that someone else is going through it,
or has been through it.
And then hopefully
they can talk about it too.
Something the Raemers Foundation
has done a fantastic job of is
finding people of a certain stature
that are willing to kind of
risk the embarrassment
of having told the truth.
That's a ridiculous statement
in itself right,
but I think that's what it is.
I think with Ben, his struggles
weren't ever highlighted.
He was highlighted
as this fabricated version of himself,
which he really wasn't.
But I think having pro skaters
being brutally honest, and talking
about the things that haven't been
spoken about in the skateboarding
community before,
has just been massive.
Like the events that they've been
putting on in London
where they're premiering
the Smile Films and you're gonna go
and watch a ten minute documentary
about his mental health
and his experience.
And then you're going to have a panel
discussion afterwards
with like mental health professionals
people from the skateboard community,
the people that have been in the films,
it's completely unprecedented.
They've managed to make that happen
and turn Ben's death,
which is obviously like a tragedy.
They've managed to make
something that's like
resoundingly beautiful out of it.
For some reason,
it doesn't feel like the last day
because,
yeah,
it felt so far away like a week ago.
Talking about Ben from here,
it's quite hard for me
because I remember that little kid.
Can I have a balloon please?
And I also know that little kid
turned into the guy
on the front cover of Thrasher
three fucking times, you know?
And now he's not here,
and he's not here
for reasons that, like,
we couldn't really help
him with that much.
We tried to point him
in some directions,
but by that point,
he's a little bit far down the road
and that road is a lonely old road.
But sometimes people
go all the way to the end
and turn around and come back,
and unfortunately he didn't.
Everyone involved in this,
everyone you've spoken to.
Getting to say things
that you hold in a lot.
You know, it's kind of
it's definitely helpful for us.
Especially almost four
years later, you know,
like going through it
and still going through it.
And time going by and like,
you know, he's stuck at
that age as we're in our new life,
you know, or moving into new lives.
It's a good way to express things,
that you've maybe never said before.
Talking at Ben's funeral
was one of the hardest things
I'll ever have to do.
You know, like I say, he was
like my kid before I had a kid.
So to stand up in front of 1,000 people
and tell them what I felt.
But also I felt
the most important thing was like
don't brush suicide under the carpet, man.
This is real.
This is happening on a daily basis.
People are losing friends
and family every day.
And a lot of it's men,
because we ain't so good
at talking to each other.
Like as individuals,
we have to be more aware
of what other people
are going through,
and letting it be known
that you can speak to me.
I will pick up the phone
or reply to your messages.
Suicide is a permanent solution
to a temporary problem.
It's like, you can get help.
Don't be scared
to ask your friends for help
because that's the only way
I accomplished this mission.
It's like people don't generally
want to ask people for a handout.
So all I'd say is
don't be scared to do that
because your friends love you,
your family love you,
there's people out there that love
you and are willing to help you.
It's our job to continue talking about
why and what happened there,
because if we don't,
he just died.
He didn't take his own life, he just died,
it's not the same thing.
If you don't want to talk about it,
that's up to you.
But we need to
because we're his friends.
And we don't want anyone else's
friend to do the same thing.
And the only way that we can do that
is by talking about it
and making everyone aware
that's what happened!
I mean Barney's done
this fucking thing,
it's insane.
Whatever his reasons are,
it doesn't matter.
What matters is it's got you
to travel halfway around the world
to make a film
about the process
and in the process
it's going to turn into
something else that's
going to make more
people talk about it
and it goes on and on and on.
That is the key thing.
Every part of that, is going to help
someone else, somewhere else.
Barney Page, Barney Page
Barney Barney Barney Page!
I haven't had a board like that
since I was 12.
It definitely has to be
captain something,
doesn't it?
Headlamp!
It's just one of them times
where you just look back,
and you're like,
I've done something in my life
that I just loved.
I just loved it.
There's not a lot left
that you can do in skateboarding
that's like the first time
something's been done,
for him to be like
I'm going to do this momentous
full stretch from
John O'Groats to Lands End,
for this foundation that is set up
in the memory of my friend,
and I'm doing it for me.
It's mental.
It is shining
a light on that really dark situation
that one of Barney's close
friends, killed himself.
With suicide,
it's something
that is so impossibly difficult
to try and understand.
Don't brush suicide
under the carpet man,
this is real.
People are losing friends
and family every day
and a lot of it's men,
because we ain't so good at
talking to each other.
It's our job to
continue talking about
why and what happened there
because if we don't,
he just died.
He didn't take his own life.
He just died.
It's not the same thing.
This is his way of like
making a mark,
and contributing to this ongoing
conversation and this change
that's happening
within skateboarding.
The further and
the harder I push myself
and the longer we're on the road
and if I don't give up
it's just to push the awareness
that much more, isn't it?
Going through an entire country
piece by piece with my friends,
it's hard going
but it's a great moment in my life.
I don't want to take it for granted.
I'll be honest.
I saw Barney posted that he was
going to do this trip,
and two thoughts were,
I'd really like to join him
to like support him and to photograph it.
I think it would just be cool,
and then the second thought was like,
how is he going to do this?
We've heard of people
running and cycling
from John O'Groats
to Land's End,
but how about skateboarding it?
Well Barney Page is doing just that,
skating 941 miles
in 25 days.
I just remember getting in
and Barney looked rough.
I definitely don't feel 100%.
And he was like, "Oh, I was just
in Paris for this shoot."
"You know,
I've been having some fun."
and I'm like,
"We're starting tomorrow."
It's like midnight.
And I looked on Google Maps, and
it was like 3 hours to John O'Groats.
Oh and he was sick!
We wake up at like eight.
We went to some touristy stuff.
I felt like we were kind of
just like putting it off.
There was a plan, as in like,
we're going to Land's End.
I mean, it's like 900 something miles.
Are we really doing
this for like a month?
I didn't think about it,
to be honest.
Can you skate on a road?
Is there sidewalks?
I don't know.
In my naive brain, I think I was like,
there's gonna be a magical sidewalk
the whole way.
I didn't really think about it
until we got there
and I was like,
"Cool we're driving across Scotland."
But I think it was only when I
got in the van did I realize like
I'm literally going like five miles an
hour. So this is going to take, forever.
He had two boards,
two pairs of wheels,
one pair of trucks,
no food.
I think I had a bottle of water
from the airport
and like a backpack of clothes.
I remember thinking like,
there must be another
bag in here that has, like,
the rest of your stuff.
And there wasn't.
It was just like what he had on.
It was insane.
That's 37 miles (59.5 km) wasn't it?
37.6, actually.
It was completely out of the
ordinary and out of character
for Barney to be doing this
kind of like, endurance event.
You know, he's an amazing
skateboarder and he's like
kinda great at skating all terrain.
But I didn't think he would be
the sort of person that would
step up to do
this kind of event,
if you see what I mean?
I was just a bit more kind
of worried about being able
to hold his mental stability together
to be able to get to the end.
So when he hit me up about it, I was like,
"Have you done any training?
