Don’t laugh, but recently took up rollerblading for fitness as I really struggle to motivate myself to go jogging. So far am loving it, but constantly on the look out for good blading spots on the South Coast – or even potentially further afield. I’ve done Bognor, which is great, Southsea which is not so great and am planning to do Brighton, but does anyone have any knowledge of any other places?

Venice Beach?

Rollerblading…. only socially acceptable in California….. or Germany.

Are you Keanu Reeves ?

Ps Does sound fun and good for fitness workout. What about a local seperated cycle path. They are usasully smooth.

Some say you can get special wheels for rougher surfaces.

http://southcoastroll.co.uk/about.html

Sunday!

recently took up rollerblading for fitness

You know this is a cyclist’s forum, right?

The 1990’s?

I just did a google images search for ‘roller blading’ to try and get a hilarious picture to post but most of the images on there i’d probably get banned for posting!!

Roller blading is just soft porn it seems.

….goes of the check if Decathlon sell roller blades…..

You know this is a cyclist’s forum, right?

Yep, OP should know better than to come on here with a satisfyingly broad range of interests. 🙂

Ha ha. Seriously though it’s great for fitness – I do also cycle. South Coast Roll at Goodwood looks amazing.

I don’t know about where, but I can help you with when. The dead of night so nobody can see you. Get a skateboard instead, it’s quite similar in some ways, with the advantage of not being utterly ridiculous 😉

Then again if you’re insistent on doing it at least do it properly and get some roller skates.

Skateboarding is not even remotely similar activity. Try skateboarding say 10-15km trip which is an hours skate at easy pace..

As for suitable places I have no idea, up they are used on multi use walking / cycling path, along with just about any other forms of human powered method for moving. Plus hover boards, airwheels etc.

a local rink opened up in our town. I started taking our 2 lads, who love it. It’s boring watching for 3 hours, so I had a go. It’s ace fun. I now own some awesome SEBA blades 🙂

oh, and it burns more calories per hour than most other activities, if that’s what you’re after

Milton Keynes.

Yep, OP should know better than to come on here with a satisfyingly broad range of interests.

Just thought it odd for a cyclist to take up another activity just for fitness.
Glad the OP satisfies you though.
🙂

Used to be a regular at the Muenchner bladenight when we lived in Munich 2001-ish.

Every Monday night, 10,000 people doing a tour of the city centre with police providing rolling roadblocks to stop the traffic. A real party atmosphere event that ended in a pop-up beer garden. What’s not to like? 😀

Wish they had something similar here. I’d dig my blades out and support it.

Keeping to the seaside theme, Bournemouth would be good, Sandbanks also has a nice shared path along the beachfront. Can’t you just skate anywhere though? If you’re in or near London then any of the parks, Hyde park used to have (might still do) a biggish skate scene. I can’t remember the name of it now but there was a pub near Paddington where they’d all meet after skating and on certain weeknights half the customers would be on wheels.

When I was younger we used to skate all over the place. There’s a fella round by me that regularly skates on the road, I assume as a form of transport rather than specifically for exercise, he travels at a fair clip too.

Happy days, late night roller hockey in MFI car park, tin cans for goal posts, isn’t it? Marvellous.

I started roller blading in NYC in ’99 when I worked out there, came back to UK but found it hard to find places to go. Hyde Park was OKish, and I did meet some really friendly guys, but switched to cycling in the end.

Used to do it around the local town as a kid (midlands) and when getting ready to ski, still occasionally go from Bath – Bristol along the old railway. It’s a bit of a leg burner but doesn’t half help the sprinting muscles and the ski legs!
Best after dark though so no one can see me!

Skateboarding is not even remotely similar activity. Try skateboarding say 10-15km trip which is an hours skate at easy pace..

Used to skateboard every where in my youth. At that point rollerblading was very much seen as a similar sport by the masses. We used to have people on roller blades arrive at our skate spots. We didn’t even speak to them for they failed at being rad 😉

I might as well admit that I have my ticket for that – would be interesting to meet up with other STW skaters if anybody else is going (and for those advocating skateboarding, you can use one in that, though it looks a far worse option). Can’t really help with South Coast spots, though I understand Brighton is supposed to be good and has a weekly mass skate. As mentioned, car parks are a good option if you’re happy to skate around in circles (I was always into covering ground in my first skating incarnation, though having taken it up again doing a lot of skills going in circles).

As always I’m enjoying the disparaging comments about people with a different minority interest to theirs 😆 The interesting thing though is my experience of interacting with skateboarders and BMX riders (including one chap who is probably way more skilled at freestyle BMX than anybody on here) is that they’re all encouraging of other different wheeled balance sports, I think it’s just here that people feel the need to look down their noses. A funny one the other day when I turned up at a local spot to practice riding my unicycle there was a chap there skating – he’d packed up by the time I got started, but came back to chat – he wanted to talk unicycles (he also rode), whilst I wanted to ask about the skating tricks he was doing!

