Southampton Round-up
As you may have gathered from the below photos, we went on a trip to Southampton at the weekend. We visited some rad parks, so I think some reviews are in order.
Bournemouth is home to a nice new concrete park that we skated on Friday night. Its a long way from your usual council built rubbish, with an original design, and interesting features. Whilst it does have the standard quarter pipe-driveway-flatbank set-up, it is enclosed in a bowl, which runs over the top of the driveway, creating the opportunity for carves and grinds over the driveway. This then flows into a long, hipped 4ft mini-ramp, which waterfalls into a 6ft bowl, with an 8ft vert bowled extension for the gnarlers out there. Then theres the interesting steep banked obstacle, perhaps based on the banks in Portsmouth that we skated on Saturday night. There's a stair set with hubbas and a rail for you to "throw hammers down" if you so desire. More interesting, however, is the polejam out the top of the nearby flatbank. I've never seen this in a park before, and although getting speed is a problem, it is certainly do-able [insert photo evidence here...] Overall, a great park, definitely worth a visit, although apparently it gets quite busy so try going during school hours or in the evening like we did.
Southsea is an all-time classic skatepark.
Snake-run? Check.
Downhill to bowl? Check.
Peanut bowl? Check.
Satan's toilet? Check.
Spined mini ramp? Check.
Vert ramp? Check.
Street course? Check.
Straight out of the seventies comes the concrete monster that has everything you could possibly want (apart from 'street', but luckily Portsmouth's got plenty of that.) Everyone should skate it at least once: £3.50 for 3 hours, take a helmet.
Considering Gravity Ramps' previous record, I didn't expect great things from their new park in Romsey. However, with input from Mark Churchill (no doubt I've spelt his name wrong like everyone else) they seem to have got their act together, as this is a very nice little park. Whilst it has some standard elements such as driveways and jumpboxes there are some more interesting creations such as wallrides, steep banks, and the a la mode polejam which you can see Churchill skating below. All in all a good job by Gravity; hopefully they get Churchill on board for future projects.
Rain stopped play at Verwood, but we'll certainly be returning for a visit.
Well that was a long post; well done if you're still reading, I probably wouldn't be...
All photos shamelessly(fully?) robbed from other sites, although you can see us skating some of the parks below.
EDIT: Apologies to Darren at sk8m8, the UK skatepark search engine, for hotlinking to his photos (I guess it was shameful rather than shameless after all.) It's a very useful site, providing information, photos, maps and directions to thousands of skateparks in the UK. Here are links to their pages on the above parks: Bournemouth, Southsea, Romsey and Verwood. Thanks to Darren also for informing me that Churchill is in fact working for Gravity, so future successes look likely.
Bournemouth is home to a nice new concrete park that we skated on Friday night. Its a long way from your usual council built rubbish, with an original design, and interesting features. Whilst it does have the standard quarter pipe-driveway-flatbank set-up, it is enclosed in a bowl, which runs over the top of the driveway, creating the opportunity for carves and grinds over the driveway. This then flows into a long, hipped 4ft mini-ramp, which waterfalls into a 6ft bowl, with an 8ft vert bowled extension for the gnarlers out there. Then theres the interesting steep banked obstacle, perhaps based on the banks in Portsmouth that we skated on Saturday night. There's a stair set with hubbas and a rail for you to "throw hammers down" if you so desire. More interesting, however, is the polejam out the top of the nearby flatbank. I've never seen this in a park before, and although getting speed is a problem, it is certainly do-able [insert photo evidence here...] Overall, a great park, definitely worth a visit, although apparently it gets quite busy so try going during school hours or in the evening like we did.
Southsea is an all-time classic skatepark.
Snake-run? Check.
Downhill to bowl? Check.
Peanut bowl? Check.
Satan's toilet? Check.
Spined mini ramp? Check.
Vert ramp? Check.
Street course? Check.
Straight out of the seventies comes the concrete monster that has everything you could possibly want (apart from 'street', but luckily Portsmouth's got plenty of that.) Everyone should skate it at least once: £3.50 for 3 hours, take a helmet.
Considering Gravity Ramps' previous record, I didn't expect great things from their new park in Romsey. However, with input from Mark Churchill (no doubt I've spelt his name wrong like everyone else) they seem to have got their act together, as this is a very nice little park. Whilst it has some standard elements such as driveways and jumpboxes there are some more interesting creations such as wallrides, steep banks, and the a la mode polejam which you can see Churchill skating below. All in all a good job by Gravity; hopefully they get Churchill on board for future projects.
Rain stopped play at Verwood, but we'll certainly be returning for a visit.
Well that was a long post; well done if you're still reading, I probably wouldn't be...
All photos shamelessly(fully?) robbed from other sites, although you can see us skating some of the parks below.
EDIT: Apologies to Darren at sk8m8, the UK skatepark search engine, for hotlinking to his photos (I guess it was shameful rather than shameless after all.) It's a very useful site, providing information, photos, maps and directions to thousands of skateparks in the UK. Here are links to their pages on the above parks: Bournemouth, Southsea, Romsey and Verwood. Thanks to Darren also for informing me that Churchill is in fact working for Gravity, so future successes look likely.
Posted by Jamie at 6:26 pm
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