Have you sort of pushed
down the road for a
few miles just to like
see if you could do it?"
And he was kind of like, "Well,
I just push around all the time.
That's just what I do."
So, he's been training for it
as long as he's been skating, maybe?
This one I can touch way easier.
Yeah. Yeah you'll always have one leg,
that'll be just, the weirder one.
Generally, it's the one you get
the injuries on, man.
How is he in that van?
I did a run from John O'Groats
to Land's End in 2010
with my friends Mathew
Pritchard and Matthew
Ryan. Barney knew
that I'd done that.
And then when he came to skate it,
he sort of hit me up and was like,
"Oh, which way did you go?" and
"How long did it take, and
how much do you need to eat?"
Pritch, who used to be pro skateboarder.
I turned round to him one day
and I was like,
"Would you rather skateboard for this?"
And he was just like,
"I'd definitely rather run this."
And I was like, "Yeah, me too."
He's actually using a proper board
with big huge soft orange wheels.
Looking back
and seeing the longest,
steepest downhill with a tailwind
and I'm just like, walking against the wind
up the hill, I was just like,
heartbreaking!
And then you just go
around the corner and there's
another hill like as
far as the eye can see.
Love that for me.
It's a perfect day apart from the wind.
Look, it's absolutely beautiful.
So if it's raining tomorrow
that would be shit
because the potential today would
have been great without the wind.
But, what can you do?
It's not a bad thing
it's unorganized.
But it was just like,
we don't have a plan.
And we ended up in like a
full on wind farm, day two.
And then it's going to rain,
like, every day after.
So we're trying to get, like,
as far as possible.
And then
that's when we went over that hill,
and it was literally like,
the longest downhill on earth.
And it was right along the ocean.
One beautiful hill bomb
all the way down. I
could just see him
looking back and smiling.
I think that was the first time of the trip
where it really felt like
I could see him enjoying it.
He was flowing.
I was like hanging out the van.
It was like the most scenic shit ever
We were like, "Oh, my God!"
The entire way down I was like, "Oooooh!"
It's all worth it.
I think when I spoke
to people about it and
said, "Ben's really
good friend of Barney's,
he's skating from the top of the country
to the bottom."
And they were like,
"Ah. What?!"
And even I was like,
"I know, it's actually insane."
Because of having such
challenging upbringing.
We were so close, and
although we used to fight
all the time,
we just had such a loving relationship.
Ben had counseling
when he was really small, and it
came from not having a dad
and his frustrations,
I think that's where a lot underlies
and Ben
put everything into skateboarding.
He had a nice style
and you wanted to watch him,
and not many 12 year olds do that.
Mark was such a pinnacle point
in Ben's life, like
not just his skateboarding career,
his life.
And something that Ben really needed.
Like I met his mum. I
think his mum turned
up and just like talked
to her and just said,
"Oh, this is what
we do. Like, we travel
around, we skate, do
demos and blah blah blah.
Like if your kid wants to come out."
And she was just like, "Yeah, take him."
And then that was that for
like the next six,
seven years, I reckon he was
with us in the van every week.
It was the right place, right time.
We were local, he was local.
Everything sort of
aligned at that time for him.
And he was a little kid that was
desperate to get out of his situation
With Ben's mum,
like she told me quite early,
she was just like,
"Oh, he's pretty angry."
And it was pretty, pretty clear that
you could be pretty fucking angry
about what situation he was in,
you know, like there was like
four of them living in this little flat,
damp on the walls,
little smelly dog, and not much money,
no dad around,
and basically
pretty much an alcoholic mum.
I think I was running away
from my childhood for a long time.
I was suppressing it
and what I've come to realize is
you suppress something,
it comes out eventually.
You can only run from it for so long.
You just have to, you have to learn
to process these things,
deal with them
and then pick yourself
back up as best you can.
It was an escape, skateboarding,
you know what I mean, for him.
And like it is for all of us,
a lot of the time, it's a good escape
that gives us like somewhere to go,
that isn't in our own heads.
And this place looks nice today,
but it's pissing down here a lot,
this is England.
It's not like this very often.
For this kind of stuff.
Happiness is not 24/7.
Pissing it down with rain.
Definitely doesn't make you want
to get out of bed.
Even if it's just a little lighter,
because it's just too dangerous
to push on the busy A-roads
when it's this wet.
It's a slippery,
and it's hard to push,
it's just miserable.
I am quite nervous on the road though,
I'm not gonna lie.
The log one came through,
I was just like, "Oh my God."
Imagine a log rolling off the side.
Having that role of
being the safety van,
you are that sort of blockade
between him and big truck, lorries.
You'll get a lot of people in cars
beeping their horns.
You got the authority
to be here doing this?
Lorry drivers giving you shit
because you're holding them up.
Just because you're so far back
and if the car's overtaking,
they're going to come in where I was.
You had to be aware, like,
not to be too close to them.
That felt like you were like
just tailing him too much.
But also if you let it go,
cars could come in.
This road fucking sucks man.
I guess with Barney,
because of what he was doing it for,
you know, if he's feeling like shit,
he's probably thinking about Ben
going you know,
"My friend's not here unfortunately
because he went through so much pain.
As far as I'm concerned,
I'm still here,
I'm in a little bit of pain.
Get on with it.
Just keep moving forward."
Hi there.
I'm Ben Raemers.
Ben was probably the sweetest
little kid you'd ever meet.
Actually, at a skatepark,
especially in Essex.
He was powerful
on a skateboard, a joy to watch.
Stylish.
Would do shit good,
but really good.
It was just exciting to skate
with Ben and to watch him
because it was like you didn't really
know what was going to happen,
and neither did he.
He'd be like, "How'd you do that?"
And we'd be like, "Oh, I like this."
And then within three tries,
he's doing it better than you can do.
And that just happened,
like continuously.
And he obviously became ridiculously
good at skateboarding
very quick.
Which was amazing to watch
because it inspired us.
Literally you could see in his eyes
that he was just so excited
and grateful and
just taking it all in.
We were always pushing
him to get better and better,
and then he was international level.
It's mind blowing.
You know, he's just a
kid who happened to be
good at skateboarding,
and was funny to be around.
It was like, you would
have still hung out
with him if he was
shitter at skateboarding.
It was fun.
You were laughing all the time.
Maybe not always with him,
sometimes at him,
but that was just
because he's a young kid.
Growing up, we both kind
of had similar upbringings,
and like both single
parents bringing us up.
Both our mum's had, a drink problem
and we'd talk about that a lot.
He used skating to escape from that,
and like geographically
you could escape it as well,
but I guess that
just follows you around.
It's like you can leave there physically,
but like what's gone on
and what's effected
you is like still sitting there
in your brain like
eating away at you every day.
First clip,
first day,
I want to go home.
Stinking.
Yesterday was ruthless actually,
coming up to this point.
This is the point where
we stopped yesterday.
But the entire day was just
lashing down rain
horizontally across these highlands here.
You're in Drumochter, which is like
quite a beautiful Scottish glen,
but quite a scary place to be
because the weather just comes in.
