Skating in London

March 1998

By Timothy Tjoen-Tak-Seu.

I’ve been skating now for the last five years, most of it in New York. I have also skated in the Washington D.C. area and in Holland (which is the best place to skate because you can go anywhere with your skates). Anyway, I’ve always wanted to go in London because I’ve found it to be an interesting city. And I also wanted to go there to see how it would be to skate there. Before going to London, I did some research through the Internet on in line skating and I also bought a road map of London to give me a better perspective of London. 

I decided to go to London on the third week of March for my vacation (Hoping that the weather would be good).  I arrived on a cloudy Tuesday morning in March. That morning I decided to test the waters. The first thing I noticed is that the streets in London are very narrow compared to the wide streets here in New York. I decided to skate on the sidewalk (Or the pavement as they call it in England). The second thing I noticed is that the asphalt they use on the streets is very rough compared to the smooth pavement here in New York (So don’t complain about the bad pavement we have here). Also, the sidewalks in London are narrow and tiled in little sections, making it a bit bumpy to skate on. In some ways it felt better to skate on the sidewalks, but then you run into the problem with pedestrians, since it is primarily for them.

By the middle of that first day, I thought it was a waste coming to London because I was skating most of the time on the sidewalk. I mentioned before that the roads were narrow. A two-way street in London barely fits two cars in width. That means that there is barely space for skating (when skating, you’re taking up space horizontally on the road). At the end of the first day, I got used to the traffic being on the opposite direction. I got used to skating on the rough asphalt by Wednesday. It did not rain a single day while I was there and it was sunny. I took advantage of that and tried to skate as much as possible. I wound up doing about 80 miles for the week in London. Most of the skating that I did (half the time on the sidewalk, the other half on the streets) I would not recommend unless you are really good at skating in traffic. So if you’re thinking about ever skating in London, the only places that I would recommend are the following: Hyde Park, Regents Park, Battersea Park, and Richmond Park. Hyde Park has a wide path alongside the Serpentine Lake, which gets really busy during the summer. It’s the major spot for in line skating in London. There’s also a bike path that runs along Hyde Park from Marble Arch to about the Royal Albert Hall that you can use for skating. Regents Park has a bike path that runs through the park from north to south. Battersea Park has a road that circles the park, which is barely skate-able because the asphalt is really rough. Richmond Park has two paths, which total about 4 miles. It has very good asphalt, but the path is very narrow. If you go there on a nice Sunday afternoon, expect it to be crowded with families and kids on skates.

As I have mentioned before, I was skating half the time between the sidewalk and the road in London. If there wasn’t any traffic on the road I would skate on the street. But as soon as there was traffic coming behind me I would go on to the sidewalk. So at times it was a constant zigzag. The reason I was doing this was because I was afraid that I would get hassled by the drivers over there. As it turns out, the drivers in London are much more “civilised” than drivers in New York. I only got honked three times for the week I spent there. In Manhattan, I get honked the same amount in one day. 

People over there in general are much more polite in comparison to people in New York. I wasn’t even stopped by the police while I was there. In conclusion, I was expecting one thing out of this trip and I got something very different. It’s tougher to skate in London as compared to New York because its a older city and everything in London is smaller compared to New York (In every aspect: from buildings to roads, etc.) London is a very exciting city and it is interesting to see by skates (for me at least). But I would strongly recommend that you do your skating in the parks if you do visit London. People in London regard in line skating as a recreational sport more than anything else. They don’t see it as a means of transportation. When I was there, people were looking at me as if I was crazy, but at the same time were amazed at how I was able to manage the streets and sidewalks with no problems. It was definitely a challenge that I enjoyed. Hopefully in time, in line skating will become a daily routine for Londonites. I’m sure that I’ll be back in London for more skating.

This article was written by Timothy Tjoen-Tak-Seu, reproduced with his permission.  He can be emailed here.

His website about skating in Tokyo can be found at http://g0083.tripod.com, and a further website about skating in Osaka at http://go.to/g0087

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