London Skaters News and Photos

Old News

Wednesday 28th February

I've finally gotten around to posting the photos of the big dinner we had during the Beckenham Inline trip to Lille on the weekend of 17th/18th February.  This was an excellent trip, organized by Olivier, who put in a tremendous amount of effort with assistance from members of his old team in France.  We all had a great time and a superb dinner.  Check out the photos.

Sunday 25th February

First trip to Hyde Park this year for me!  We met a bunch of the regulars from last summer - good to see you all again.  Check out the new tarmac on the Serpentine road.  It's great in the cold, but I have my doubts as to how that surface will cope with the summer heat.  The south half of the road has a much harder appearing surface than the darker colored north side, so lets hope that the north half will still harden up some more.  I even managed to skate (gently) for two and a half hours, so my ankle is really coming along now.  Awesome fun - I totally forgot how much I've been missing skating in the last 3 months.

There is a new no skating sign on the pavement alongside the Albert Memorial - probably for those who used to ride the steps there.

I've posted a bunch of photos I took yesterday here.

Saturday 10th February

We visited Tim Wheal's Skatehog skate shop in Eastbourne today - great shop and friendly service.  The shop has lots of useful skate choice and an excellent selection of clothing. Tim hasn't quite got his internet purchasing online yet, but does have the beginnings of a test site up, oh well, hopefully soon - we can always do with more online skating suppliers.

Tim is the organizer of lots of great Eastbourne and other events, and does a monthly barbeque during the summer, starting from around mid-April.  I reckon this is worth a couple of visits for a skate party - anyone else keen?  Email me!  Another interesting one will be Skate 2001, a massive skating event that attracted something like 15,000 people last year.

For those of you that were wondering about the BettyBlade London Street Skate, yes, this will be back in the spring, and bigger and better than ever.  Simon Hill-Norton of BettyBlade has gone to quite a lot of trouble organizing things so far, and plans to do things on a bigger and more formal scale this year, This will include assigned marshals with reflective vests, walkie talkies, etc.

Monday 29th January

Beckenham Inline hockey club joined up with Battersea Youth Center last Friday for a friendly match against the Imperial College of London.  Good fun, especially as Imperial College got a 10-3 creaming from us.  Sorry guys, at least the club had good fun playing you!  I've posted some team photos of the occasion here, together with some Beckenham Inline team photos from two weeks earlier.

Sunday 24th December

Hey, sorry about the lack of regular updates at the moment.  What with winter, and the broken ankle, I'm trying not to think of skating too much in order not to get depressed!  I'm out of the cast now, but apparently still have about three months before I'll be able to skate again.  I guess it could be worse...  ;-)

Quite a few people have been asking about rockering skates, so I've put up a short article.  This currently only shows how to rocker Salomon TR9s and K2 skates, and details of the rockering on my hockey skates.  If your skates have a different system, and you wouldn't mind me taking some pictures of your skates, please let me know via email.

Monday 4th December

We went to watch the London Knights, who were co-incidentally playing the Giants again.  Good match to watch, but not as exciting as the one two weeks ago.  This time the Knights gave the Giants a severe hiding, rather than the close match of the 19th November.

I took my camera this time and have posted a few photos.  Luckily the arena is very brightly lit, as the conditions were really pushing the limits of my digital camera.  Digital technology is getting very close, but film is still king for now.  Still there's nothing to beat being able to burst shoot as many pictures as you feel like, and then select the best few photos minutes later on a PC.

Monday 20th November

Awesome weekend!  We went to Beckenham Inline to watch the hockey, and I used the opportunity to take a whole lot more photos of the club members.  Afterwards we went to the pub (at the Beckenham Spa leisure center) for a drink.  Hot damn, I'm missing skating and hockey especially!