Sherman and Barney took a cycle path off,
we couldn't go down,
so we were just trying to catch up.
No communication.
And then I do remember,
like looking at the map
and was just kind of like,
I think we went like miles.
Didn't start to panic
because I knew we'd be okay.
It's just I was kind of exhausted and
cold and wet and it was getting dark.
And that's the last position you
want to be in right there, isn't it really?
Just feeling stranded in the highlands.
If we went back, I feel
like we went too far.
So then we just sat there.
It's not like they're
skating through town, they
can just pop in, ring us
at a cafe or something.
They're in the middle
of the Highlands, it's
getting dark, we have
no contact with them.
Got quite scary and quite stressful.
That was the reason I wanted to go
because I remember talking to him
and he was going to do the whole thing
by himself with a backpack
and a tent.
And I kind of thought he was
like over the trip at that point.
Well, when you got back
to the house last night,
definitely wasn't surprised to
see you looking quite disheveled
because that's definitely
what the Highlands weather will do to you.
Hannah is an amazing photographer
and I think I posted
something on Instagram and she was like,
"Do you guys need a place to stay?"
She was such like a saving
grace in the Highlands.
Oh, I'm happy the sun's shining today.
Our new good friend Hannah
and her beautiful little puppy Una
took care of us by the fire
for another evening.
That made everything
all the better after such a strenuous day.
If I gave you these you'd go much faster.
Yeah almost out of The
Highlands now, almost.
That's quite rewarding seeing it
on the other side to be honest.
We entered it and it
was quite overwhelming.
That's a good milestone.
The first couple of days were tough man,
they were tough.
There was definitely a part of me that
was like, "Oh my God, what have I done?"
What's the forecast for tomorrow?
Rain, next day rain, day after rain,
day after that rain,
day after that rain, and so on.
A month back I was like,
"yeah, you know a bit of rain"
Ahh gross.
"I'm tough enough,
I'll push through that."
Like soreness,
"yeah, yeah, I got this."
But then when you're actually doing it,
you're like, "man it's not as easy
as it was in my head," that's for sure.
How many miles are we in, like eight?
No, ten.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
So 25 more, lovely.
Okay hey, two more, to lunch.
To be with someone and have that
stress shared between people
is so much easier,
and better for you than to take
the brunt of it on your own.
Yeah, you need a little help
from your friends, don't you?
Like, if you guys weren't with me
for the last couple of days,
it would have been horrendous
because pushing through The Highlands
by myself would have just been, torturous.
Oh, this is nice.
What Barney's doing with this massive push,
and pushing through to meet people
and to hopefully get them to talk
about their experience in a way,
or get people to open up
by seeing what he's doing.
It's really needed.
Whoa!
Rainbow!
Suicide's very high in the Highlands,
and I personally have friends
that I've lost to suicide.
And it's so common now that
to still have to raise awareness for it, it
feels like we're living a bit behind times.
Like it is,
is it not the number one
killer of young men in Scotland?
And it's like,
how is this not discussed more freely?
All I really saw was like,
a friend doing something
for another friend.
I really liked,
and was touched by Barney's
just like huge gesture
and what it would take to do it
and how sure he had to have been
to do it, you know what I mean?
Like, that takes a lot of guts and focus.
I wasn't shocked
the idea of him undertaking that.
I kind of understood
and it made sense.
I first met Barney through Ben,
when Barney was young, and
he was like a Happy-Go-Lucky kid.
Like my mate Ben,
he kills it, he does.
It was in the context of him and Ben, too.
And they're kind of like
two peas in a pod, you know, like
especially because they're
both skating for a US based company.
And they both had their
English banter going on.
So we like, kind of like
we just laugh at them,
just their antics together.
It's honestly crazy that we get to do this.
It's honestly crazy that we
are just like given money
and then are just like,
let loose into the world.
And it's awesome.
It's kind of what makes
skating so rad is that,
yeah, it's so irresponsible.
I mean, skateboarding is so
heavily lifestyle based.
Like it's unique in that way where it's not
a sport like other professional sports
and it's not like you're
training for anything,
you're kind of just doing
what you feel like doing,
and that satisfies your career
for a long time.
The best thing about skateboarding
is that it's structureless, right?
To a certain extent.
And then you get a situation like Ben,
and the worst thing about skateboarding
for Ben was the fact
that it was structureless.
I remember him always saying that like
every day to him is like a Saturday.
He can kind of do anything he wants.
He can drive around, get breakfast
and a pint, every single day.
You can be a professional skateboarder
and be drunk a lot of the time.
Absolutely fine. It's normal.
You go to do a demo,
you finish the demo,
everyone wants to take you out
and go and have a party.
If you do drugs or you
like getting hammered,
you can do that
and no one's looking at you going,
"Whoa, what are you doing that for?
You've gotta do this again tomorrow."
He's like,
"Nah, that guy's fucking rad.
He came out and partied with us,
and then tomorrow's at the demo,
hung over and still ripping."
You know, and that's cool.
Like, he's even cooler than he was
the night before.
Do you know what I mean?
The way that skateboarding
lets you live in sort
of an alternate reality is wonderful,
but it's also super detrimental
to like, your development.
All the attention you know
can really, like, mutate you.
For Ben, that would have been really tough
because he just loved skateboarding.
But then when you're in a position
where every single time
you pull your skateboard out and
step on it, every kid with a skateboard
is like, "that's Ben Raemers."
Phone's out.
"When's he going to do something?"
Skateboarding changed
from what Ben initially started with.
He was, you know,
quite young and he was just loving it
because it was him with his mates.
It wasn't this big pressure of being pro.
So if you get hurt and you're out
for six months, you've got six months
of looking at kids coming up going,
"Oh my God, my time's numbered."
And that's a tough thing to deal with.
I think when Ben turned pro,
things started to become
a problem because
a lot of the stuff that he did
wasn't good enough for him.
It takes so much
thought,
and focus,
and faith,
to experience so much
repetitive failure.
That made me dislike skating so much
that I would constantly
have sort of crises
about what I was doing.
I'm fucking over it man.
Because I was out shooting photos
with Ben, it would be most evident
to me that he was having
a bad time at that point
because he would just get angry
super quickly,
snap his board, smash stuff up,
and that wasn't kind of normal Ben.
Wasn't fun.
Quite an awkward position
when you're out there shooting photos.
Almost like
insinuation that you're kind of
somehow complicit
in making their life a misery.
But with Ben, it was kind of
that was when you felt like
maybe he's just getting like
over skateboarding, right?
Which I suppose what I'm equating
with like poor mental health
is like he's not finding it fun anymore.
That something's changed.
Skateboarding is so intense.
It is such an intense activity
and intense lifestyle
that you just shut off.
I mean, how could the most important thing
in your life
not have the potential
to like, ruin you?
It's pretty cold.
Like really cold.
Just I wish the weather
would give me a break.
My feet are soaked now
because of some of those puddles.
I couldn't feel my face when we were
bombing down those hills.
