I was lucky enough to go away on a vacation with my girlfriend to London, UK for 10 days or rest and relaxation.  In that short week we packed in lots of tourist sight seeing, amazing meals with new and old friends all the while fitting in a bit of skating.

The week before I had left for this trip, due to my own stupidity, I had accidentally unstitched the base of the right skin on my Nimh, making the right skate un usable.  With no time to get to it re-stitched, I dusted off an old Razors Shima 3 boot and slapped on the Nimh Soul plates, creating a usable pair of skates. I packed my Sagona/Kelso jockin’ boots along with me to try and get some skating in on a new continent.

The first opportunity to skate in London was at the infamous South Bank Park.  Basically it’s a legal area on the south bank of the Thames River where skateboarders, bladers and bmx’ers are allowed to skate some weird flat banks, a few covered ledges and graffiti artists are allowed to paint walls.  I met local 11-year-old Reuben skating all by himself, hucking 180’s and some grinds on the small ledges.  Big up Reuben for hooking me up with a sweet Adidas notebook!

Later that week, through the beauty of the Internet I was able to meet up with London street shredder and OG Blake Bird at the Mile End tube stop for some park skating.  FYI, Blake and the London heads are putting together a new video; watch out for some fresh skating in the coming months.

The park was rammed with bikers and skateboarders but we both managed to get some fun tricks in.

After that we cruised over to the local London Uni for a ledge sesh.  Unfortunately the spot we wanted to skate was being held hostage by a steel drum band, so we quickly went to another ledge spot close by.

Finally, on the last day of the trip, I was dropped off through the hell of London traffic at the Mile End Park where I met up with some more locals.  The night before there was a mini ramp jam and Blake hurt his back, leaving him unable to blade.  I met up with some other locals, Jamie, Fergus and Dave.  We warmed up at the park and then hit up some local street spots in the Financial District.

The final spot was a new marble ledge between buildings.  We skated for about 20 minutes before I had to make my way home.  Big thanks to Fergus and Dave for touring around and showing me some spots.

England was great, and I highly recommend going if you get the chance.  A few things to note:

Do not drive in London; traffic is the worst I’ve ever encountered.

English people love McDonalds and fast food, but hate the majority of Americans

Skating from spot to spot is ridiculous.

Stay away from CHAV’s and Geezers!

This entry was written by Chowsa, posted on November 6, 2009 at 11:14 pm, filed under Roving Reporter. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.