The 😉 on my post should have given away the fact that I wasn’t being serious. I should imagine that most other posters aren’t being serious either. Just difficult to get across in the written form.

We used to have a real mix of BMX, decks and bladers plus just people generally hanging out.

Glad it’s not just me then. Another born again skater here. They opened a new rink by us (Bury) recently. It’s ace!! Used to skate a lot when I was younger (the Warrington Rink was the centre of our social life at 16), so I started taking the kids. Then mates started coming along with their kids. Now there’s a gang of us, and we do at least one night a week.

I’ve just indulged myself with another set of Bauers. Keeping it old school – Bauer Nexus with a Playmaker conversion (by Olis Skate Shop), now running wider ACS651′ trucks and Sims Street Snakes on Peralta rollerbones (about to be swapped for some Kryptonics 67’s). And the obligatory Rocers fat laces of course 🙂

A couple of hours skating is a proper workout! Better than going to the gym when it’s a cold wet evening and you don’t fancy riding your bike.

Happy skating!

Oh…. blades are a bit gay though 😀

A couple of hours skating is a proper workout!

Especially when you couldn’t afford Bauers and had to make do with two tonne Pacers. 🙁

The scene from Malcolm in The Middle of Hal Rollerdisco dancing in a full silver lycra suit is one that will haunt me forever.

I’ve just indulged myself with another set of Bauers. Keeping it old school – Bauer Nexus with a Playmaker conversion (by Olis Skate Shop), now running wider ACS651′ trucks and Sims Street Snakes on Peralta rollerbones (about to be swapped for some Kryptonics 67’s). And the obligatory Rocers fat laces of course

Binners you have just described my yooof in a whole sentence. I used to frequent warrington roller rink/southport YMCA armed with a set of bauer turbo’s with ACS 651 trucks and it was the shizzle

It was indeed the shizzle! 🙂

They don’t make Turbo’s any more fella, hence the Nexus. Got to be Bauers! My old Turbo’s were running Tracker mid-track, and Santa Cruz OJ 2’s, me with me SC Rob Roskopp t shirt on

Santa Cruz, Rob Roskopp and OJ Simpson? I wonder whatever to any of throse lot eh?

If you’re in the Bury vicinity drop in For a trip down memory lane. There’s a bar and everyfink. We’re there every Thursday night, and weekends! On the evenings There are plenty of pretty handy skaters of… ahem…. ‘a certain age’

😀

These were the default rollerskates in our area in the 80s* – Bauers were the stuff of dreams!!!…

I’ve often wondered about roller blading on the roads, but they are so bad around us I think I’d spend most of the time faceplanting the tarmac.

(*Alfreton Leisure Centre roller discos!)

There is a bit of a inline speedskating scene which I dabbled in a few year ago – I played ice hockey as a kid, so didn’t take long to get going. London Speed Skaters hold an inline marathon at the Olympic park – previously it was at Hillingdon. There was also the Goodwood Roller Marathon for a few years – I convinced them to run a 100km event one year as they had booked the track for 4 hours. Inline is quite big in Germany – with big street marathon events held along with the running race. Seriously quick – 65 minutes for a marathon. I used to go to Dorney – early Sunday mornings and wind up the nodder triathletes on their bikes by drafting them on the back straight at 40kph. The trouble is that people don’t appreciate that without brakes, it’s hard to stop or change direction quickly without losing skin. Dog walkers and flexy leads are a real peril! In St Gallen in Switzerland they used to run a closed-road 111km event – 1,000 skaters and rolling countryside and pacelines of 50+ skaters doing 40kph – the downhills were awesome as you simply ‘let go’ and schuss the downhills, reaching 60kph+ in a tuck. Skates and the tech are pretty awesome too – carbon boots and machined frames – Bont started with skates before getting into bike shoes.

Which got replaced by the South Coast Roll, which is on Sunday, as mentioned above. You can go and skate a marathon, as I plan to, but you don’t have to.

There was someone up at Mugdock recently with rollerblade things and ski poles. I didn’t see exactly what was on his feet, his slightly transparent white Lycra shorts were too distracting…

Ah, Binners. happy happy memories dude.
I may well just take you up on that offer. I wonder if I can still skate backwards… 😀
We used to have a dance to ” tainted Love” we must have looked a right bunch of wallys!!!
Used to play Roller hockey too.!!

Often get some people Nordic skiing up box hill, not seem them coming down yet.

Likely to have been roller skis if he was using poles – much the same technique as skates, but you use your normal XC ski boots and the idea is to replicate XC skiing as closely as possible for summer training. It’s all good.

Not sure if Binners is
[video]https://youtu.be/I84Toor23h4[/video]

Or…

[video]https://youtu.be/rmMTK3lGfvI[/video]

Binners: My missus another old Warrington Roller Rink regular.

We are very lucky for rinks around Manchester: Wigan Roller Rink & Atherton Rink (same people run both rinks), Roller City in Rochdale, Warrington Skate Academy and the Bury Rink.