It just makes the miles
seem a lot longer.
Saturated wet, it's not nice anymore.
Difficult day again though.
I'm a little bit behind,
but I'm confident
I can make up the miles
on the good days.
If skateboarders can really
understand anything,
it's like, going through
something completely miserable to try
and reach some kind of goal,
you know what I mean?
There's this thing at the end
that you're envisioning and
to deal with the self-doubt,
is probably cushioned a little bit
just by being a skateboarder because
you know, what we do by nature is
so difficult and arduous.
We've got two of my good friends
that I grew up with
coming to Edinburgh today, and
they're going to be joining the crew
because we're losing two men tomorrow
Keep us motivated, keep us moving.
So, yeah, we've had
a bit of a pickle this morning.
Drove over a big screw.
So now we've put him to work,
fix it, see?
He's coming along nicely.
How's your first day
on the trip boys?
Don't know, haven't had it yet, boy.
Hopefully it's
going to be a good one.
Straight to the flat tire.
Gwolsh and Shooter
are my good luck charms.
Welcome home,
Barnaby.
We're far from home.
I feel pretty motivated, still.
I thought at this point, I'd be
a lot more mentally drained than I am
actually, to be honest.
In my head I thought I'd be like,
kind of just,
having enough.
The only thing that's bumming me out
is just the weather.
Pushing in the rain
and having the wind against you,
and it just lashing in
your face for hours.
It's just not the best motivation.
The miles go slower in the rain.
You know, and the slower the miles go,
the longer your day feels.
Feels like your board's getting
dragged backwards
and you're trying to go forwards.
Well, that's been a thing.
It's like, well,
you can either hate your life,
and just be completely miserable
the entire day,
or you can be like,
"Well, it is what it is.
There's nothing I can do about it
other than push now.
So I may as well try and enjoy it,
even when it is
ridiculously hard work."
I want to get to the bottom.
Like, I want to get to the bottom.
If I don't complete it,
there's got to be
a good reason why I don't.
Each day, I've just been
setting myself small goals.
Even when it's like,
ten meters down the road.
It would just be like, hit that goal and on
to the next one. It just keeps you going.
Because if you're thinking about
everything as a whole, it's overwhelming.
And then you're just gonna start,
getting in your head
and telling yourself you can't do
something when you know you can.
It's not going to be forever,
and it's not going to
continue on with this rain
for the entire skate.
Maybe most of it,
but not all of it.
Scotland, England, Scotland,
England, Scotland, England,
Scotland!
Good job Barn.
Thanks man.
Twenty four!
24 miles?
Yeah.
I might just keep going.
Huh?
I'm just wondering, do you guys
have somewhere to stay tonight?
Yeah.
You don't sound very keen.
Yeah, we've booked something.
That's converted as well.
Oh, we've got a big house up the road,
I didn't know if you'd want to stay.
- We can have some pizza.
- Wow.
We've got six bedrooms.
Oh, really?
Nice warm showers,
and that's the address.
Thank you so much,
I really appreciate it.
We're only up the road.
Okay, I've only got
ten miles to go as well.
No, it's cool cause we can drive back,
thank you so much.
- It's warm and dry and hot.
- Thank you so much!
So nice of them.
Oh, look dogs!
We're going.
They said six bedroom house,
but they didn't say
six bedroom castle, did they?
It was so nice of you guys
to stop for us earlier,
because I didn't know how to react.
He said, "We could wait for them"
and I said, "Just turn around."
They can always just say no.
1430, the tower was built
It was built by Robert The Bruce
for his sister.
Four foot thick walls.
Shoot arrows out of and that.
Apparently this used to be a booby trap
where they'd pour hot
oil on invaders and that.
Supposedly they brought that back
from a crusade
and there's six stones in Scotland
with this carving on them.
There's loads of history.
We're just trying to take it all in.
Yeah, you know when I said to you
about that time
I thought about killing myself.
I was driving up a motorway
and I was just going to drive
into the concrete embankment.
The only thing I can remember
is that feeling of euphoria,
and that frightened me, you know,
I just went really warm
and didn't have a care in the world,
but I didn't do it.
And I had two children at that time.
Two young children.
Sorry.
And that's probably
why I didn't do it.
Deep down inside me,
something said don't do it.
But you've got to listen to yourself.
You gotta listen to that little voice
in your head going, "Stop.
You know, this isn't good
you've got to stop."
Well as I say, without that dream,
I'd have given up.
If I thought that was it,
and that was my life,
I would have just thought,
"nah, don't want this."
It's important to have a dream,
have hope
and cling on to it with
everything you've got.
Everything you got, you know.
I definitely had a lot
of time to start thinking
about my own mental
health, like my life
or a lot of people that skate.
Everything's quite uncertain,
nothing's set in stone.
Nothing's secure.
And I think that has
a massive part to play
in the skating community
with mental health.
Just because you know,
you don't know when it's going to end.
The whole skate career,
the whole sponsorship life,
the route is kind of like a mountain.
It goes up you climb,
you reach a peak,
and then it just tapers off
or plateaus or something.
But it goes up and it goes down.
And it's a cliff when it ends
for a lot of people.
And that's pretty drastic
and scary for a lot of people.
If your life doesn't figure
itself out along the way.
So many skaters
at the end,
they're fucked up.
It takes a lot to learn something
to be professionally good at it.
A lot of hours of your life,
a lot of years.
So it's quite daunting
thinking that you're going
to have to go through
the entire process again
to try and get somewhere
on a professional level again.
If you look at kind of transition areas
in life from a psychology
perspective, they're quite
a risky time in people's lives, right?
But usually they happen
with like emerging adulthood.
So like 18 to 25, that kind of age
where transitions are coming,
you're leaving home,
you're going into study or work
or you're starting a family,
if you're starting a family young.
All of these kind of things.
That's a really difficult point
in someone's life.
And I think for
a lot of skateboarders,
maybe that gets deferred a little bit
because if you're really good
at skateboarding, maybe.
Because you're kind of getting sponsorship
and you're traveling the world,
and it's not a time to kind of engage
in those transitions.
So you maybe,
experience it differently.
And I think over time,
the realization sets in that like,
there's a transition coming,
but you feel equally
unprepared to manage it.
But society expects
people of 30 years old plus
to kind of got their shit together.
And I think skateboarding
maybe doesn't prepare for that.
It's not like when you're having
beers with your friends,
you can definitely
go into this kind of
thing all the time.
Especially if they didn't
have the same experience as you.
You know it sounds very,
I think, sometimes it might sound
a little bit unappreciative
if you talk about it in this way.
So add all those factors into someone
with the complexity of like Ben's
upbringing, where he didn't have
like a stable situation, really,
and then he's on his own.
He's out in America,
living this life that is dreamed about
and I know he had a great time
with a lot of that.
But also at the same time,
there's a lot of pressure
coming to that.
Back on me beaut,
we're back on the road.
On the road again.
There's a tractor.
They're like really leaning to one side.
The trucks was a mental issue.
He was like I can't skate straight.
