Skating in Barcelona!

Getting fed up with the miserable London weather, I decided to take advantage of the ridiculously cheap airfares and escape to Barcelona for a quick February skating break. Barcelona is a great city for skaters, there are lots of parks and squares which are good for skating, a fantastic seafront promenade, many streets with wide pedestrian areas, and the roads, when you need to use them, are very smooth. In addition there are four organized street skates every week and the local skaters are very friendly and helpful.

On my first day I had intended to visit one or two of the spots identified by the Rough Guide as being good for skating but found that there were so many good skating areas and skating the streets and pavements between them was so easy that I ended up spending about six hours skating solidly and seeing a great deal of Barcelona. Starting off at the Arc de Triomf, I then spent a long time exploring the fantastic seafront at Port Olimpic before heading back to Placa de Catalunya and finishing off with a few laps of the famous Ramblas and a detour to Port Vell.
 

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Arc de Triomf, not as big as the French version, but better for skating

Port Olimpic comprises several miles of stunning seafront promenades, traffic free and very wide. In places the paving stones can be quite rough, particularly at the north-eastern extremity, but it was all negotiable. There was even a dilapidated old skate park with a couple of half-pipes. Although I decided that discretion was the better part of valour when it came to the half-pipes, some of the local kids were giving a great demo of how it should be done. I got a few looks which indicated clearly what they thought of a skater who felt the need to wear a helmet. In fact, throughout my stay in Barcelona I never saw any other skater with a helmet on. For those who don’t know me, I work in rehabilitation of people with head injuries, so I think I have good reason to be a chicken !

Many of the big streets and avenues have wide asphalt pedestrian areas in between the lanes of traffic and very smooth cycle paths. Some of the pavements on ordinary streets, however, leave a little more to be desired, with very small grooved paving tiles, which although passable, are not pleasant and can give your joints a good shaking. That said, its always possible to skate from any area of the city to any other, fairly easily. Strangely, the one area I hadn’t expected to be able to skate – the Barri Gotic, the oldest area of the city which I had heard was heavily cobbled, turned out to be nicely paved in most places and it was great zipping through very narrow medieval style alleyways dodging tourists.
 

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Seafront southwest of Port Olimpic

At the end of the day I had my only run in with the authorities. I was skating a newish wood slatted footbridge over the marina at Port Vell, a redeveloped area of the old port, when a couple of security guards pounced on me and made me take my skates off before continuing, I didn’t really have a clue what they were on about, but lots of wagging fingers and frowning gave me the general idea. As I’d already skated back and forth across the bridge several times with no problems I was a bit mystified.

On the second day I explored the Montjuic area, and was very glad of my heel brake, putting it to good use on several exceptionally steep slopes, however the Olympic stadium area was brilliant with wide open areas for skating and some amazing views over Barcelona.
 

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Tree and bench slalom southwest of Port Olimpic

There are several organized street skates in Barcelona every week, on Tuesday night, Thursdays night, Friday night and Sunday morning. More information can be found at  www.patinar-bcn.com. The Tuesday Night skate is the most difficult of the week, and although I might have preferred a more gentle introduction to Barcelona skating, it was the only one that coincided with my trip. The Tuesday night skate normally attracts a hard core group of only 15 skaters or so, whereas the Thursday night skate apparently gets about 50 regular participants.

I approached the Tuesday night skate with trepidation after reading many dire warnings on various websites - ‘Infernal speeds’ – said the Barcelona skaters own website, (with help from the Lycos Babelfish translator). “Don’t even think of participating if you have no downhill experience, or aren’t fit enough”. added Peter Nikkel. (www.nikkel.nl/skate/barcelona2001) I decided to go to the start anyway and see what happened from there.
 

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Half pipes at Port Olimpic

After turning up at the Placa de Catalunya well before the appointed hour of 10.00 pm it was quite a wait before one, then a second skater turned up, and that was it, a grand total of three skaters. Luckily both Miriam and Isabelle spoke good English because, embarrassingly, my Spanish was non existent beyond ‘no hablo espanol !’ I explained that high-speed downhills were possibly not my area of expertise and they offered to follow an easier route, and throw in a few tourist sights for good measure. After waiting in vain for other skaters we set off at 10.30 pm.

We started up the gentle incline of the Rambla de Catalunya, with a wide central pedestrian area and then took a series of narrow alleyways via the Placa del Sol, stopping to admire some Moderniste architecture. The route became gradually steeper as we progressed and it soon seemed that we had been skating uphill for miles. The final climb up the Avinguda del Tibidabo to Placa John Kennedy was a killer, but we eventually made it. At this point the Tuesday night skate would normally have ventured even further up Tibidabo, the 500 metre high hill behind Barcelona, but as there were only three of us and we had no lights, and, I suspect, because they were going easy on me, Miriam the ‘RouteMaster’ decided that we were high enough for that night. The long uphill climb was then finally rewarded by a very long gentle downhill along the Passeig Bonanova followed by a much steeper and exhilarating downhill through narrow pedestrian streets. We finished off with a long section of Avinguda Diagonal, a long wide avenue running right through Barcelona, and part of the Gran Via Corts Catalanes, ending up back at the Placa de Catalunya at 12.30 am. The downhills were fantastic, and not as difficult as I’d thought, although the Spanish skaters undoubtedly ‘edited’ the route for my benefit. The whole skate was by far the highlight of my entire trip and I’d like to thank Miriam and Isabelle for making it such a fantastic evening.
 

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The locals show how it's done

I never skated all the way up the Tibidabo, but I did run up it on my third day in Barcelona. The route I took was a rough trail totally unsuitable for skating, but I scouted out the other roads to the top. The long sweeping downhill road with hairpins, stretching for four miles down into the city looked like an amazing downhill skating route, especially as it was very quite at this time of year when the funfair on the top of the Tibidabo was closed. However due to a combination of exhaustion and cowardice, I decided to leave that experience to a future trip. The fourth and final day of my trip rained heavily all day and I was forced to abandon my skates and explore some of the more traditional tourist attractions, of which Barcelona has very many to offer.

All in all the trip was fantastic, brilliant skating in an amazing city, I’d recommend a skating break in Barcelona to anyone.
 

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Rambla del Poblenou, a typical street with central pedestrian area

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After being apprehended and de-skated by security guards at Port Vell

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Another shot of the Olympic stadium plaza

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Pointing out some Moderniste architecture on the route of the skate