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Daredevil duo are worldwide hit

2/ 5/2007

A FATHER and son's daredevil hobby has attracted a massive 400,000 hits on the internet.

For, if you thought off-road mountain biking was tough, how about trying it on one wheel?

Simon and Aaron Rolph took up the bizarre hobby of 'extreme unicycling' five years ago.

Now a film of them whizzing down mountain paths and leaping from rocks and down ramps has been watched by more than 400,000 people on the worldwide web.

'No Cycling' shows Simon and Aaron, 18, as they perform their tricks on mountains in the Lake District.

Made for the Kendal Film Festival, the short film has had 467,399 hits on the video-sharing website 'YouTube' and was recently featured on its main page.

Simon, 48, who - perhaps ironically - works as a traffic casualty reduction officer for Oldham Council, and who lives in Cumbria, said: "We took up mountain unicycling about five years ago. We both love hill walking and cycling, so we tried unicycling and took it off-road after a couple of months.

"It becomes more difficult as the stones get bigger and it's mostly downhill because it's very hard work otherwise. We think of it as cycling rather than a circus skill."

The film's director Alun Williams said: "Simon and Aaron were extremely good at what they do and were both surprisingly normal to boot."

Click on the link below to see Simon and Aaron's spectacular video ...