And I was kind of like fobbing it off
like, "ah he's just complaining."
It's like it's dropped on this side
and the board is just stuck like that.
When I left,
because I had to go back to L.A.
for like four days and I was like,
"Are you sure you don't need anything?"
Because everything's way cheaper in the US.
I'm like, "Do you want trucks,
do you want wheels?"
And he's like,
"No, I've got everything."
And you messaged me and you
were like, "It's gone downhill.
We have no trucks."
Oh my God.
I just noticed
that's insane.
His truck was like
grind down to a nub.
I've never seen that
happen to anyone.
Yours are quite bad as well.
He had your trucks,
but they were like, smaller.
I hope this works.
They're too small.
I'm going to get wheel bite savagely.
The roughness of the ground.
And I think it was just rattling
so much for so many hours each day.
It was just grinding away.
You learn to value smooth ground more,
that's for sure.
It was hard work to
skate down that hill.
You alright, Gwolsh?
A bit bummed?
Haven't seen you
smile in a little bit.
Missing it, you know?
I was there for my driving license
and my companionship I'm sure.
I kind of treated it
like a little job, but
probably the funnest job
I've ever had in my life.
I guess my role
was predominantly like navigating.
When we come off the motorway,
we go down there.
Just keeping an eye on
where Barney's gonna be going,
and if we have to split,
where we're going to meet up.
- What way would we be on the bike path?
- We were kind of taking the route
as it came because the route
that Barney had originally planned,
you know, there was a big bit
where it was all gravel
paths and can't really skate on that,
although he did a bit.
So what should we do?
Well we can go a different way.
Trying to convey to him while
he's in front, got his head down,
just trying to skate.
Beeping the horn and just being like,
"Go left, go left."
But then it was like, "Oh shit,
we've actually got to go right."
Right up here.
You have to turn back down there.
It became really difficult,
to even communicate with him
because he'd be a bit further
away from us,
so we couldn't signal
him from the van.
We'd have to call him
and there wouldn't be any signal.
Quite a few moments where we ended up
kind of losing him in way.
He was doing this big thing,
and I didn't want to send him
the wrong way.
We'd go somewhere and I'd
look on the map and think,
we'll get there before him.
We'll just wait for him
when he gets there, but like
we'd basically pull up and he'd
already be there waiting for us.
And I was just thinking like,
"How is he going so quick?"
Where am I going? Right or left?
It's more of the pressure
in the situations.
Go left.
No Right!
At certain points, it was just like,
"Oh, my God.
Where's he going?
What're we doing?"
Barn!
Go to a different place.
There was a low bridge, yeah.
Thanks for bringing that up.
One of the greatest
achievements in my life.
From inside, I thought it was like
the top of the van
just got peeled off like a tuna can.
It sounded so crazy.
The plastic box on his van
just shattered.
Full of sleeping bags
and camping gear all over the road.
Oh, someone drove over
my sleeping bag.
Yeah, it was scary because I thought
we were going to get wedged.
- I'm sorry.
- Nah, it's alright.
If you second guess a tunnel,
or something again just check.
Next time, we'll speed up.
Ben fell out of love
with skateboarding,
but it's all he ever knew.
And on top of that,
he had no routine.
So he had hours and hours of,
when we were at work, of just sitting
there in his head thinking "that's it."
He wanted to move
beyond skateboarding.
You know,
and he was trying to get jobs.
He was always saying he was jealous
of his mates that just had jobs.
"You know, he wakes up in the
morning and he goes to the shop,
and he works in the shop,
then he comes home and he's got
his misses, and you
know, that's their life.
And I can't have that,
because I'm expected
to go to Australia
at the drop of a hat or whatever."
And I think that he started
to see skateboarding
as robbing him of the stability that
he probably craved at that point.
So he would always
mention his relationship,
not having a father and taking care
of his mother and all these things.
But I kind of feel like
what stood out to me more was,
like his kind of personal dilemma
of not knowing what to do with himself.
And the last time I saw him he was talking
about going back to school to
study underwater photography
something like completely off topic
from anything he's ever
expressed interest in.
And I don't know
seemed like he was really struggling
on what to find for himself.
There's a lot of anxiety that kind of
happens internally, like
worrying about
what's going to come, or what's
going to happen, or what's going to be?
That kind of worry
it's pretty insidious, right?
Because the more you feel it,
the more anxious you get,
the more you start noticing it,
the more you start kind of paying
attention to it, the more anxious you get.
Well, a lot of people look at Ben,
he had like a very successful career.
You know, he was our like poster boy.
And then you kind of almost
don't want to think that
all this other stuff is happening.
And that's always been
the thing is like,
"Oh, you know, you've got a dream job.
You're doing what you love."
But then you see like,
okay, sometimes doing what you love
for work kills what you love,
and how do you deal with that?
You know? And like,
that's a real struggle
a lot of people go through.
You always hear about artists
or musicians, or whatever,
and they just disappear for a while
and just they can't handle it
or whatever.
I just understand what it means
to be completely burnt out,
by something that seemingly is
perfect to the outside world.
It's tough, it feels lonely.
You feel kind of like isolated
because of it.
And I think like,
all the things that
skateboarders have to go through
emotionally can really isolate them.
Generally,
it ends up in an alcohol
or drug fueled
situation where that is in another escape,
whilst you're in there.
Do you know what I mean?
And that's what happened with Ben for sure.
He was basically an alcoholic at the end,
but he grew up with that situation.
It's normal for him.
I was guilty of it,
like knowing Ben had
an alcohol problem,
but not really addressing
it with him.
I didn't want to do it because
I didn't want him to feel bad or anything.
But really looking back on it, is it more
we don't want to feel bad by saying it,
and put ourselves
into an awkward situation
to like help someone?
Well, that's it. You can't really
trust the forecast in England.
It'll say 100% rain for a month.
Nah, but even for like a weekly forecast,
it'll say rain everyday
and it's like you know,
100% chance of rain all day today
and it's dry.
This place, you just gotta look out
the window in the morning
and then, go by that.
I'm sure it will rain at some
point today though,
but if it doesn't,
it'll be really nice.
Sun's shining right now
but it's looking very grey.
I had to kind of
make a decision about
whether we're gonna go through
the middle of the Lake District
or not.
And I mean, at the end of the day,
that kind of stressed
the whole situation out a bit.
It's the wind that's more annoying
than anything, to be honest
I think this was
the wrong route to take.
Definitely.
Made it ten times harder
for myself, I think.
I think I'm over it.
Can't even push in a straight line.
Fucking dumbass road.
I think it's too dangerous
to push down this.
I'm over it for the day.
I can't even
fucking push on that board.
It literally just leans to one side.
Should not have come this way.
Aww, Mum's washing.
The roads are flooded.
You got a headwind, you just
got rain lashing in your face.
Above all that, you get to this peak
up these winding hills
and then you can't even see in front
of the van because there's so much
fog and it's freezing cold.
There was just like no hope.
Oh, my God.
And I was just dripping.
The board was leaning to one side
and those pot holes,
then the cars behind me.
