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Excellent - again Stockwell's great for practising the feel of rolling different gradient/height banks as there's so much variety there and it's easy to gradually step up the speed, etc.
Can't advise on pads ... I got my daughter to wear her cycle helmet when she was sitting on her board rolling through the big bowl at stockwell, but other than that have generally just lent towards assuming a few grazes won't do any harm and she's probably more likely to hurt herself climbing trees, etc, where I've never considered pads necessary. But this is almost certainly terrible advice.
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Yeah speaking to them this morning on the skate to school, they mentioned wanting to go back to Clapham next weekend and I said maybe we could do Brixton instead and then they were like can we do Clapham after as they already knew they liked it there.
So fingers crossed they like Brixton as much.
They’ll definitely need pads, the transition from just seeing what it’s about, to trying things after seeing what other kids with more experience were doing was frighteningly fast.And though they bounce back from the odd fall off their bike or trip over in the playground, they do tend to produce screams and big tears when it happens and I’d rather they had a bit of padding so each session isn’t punctuated with massive tears and cajoling to get back at it.
cornelius_blackfoot
Took jnr back to Clapham skate park today, after ice cream and some skating in a private residential place round the corner from Clapham old town which has some weird angled paving, eventually got told there was no skating there after we’d been skating around for 10-15mins. Assume the concierge/security allowed it as it was a middle aged man and their child rather than some teens looking to (insert colloquial words for skating hard here) …
Anyway took them over to skate park which wasn’t as busy as I expected, some skate teachers and their kids practicing, some older men and a couple of older teens/early 20s.
Jnr took to it really quickly, but fuck me the fear I got from rolling down some of the smaller ramps/banks, was immense, and jnr was off wanting to skate down steeper and steeper inclines. Hadn’t brought any pads with us as I didn’t think they would get as into it as they did.
Finally had to drag them out after about 45mins of them wanting to try more lines/ramps, which I was unsure they’d have the skills/balance to do.
Anyways got home tried on the pads they’ve had for a while and the knee ones are too small whilst the arm ones still fit, ( they are tall but relatively skinny), and just brought the next size up for a cheap price off eBay.
As you mentioned clapham park when it starts to fill up becomes a bit difficult to navigate as everyone bombshell the same couple of lines. So when pads arrive I think we’ll make an early morning trip to Brixton and try those bowls there.
And I’m definitely going to have to get myself some pads if I’m going to keep up with them..