Following on from my recent (moderate) success at snowboarding, I've been fancying have a go at skateboarding again. I skated loads as a kid, and though my balance was pretty good, I was never much cop as a skater, due to extreme cowardice (neither my shins or my ego could take the knocks).
I haven't skated at all for about ten years (apart from one ill-advised drunken nocturnal session about five years ago.)
Back in the late 80's/early 90's, I could occasionally persuade my parents to drive me out to Coomb, a small village in Oxfordshire. Sonehow I had worked out that it had an old concrete skae bowl tucked away at the back of a cricket pitch, a relic from the original 70's craze for skateboarding.
I realised while out cycling last year that Coomb is only about 5 miles from where we now live. So on sunday, feeling like getting out and about for the day, I decided to drag Hev along to see if the bowl was still there, and isf we cold find it. It is and we could.
The cricket pitch of my recollection was a football pitch, it being winter, I suppose, and there was an under-15's match in progress.
I trudged across the field to the bowl in the corner, board in one hand, a bearded thirty year old, with wife in tow, feeling rather embarressed. Whether this was 'cos i was feeling too kiddy, or too old mannish, I can't quite say, but it didn't feel quite right somehow.
Anyhow, the bowl was in a similar state of rideable disrepair as before. I managed a few runs without breaking my neck, and it was good fun (though the puddle of mud in the bottom of the bowl was something of a hinderance.) Hev took a few videos of me 'in action' (hah!) on her camera, which I'll post up if I get round to it.
Despite feeling like a big kid and an old man all at once, I had fun.
Anyone fancy coming out to play?
Maybe next I'll check the Oxford Wheels Project out...
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