And then I was like,
I actually can't see in front of the van.
I was like, this is so sketchy.
I don't know what we're doing.
It had to be called,
it was dangerous.
I don't know how early on
I recognized it
because we did have discussions
probably around 2013, 2014,
where we talked about like,
he was struggling with
certain things and, like, events
that happened that he couldn't
get past and this, that and the other.
And like, I did suggest
to him on a couple of
occasions, like, you
know, we need to get help,
but then didn't have a clue
where to turn or who to speak to.
And then I never
followed through on that.
I mean there were
definitely classic signs
I think, like giving stuff away.
Just getting rid of belongings.
Continuously drinking is a sign.
Shutting off,
not talking to people or
people you are close to
and then hanging out
with other people that
aren't as close,
and not gonna realize
something's up with you.
Actually, Ben got to a place
where I thought he was better
and that's a huge sign.
You know, he struggled for so long
and then he got to a place
where he'd moved into his own place
and he seemed better.
I was having kind of calmer
conversations with him,
but then that was a sign in itself,
I think you notice big changes
in their behaviors.
He'd always get drunk and he'd
always be like, "I love you so much Lucy."
And I'd just be like,
"Aw, I love you too Ben."
But I think that was him
preparing, knowing that
he needed to say it because,
he was going to take his life.
I remember getting
the phone call from Mark,
and him just being like,
"Ben's dead."
I was like, "Fuck off, no way."
He was like,
"No, no. Ben's dead.
We think he's taken his own life."
I think it's hard, man.
Life's a lot harder than it looks
on the outside, isn't it? You know?
And especially from an outsider
looking at Ben going,
he's got everything.
He's a pro.
He travels around the world.
He looks like he's having a great time.
At the same time, you know,
he's drowning his sorrows
in getting pissed every day,
because he's on a trip,
most of his life.
Also, he's watching
the whole skate world
getting better and better and better,
putting more pressure on him
for being this guy.
And he's not the egomaniac guy
that he needs to be to step up
and go, "Right, I'm going to be better
than all these. I want to be that guy."
He's just wants to do his thing.
You know, and some people can handle
that and other people can't.
And that, that's...
it's not an excuse, it's like
you know, with life
I had a minimal toolset.
I'm learning now through counseling
and other stuff over the years
that I've done personally,
like you get more tools to deal
with the shit that comes your way,
and if you've got minimal tools,
you can make pretty shitty decisions.
What pain must he have been in
to even contemplate doing that.
That's the most upsetting part
is that he did that because
he was hurting so much.
It wasn't because he
wanted to leave everyone.
I don't believe he wanted
to leave everyone.
I just think he didn't want to
feel that bad anymore.
He wanted to be relieved of the pain.
And he was probably sticking around
because he loved everyone so much.
You can't necessarily blame yourself,
but you do
because Ben could have
done it regardless
of what any of us could have done.
But yeah, like, for me,
I would definitely never
not say something ever again now
because I didn't
want to feel uncomfortable,
or I didn't want to make them
uncomfortable.
Really questioning, like thinking
you know somebody
but not knowing the full person,
you know?
And even though I know all these
issues and all the problems,
but not ever believing for a second
it would ever manifest itself this way
and dealing with that,
I don't know, it's like
just can't believe it.
Years go by
and you still can't believe it.
In hindsight, you're like
if we'd have known he was further
down the road than any of us thought
you would have tried harder.
But then, you know,
at the same time, you're
juggling your own stuff
as well and you're like,
no one really knows where anyone is
because everyone's quite good
at hiding it, aren't they?
Everything is fucking soaked.
Is that thing dry?
Quite,
quite dry.
I'm going to take the miles I pushed
through the Lake District yesterday,
convert them down a different road,
and that takes us to Kendal.
I'm going to use that
as a starting point.
Kind of had to call it quits
on 20 miles yesterday,
which was quite
disappointing actually.
That was by far the least amount
of miles we've done.
But you know,
after like collecting my thoughts
for a little while.
I feel quite good again today.
Today is a new day, the sun's shining,
we'll try and make up the miles.
It's about all you can
do really, isn't it?
Hey.
No.
I don't have any make up on.
You went to a castle.
The castle man.
A lot's happened
and I'm a little frustrated.
I don't think I got enough time
to swap those trucks right now,
to be honest.
- He's never going to do it, is he?
- Huh?
You're never gonna swap 'em.
Yeah I am, it's horrible
It's actually horrible now.
I got to do it now. I'm going to do it now.
Let's go ahead and do it.
I feel like he wanted
to do it all on one
board with one pair of
clothes with one shoe.
I don't know why, but it was like this,
I don't know if goal's the word.
Ahh beautiful.
How are the trucks?
Oh, my God.
You don't realize how much of a struggle
it is until you put something new back on.
I was dragging the board because
it was leaning to one side,
and it was like hurting my leg.
Now it's gone.
He's always been like that,
I think he always likes to complain.
Every day is the same thing, really.
Wake up,
stretch a bit,
have breakfast,
laugh with your friends for 5 minutes
and then push for 6 hours,
day in, day out.
But it's really daunting before
you start the day in the morning,
because your like, 37 miles,
you know exactly how long it takes.
Oh, God, there it is.
I think the weirdest thing for me
was like,
you know, we do like a 40 mile day
or like a 50 mile day.
He was tired obviously but
it was kind of like
water off a duck's back
in a way for him.
It takes a kind of
certain mindset, right, to
want to put yourself
through the mill like that.
It's not like pushing
is a technical challenge, right?
But doing it 25 days straight,
you have to have some determination
to kind of succeed in that, and what
a better reason, to raise awareness
about something that's killing people.
The only thing I knew
he was thinking was
he was pushing for his mate.
That's what drove him every day.
He would just think about Ben.
So my daughter and I have been to
Raemers Park plenty of times.
The first time
she really asked about,
you know, who he was,
she was probably about five years old.
Dad, why's that there?
Is it because
he skates here a lot?
Is he the best person here
or something?
And then I think she asked
a question like, "Has your friend seen it?"
And I'm like, "Oh, no."
I had this point with my daughter
where it's like, right now
there's kind of a fork in the road.
She can learn right now
whether or not it's okay
to ask certain questions.
We've had conversations
about the cat dying.
She was very close with the cat.
They laid together and watched TV
or they slept in the same bed together
and actually like this idea
that the cat died.
As she pointed out to me,
it was all okay
because the cat
had had fun times.
That conversation was tougher on me
than it was on my daughter.
It opened up a conversation,
which I never thought was okay
to speak about before Ben died.
It's there to remind people
that that's what happens
and that we need to have
these conversations,
and if we don't have
these conversations,
this is what happens.
It's cool that Victoria Park
became a really kind of important
place that was associated with Ben.
Beats the shit out of a gravestone,
you know?
Way more fitting.
And he fucking killed it as well.
I do kind of volunteer work
in suicide support,
provide a space for them
to talk about it,
and I wish Ben could
have accessed something like that.
