Useful links
Skating is all about getting out in the fresh air and doing what comes naturally. Questions about technique, equipment or good places to skate are often best answered in person.
But the Internet can come in handy too, particularly when bad weather keeps us indoors. If you’re looking for shops or lessons, try using a search engine like Yahoo or Google.
But so much of what’s good about skating is organised by volunteers simply for the fun of it all. If you’re looking for sites of this nature, you might take inspiration from our collection of skating community web sites:
Serpentine Road Forum
The chat room for the European skating community. Register, make friends and influence skaters.
LondonSkate
Our friends at LondonSkate run the famously fabulous Wednesday Night Skate from a week or two after clocks go forward in spring until a week or two before they go back in the winter.
The Easy Saturday Skate
The EASY SATURDAY SKATE is a beginner-level social practice group that runs every Saturday morning at 10.30am in Battersea Park. There are typically 10 or 15 people who do two laps inside the park. There are no kerbs, no cars, no hills and you can drop out any time and have a coffee.
The London Rollerblading and Ice Skating Meetup
The LONDON ROLLERBLADING AND ICE SKATING MEETUP GROUP is organized through Meetup.com and schedules regular meetups for both ice skating and inline skating. The Hyde Park skates are typically on Sunday and have 10 or so participants, some of whom go on to do the Sunday Stroll afterward.
London Skaters Speed Team
The LSST is the place for skaters that like to race round in circles. It’s mainly about skating in marathons, but they like anything that allows them to go the distance in Lycra.
Camberley Skaters
Although they live in the wild west, they are not cowboys. The Camberley Crew are regular visitors to London and always welcome visitors to the west country.
Eastbourne Skaters Association
Organisers of Eastbourne Extreme weekend of skating fun each year in July. Check out their site for updates and for all things skating in Eastbourne.
International
MacAdam Inline Skating (Lyon, France)
The Lyon Friday night skate starts at 10pm in Parc de la Tete d’Or (similar to Hyde Park only it also has a zoo). The pace and size is about the same as the LFNS but they sometimes have hilly routes with long downhills. The roads are super smooth, just like in Paris.
Three Rivers Inline Club (Pittsburgh, USA)
Pittsburgh has quite a lot of street skates in the summer and a Sunday skate all year round. They also have 3 rivers and lots of nice paths to skate along, so worth joining them if you’re ever there.