I’ve always wanted to go there. It would be so sick if they properly resurfaced it.
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Slade’s farm. Love the snake run, haven’t been there for years though
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The original surface was so good for ages. It had tiny pebbles in the crete which meant the lips were super grindy. The snake run was twice as long and there was a run in for the main ‘freestyle’ area in the middle that you could transfer from, in to and out of the snake run.
The first improvement was sticking a tarmac path around the outside - that was cool. Then they filled in the top half of the snake and the whole middle section - which was a mixture of cool and a bit shit at the same time. Added some dodgy driveway and back to back quarters and a rare unit style hip/ fun box effort - which was definitely not an improvement.
The surface pebbles got polished through years of wear and as soon as you got any moisture anywhere near that surface you were dancing on ice. Still cool, though, noticeably beginning to weather in places becoming rough and a lot slower.
Then came the resurface project. I guess they just wanted to make it not slippery and so put down concrete with the texture of rough grade sandpaper. It was faster and opened up some lines but you didn’t want to fall on that shit. The main issue was that whoever did the job made all the grindable lips, (pretty much the whole park), rollovers. That really fucking sucked. Where there kept a sharp lip , (almost nowhere), it took years till it was slideable /grindable again.
That surface has been deteriorating for some years now and is now way worse than the original became. I just hope, if it does get done, they semi restore the original layout and lips (Crete not coping 
). This place is the UK’s spiritual twin of Derby Park in Santa Cruz and it shouldn’t be left to rot. It also deserves a proper job doing on it, not some half arsed effort and, like the guy in the article says, it’ll be good for decades longer.
Christian Gaze, Slades Farm method air, late 80’s, photo: TLB.
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My great Aunt was a Carmelite nun in a convent right by Slades Farm.
We’d visit her and then go to the park quite often in the late 80s right after I’d started skating.
I loved that place
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They made a really good job of resurfacing derby. Very impressed when I went a few years ago. Glass smooth.
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Yeah, it’s a really good job (Derby, that is, not Slades). Although when they began the refurbishment of Derbyback in the late 90’s, the first thing they did was put a concrete path around the outside which was good. But, and it’s a big but, they put small speed bumps all the way down it 
. Worked out in the end though.
I last went there in 2017 and cut my hand open on the tarmac. Great park. They should probably fill in the cracks and preserve it. It has a lot of history. Isn’t it one of the oldest parks in the UK?
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Yep, I think it was built in 1978.
Definitely not scum update
They should at the very least stop calling him a “Right Honourable” person.
That was in my first ever RAD mag. Suprised I’ve never skated this place I assumed it was long gone. Will have to make the trip one day.
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Yea that’s the one. I had only bought Skateboard! and Sk8 Action up to that point. RAD had BMX stuff in it and gave me ‘Look-In’ vibes so I had been avoiding it.
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Ooft. You missed out.
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Hmm maybe I did buy it earlier than that…looking at the covers the BMX Action link dried up years before and I think I had the Femi cover issue.
Who’s got the Danny Brady document cover with a BS NB in the bowl bit?
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“…an above-inflation rise in duty on cigarettes and an 11% rise in duty on hand-rolling tobacco, taking effect within hours…”
BRB.
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Not smoked in a bit.
What’s the cost of 20 these days?