And when I talk to my
kids, you know like, I
disappear on a Sunday
morning to go and do that.
they know what I'm going to do.
You know, I don't ever want them
to get to a position in their life
if they're struggling to think like,
well we don't talk about this.
You know?
So to be able to kind of
have that open and honest conversation,
you know, "What happened to Ben?"
"Well, Ben was unhappy and
you know,
he killed himself."
It's a really horrible thing
to have to tell a kid.
Like to them,
death's this kind of vastly difficult
to grasp concept.
I mean, it is for grown ups, too,
I'm not suggesting kids are unique, but
unfortunately for some children,
they probably grasp it.
You know, children, who
are having really difficult lives.
Why do they kill themselves?
Well that's the conversation
that's important, right?
The fact is, neither here nor there.
People die by
car and
alcohol and
cigarettes
and diabetes,
and all manner of things.
You know, it's like, do we
educate our kids that sugar is bad?
Yeah. Duh.
So it's like, well you know
is mental health dangerous?
Well, if you don't talk about it,
then yeah.
It's the same with suicide, right?
Suicide is dangerous
if you're not having a
conversation with someone about it.
It's when it's not discussed
that it's dangerous.
Regardless of who you are
an awareness that
people feel like that is a
really important thing to learn.
And the younger you learn it,
the less stigma there is attached to it.
The more the conversation can happen,
the more prevention can come from it.
I'm super fucking over
pushing today,
it's so boring.
And now this is hurting,
it sucks even more.
Yeah, just had this like
all of a sudden this pain came
and it just felt really tight.
The last couple of
days as well, I've pushed
like a lot more miles
than I have done
the entire skate so far,
and I didn't really
stretch stupidly in the night.
Crossing the Devon border today
and getting to Exeter is
one of the biggest milestones,
purely just because it's where I grew up.
It's in the Southwest,
so it's the last leg of the journey.
Some of these roads
aren't even big enough
for like two cars to come by
and then people are driving like,
I don't know there's no speed limit.
I guess there is a speed limit.
Everyone's going
so fast around these corners.
I don't even like driving down
those roads.
I thought I was gonna go through
that dudes windscreen.
It's national speed limit
on those roads
it's so dangerous.
So far to Exeter.
It was like getting dark that night.
We were like,
"Should we just call it?"
But he was just like,
"No, we've got to make it."
And he really pushed for that.
And that really gave him a lot of energy.
When we met up with his family.
Bridgewater to here is quite a ways.
Yeah, it was like 50 miles today.
Bloody hell.
Yeah, just so happened
that their house was on route
at the mileage of the day
where we completed everything
and they watched me
skate up the road to their house.
It was quite a magical moment,
to be honest.
I said to Granddad,
you're very lucky
because I inherited his legs
and you inherited mine.
Yeah, that's right.
To see him even get this far
was just amazing.
Yeah you'd never believe it.
He seemed so fit
after all the miles.
Yeah, yeah.
Bright and fit and happy and...
Yeah.
Maybe that was to see us too, dear.
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Probably about six years ago,
my brother, had...
Yeah, her brother committed suicide.
Nobody knows what anybody else
is really thinking.
Even if they're depressed.
For me, I think the main thing is
talking.
I think you've got to be able
to express what you feel.
Because most people
keep too many things to themselves
and if they're private,
they don't want other people to even...
I mean, some people are
ashamed of the way they feel.
If everybody could talk about it,
it probably would save a lot of lives
Keep up the good work!
Obviously,
I know it's a big issue, you know,
but you don't realize
how many people it actually affects.
It was pretty amazing to get support
from people like that along the way.
Every day,
we'd raise a little bit more.
And so you didn't
think about the big picture.
And then all of a sudden you're like,
wow, that is a big amount of money.
15,181!
No way.
You did it.
Oh, my God.
All the things
that people do to fundraise.
It's like the money is great.
It's lovely. Thank you.
But it's also that process
of doing something.
And it's symbolic in a way, isn't it?
It's like people want to get involved
because it's something
that resonates with them.
It's something they care about.
And maybe that's their way of
supporting and addressing
and using their skills
and their abilities to deal with it
themselves as well.
You know, you don't do
physically challenging feat without
being engaged with what
you're doing it for.
When people did stop
and have these moments
to share with us.
That really, spurred him on.
You could tell that
if he didn't raise any money
and you know, even didn't finish it.
You know, just the fact that we were
impacting people in the moment
and they were opening up about it
made it worth it just for that.
Thank you so much.
No, my, my partner's
brother killed himself.
- Oh, man.
- Yeah.
You're going down one road and
10 cars pass you,
and one of them stops
and shares
an experience like that,
and you think, you know, you've
just gone through a town of like,
50 to a hundred thousand
people in it and
probably one in
ten of them have experienced
something like that, but it just
doesn't get spoken about enough.
Until you're really immersed
in that kind of thing and doing
something about it and seeing people
that it effects daily like,
it really hits home
like the extent of the issue.
You've got to look after people and
you got to look out for foundations
and resources and things
like they don't come out of nowhere.
You know, you kind of
have to fight for happiness.
Here's a way where a bunch
of awareness was created.
Here's a way where money was raised
and Ben's name was kept
at the forefront of
everyone's thoughts.
And just because he's passed away,
that doesn't mean
that should be left behind
because his name can be used
for good.
I will never fully
wrap my head around that fact
I've lost Ben to suicide, but
I can do something to try
and help with that,
and that's the foundation.
Our mission was just to create safe spaces
within the skateboarding community
and now, I guess wider,
to get them talking about suicide and
and not being
afraid of the word suicide.
When we set out, one of the things
we wanted to do was,
as you just said, give people tools
in order to have these conversations
with their friends or loved ones.
And then one of the things we thought
was to sort of try and train
people in skate shops, team managers,
people in the industry,
people who are around skateboarders.
So like for me
particularly, like the local skate shop
was where we just went and hung out.
And if people in the skate shop
have the tools to spot signs
in the community, then they
can help get those kids help.
It's just giving people tools,
resources, and to be
comfortable with asking
someone close to them
or even a colleague, you know,
are they feeling suicidal?
I guess it's just important to listen
to ask the question
and then maybe ask it again
because everyone's going to say,
"Yeah, I'm fine."
Ask it again and
just be open to listen. Like you
probably don't even have to say anything.
Sometimes it's the first time people
have said this thing out loud, right?
It's been going around in their head
ruminating like in this negative way.
And it's like oppressing them.
Sometimes they've never said it out loud
and they say it out loud
and it's shocking to them, right?
I mean, if you've heard it
a hundred other times,
it's not so shocking to you, but
there's something about
that conversation, right?
It's not necessarily giving advice.
It's not necessarily
being able to fix the solution.
Sometimes it's kind of
it's otherness comes out in conversation,
and it becomes this thing that
"Whoa, I actually think that."
And that's like a part of the process
of kind of mending as well, right?
It's about accepting
or acknowledging that you feel it.
And sometimes we can convince
ourselves that's not the truth.
