Every Friday Night and Sunday Afternoon throughout the year (so long as it’s dry), skaters in London take to the streets, and take over the capital.
On Friday Nights the skate sets off at 8.00pm from Wellington Arch, which is in the middle of Hyde Park Roundabout. The nearest tube station is Hyde Park Corner (Although Green Park is also pretty close). This skate can be a challenge to the novice skater as it is 12 – 15 miles, and the 2nd half is usually a lot faster than the first half.
However the half time break is usually near a tube station, so if you don’t fancy continuing it’s easy to get home. If you are of average fitness and/or exercise a couple of times a week, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem. Just make sure that you are confident and proficient at turning and stopping. The London Friday Night Skate always finishes at Wellington Arch, (although many continue on to the pub)
If you’re not so fit, still new to skating, or you’re just not sure if you’ll be able to keep up, then the Sunday Stroll is a great introduction to street-skating. Setting off from the Eastern End of Serpentine Road in Hyde Park, this is a gentle and relaxed skate around the streets of London which once again is marshalled. Although the Sunday Stroll usually finishes at Hyde Park, they do occasionally have ‘one-way skates’ which means that you will have to find your own way back to town.
Check out the website for full details
That's right, Blogger was good up to an extent, but wordpress is even better. I can host pretty much my entire site on their (and eventually my own) servers, using their all-encompassing software.
Another event for the Easter Weekend is the Easter Eggstravaganza, celebrating the end of winter, the arrival of spring, and more importantly the start of the new skating season, (although for some of us the skating season really stops to allow us to get drunk over Christmas, and hibernate for a few of the coldest weeks at the start of the year).
About every four months Rollerworld in Derby doesn’t exactly throw open its doors on a Saturday Night - more like they just don’t shut them, as skaters from across Derbyshire, the East Midlands, and in fact most of the UK converge on the rink for the opportunity to skate all night until 6am.
I haven’t watched Blue Peter for over 20 years, but I’ll be tuning in tomorrow afternoon, 20th February 2008 at 4.35pm (or at least I’ve set Sky+ for it) as they are doing a feature on Freestyle Slalom.
I featured Rods' site on my blog a few months ago, and he’s since updated his site:-
Whenever I turn a computer on, after checking my e-mails, there are a few sites that I just have to check, just to see what is happening in the skating world.
Every Friday Night and Sunday Afternoon throughout the year (so long as it’s dry), skaters in London take to the streets, and take over the capital. 
I had an e-mail from the Emma (Bitchin Payne) of the Lincolnshire Bombers Roller Girls the other day. They are a new Roller Derby team that train every Sunday in Lincoln. They have a dedicated group of girls who travel from as far away from Rochdale to train. Emma tells me that they are in the early stages of their training, and at the moment don’t envisage a proper bout for about a year.