Sunday a few of us from the hockey club went to the London Arena to watch the ice hockey match between the London Knights and the Belfast Giants.  Awesome, what a great match to watch!  Everything is so vivid and you sit so close to the action.  The score was one all at the end of the third period, so a 5 minute overtime resulted.  Still no further score after that, so the match was decided on a penalty shootout.  Go check out http://www.london-knights.co.uk if you're interested.  Heh, one of the linesmen was a woman - she took a massive check by accident during the game.  It was so hard that the impact picked her up and threw her backwards about 5 meters, with her arms and legs trailing behind her octopus style.

For those of you skating in the Park on Sundays, it's well worth a trip to the Arena in the afternoon to watch a match.  About once a month you get to skate on the ice after the game - might be worth a London Skaters trip?

Saturday 11th November

Playing hockey at Battersea Youth Center last night, I fell and twisted my ankle, breaking it in the process.  Bummer.

Oh, well, at least we had an excellent time up until then.  Battersea was excellent, and hopefully the club will continue to grow.  Christophe, who sells the skate lights, and Darrell came along to play as well, and I hope they had a good time.  I thought that they played much better than I did the first time I played indoor hockey - well done guys!

Tuesday 7th November

I've slapped together some comments on the TiVo I bought almost two weeks ago, now that I've lived with the beast.  If you get one TV/video related thing this Christmas, make it a TiVo!

Damn, we went to Streatham to go ice skating, and there was a private function so the rink  was closed.  There were people driving go-carts on the ice, WTF is that for?

Sunday 29th October

Oh well, the clocks went back today so there's no more doubt we're into winter now.  Hockey was excellent fun last night, as always!

We've been doing quite a lot of ice skating this last week, especially with all the bad weather.  I've found that ice skating seems to be more demanding of precise balance and control than inline skating, and that my technique was a little on the lazy side, having learnt on inlines.  I went for a 15 minute lesson at Streatham, and it was well worth the effort as the instructor forced me to calm my shoulders and hips, and put more effort into skating on one foot, both straight and around a circle.  I can now skate the length of the rink on one foot easily - I could easily do this before on inlines, but I found it much more difficult on ice skates.

Off topic a bit, I got a TiVo recorder on Friday - a digital TV recorder.  This is a great way to make sure you always have good TV to watch when you want to watch it.  It's a bit of a shift getting used to not watching live TV, and always watching off the recorder.  Heh, you can always FF through the adverts!

Friday 20th October - Halloween skate

Quite a few of us are keen to do a Halloween skate on Tuesday 31st October - please feel free to come and join us.  Depending on the weather, we plan to leave Hyde Park at 19.30 sharp on a free skate into the city.  I'm meeting some friends at the usual meeting place (the beach) in the park at about 19.00 onwards.  Come in fancy dress if you can - I'll look up some shops and post them in the next day or two.

I've posted some pictures of the skates I bought last week.  Both were bought at the Streatham shop, inside the ice arena.

Saturday 14th October

Steven has just posted his review of the William Nealy book - check it out on the reviews page.  I also own this book and really enjoyed it.  I've also updated the skate shops page with the shop in the Streatham Ice Arena - we bought some ice skates and a pair of Bauer Vapor 8 hockey skates there last week.  I was amazed at the service and help the owner gave us - this has to be the best service I've had from any shop in the U.K.

Sunday 8th October

South London Inline Hockey Club, based at The Spa in Beckenham - lots of photos of them are up here!  We joined this club about a month ago, and have really been enjoying playing with them.  I was sidelined due to injury so took the opportunity to take pictures.  These guys have to be amongst the most friendly and welcoming skaters we've met so far.  If anyone is nearby, I can really recommend coming along.

Sunday 1st October

What a great weekend for skating with excellent weather on both days!  I've posted a bunch more photos on the London Photos page - click here.

If you want a copy of any of the photos on this website, you can get them printed by Jessops.  I haven't tried their service, but I guess it should be of good quality if such an established firm is offering it.  Oh yes, be sure to email me to get the full size picture, as the web-optimized version you're viewing on this website won't print very well.

More Kensington skate photos - I met a guy on the Broad Walk who has a website with lots of good skating photos at http://www.kensingtonarea.com.

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