Now, looking at the younger generation,
it makes me so excited and hopeful
for them that we've created this,
there is something there for them.
It isn't just like they've got to
go to a GP or, you know,
somewhere really clinical, which is
something that Ben would have hated.
We've got something
for the skateboarding community
to open up that conversation
about mental health.
If we talk about it,
within the skate community,
skateboarders will approach mental health
in exactly the way
they approach skateboarding.
Like they'll take it quite seriously
but also approach it in a way
that is like, you're not going
to solve this like that.
You're not, it's going to take time
because you don't get good
at skateboarding in 5 minutes.
It takes time.
The whole trip we we're just
looking at the scenery,
super nice but in our ways,
we were just like,
"This ain't as good as Devon."
Aw Devon's beautiful though,
isn't it?
See these rolling green hills,
don't get these anywhere else boy.
Thanks for putting up with me.
That's alright.
Thanks for putting up with me.
I'm going to take a piss,
looking at it this.
Did he slam?
Only once?
I actually nearly hit him.
He like went under the van.
In my vision,
he was under the van.
I was like rushing
because of the cars.
That was such a good hill.
- Was that fast?
- No, I'd like to go faster
because I didn't know how long
the hill was gonna go on for.
Since I'd never skated down it before
and I didn't know how sharp
the corners were going to be.
It was pretty scary being in the van
when he was sort of going downhill
because we'd start at the top and
he'd start going like pretty fast.
And obviously then we have to pick up
speed in the van to stay close to him
but if anything happened,
I was really worried about us
hitting into him.
And then obviously some of
these roads were just crazy,
sharp bends,
and pot holes everywhere.
He's got a certain kind of
gung-ho attitude to skating
and to, I guess, just life in general.
Basically to a certain point,
I think you almost need to have that
to do some of the things
he's done on a skateboard.
So I can imagine him doing some
of those hill bombs and being like,
you know, a little bit careful,
but kind of throwing caution to the wind
to a certain extent anyways.
You'd enter the Moors
and you'd go over cattle grids.
Questioning myself, "Oh, is there going
to be a cattle grid any minute?"
God, those hills
in Dartmoor were insane.
The road's full of holes and stuff
and I'm just like, he's going
35mph or 40mph right now.
And he's just like dealing with it.
He just stays on its board
like he always has.
Going down hills that
you didn't know what to expect
around the next corner
when you're flying
and then thinking, you know,
"God forbid
there's like a tight corner,
a car, or a lorry or something
coming around that corner
when I get to the bottom."
It's kind of stupid for one.
And the only way to really stop
is kind of jump to your ass.
But the road's so rough.
So if you fall and I'm in shorts,
this is going to tear me up.
But, it's really fun.
That was fast.
I want to do it again.
89 miles left.
Under a hundred.
So I went to this rehab,
did some stupid shit.
Got kicked out.
Came back home,
woke up to my stepdad saying,
"Oh my God, oh, my God."
And I went in there and she,
my mother was overdosed
with a needle in her arm dead.
And that's when I
really clicked in my mind.
You're done with this shit.
So I went to rehab again.
The Smile films.
Well firstly they're named after Ben's
funny upside down tattoo.
And I guess it's the theory
that if you see your heroes,
or people you look up to
talking about something, then they can see
that someone else is going through it,
or has been through it.
And then hopefully
they can talk about it too.
Something the Raemers Foundation
has done a fantastic job of is
finding people of a certain stature
that are willing to kind of
risk the embarrassment
of having told the truth.
That's a ridiculous statement
in itself right,
but I think that's what it is.
I think with Ben, his struggles
weren't ever highlighted.
He was highlighted
as this fabricated version of himself,
which he really wasn't.
But I think having pro skaters
being brutally honest, and talking
about the things that haven't been
spoken about in the skateboarding
community before,
has just been massive.
Like the events that they've been
putting on in London
where they're premiering
the Smile Films and you're gonna go
and watch a ten minute documentary
about his mental health
and his experience.
And then you're going to have a panel
discussion afterwards
with like mental health professionals
people from the skateboard community,
the people that have been in the films,
it's completely unprecedented.
They've managed to make that happen
and turn Ben's death,
which is obviously like a tragedy.
They've managed to make
something that's like
resoundingly beautiful out of it.
For some reason,
it doesn't feel like the last day
because,
yeah,
it felt so far away like a week ago.
Talking about Ben from here,
it's quite hard for me
because I remember that little kid.
Can I have a balloon please?
And I also know that little kid
turned into the guy
on the front cover of Thrasher
three fucking times, you know?
And now he's not here,
and he's not here
for reasons that, like,
we couldn't really help
him with that much.
We tried to point him
in some directions,
but by that point,
he's a little bit far down the road
and that road is a lonely old road.
But sometimes people
go all the way to the end
and turn around and come back,
and unfortunately he didn't.
Everyone involved in this,
everyone you've spoken to.
Getting to say things
that you hold in a lot.
You know, it's kind of
it's definitely helpful for us.
Especially almost four
years later, you know,
like going through it
and still going through it.
And time going by and like,
you know, he's stuck at
that age as we're in our new life,
you know, or moving into new lives.
It's a good way to express things,
that you've maybe never said before.
Talking at Ben's funeral
was one of the hardest things
I'll ever have to do.
You know, like I say, he was
like my kid before I had a kid.
So to stand up in front of 1,000 people
and tell them what I felt.
But also I felt
the most important thing was like
don't brush suicide under the carpet, man.
This is real.
This is happening on a daily basis.
People are losing friends
and family every day.
And a lot of it's men,
because we ain't so good
at talking to each other.
Like as individuals,
we have to be more aware
of what other people
are going through,
and letting it be known
that you can speak to me.
I will pick up the phone
or reply to your messages.
Suicide is a permanent solution
to a temporary problem.
It's like, you can get help.
Don't be scared
to ask your friends for help
because that's the only way
I accomplished this mission.
It's like people don't generally
want to ask people for a handout.
So all I'd say is
don't be scared to do that
because your friends love you,
your family love you,
there's people out there that love
you and are willing to help you.
It's our job to continue talking about
why and what happened there,
because if we don't,
he just died.
He didn't take his own life, he just died,
it's not the same thing.
If you don't want to talk about it,
that's up to you.
But we need to
because we're his friends.
And we don't want anyone else's
friend to do the same thing.
And the only way that we can do that
is by talking about it
and making everyone aware
that's what happened!
I mean Barney's done
this fucking thing,
it's insane.
Whatever his reasons are,
it doesn't matter.
What matters is it's got you
to travel halfway around the world
to make a film
about the process
and in the process
it's going to turn into
something else that's
going to make more
people talk about it
and it goes on and on and on.
That is the key thing.
Every part of that, is going to help
someone else, somewhere else.
Barney Page, Barney Page
Barney Barney Barney Page!
I haven't had a board like that
since I was 12.
It definitely has to be
captain something,
doesn't it?
Headlamp!
It's just one of them times
where you just look back,
and you're like,
I've done something in my life
that I just loved.
I just loved it.