The dangers of skating in the wet are quite obvious - no grip!

No Grip = no push and no steering! To an extent no stopping either.

Which all in all takes a lot of the fun out of skating. The K2 Continental all weather wheel originally came to market in about 2001 and I reviewed them at the time. They were billed as wheels that would last 4 times longer than standard wheels and have at least 10 times more grip! I tested them and they were fabulous! Indoors they were actually TOO grippy! They had way more grip than indoor hockey wheels!

Unfortunately the manufacturers made one error - the core plastic was too brittle and the wheel failed in about 2 weeks of use! DOH! However with a little use of POLYMORPH PLASTIC I rebuilt the cores and have (probably) the only remaining set of working wet weather wheels in the world. Check the video to see them hold just like a normal wheel - on a wet road!

To be fair they are a little bit noisier and slower than standard polyurethane wheels (lower rebound too) but - heck they work in the wet! The original sets even came with K2 waterproof ABEC 5bearings :)

Pam's leaving "full time" Sk8school work as she's doing so much Hockey in one form or another there's just no time to teach! Those lucky Hockey teams, will benefit from Pam's continued enthusiasm and (now slightly more) energy.

We wish her well. Though we won't rule out occasional Heely club appearances and maybe a few jaunts in the summer!

Best wishes from all at Sk8school Pam.

Review of the last enemy.

An intrepid few turned up for the shoot at about 4pm. Finding the battersea studios was our first problem , but some one had left a flourescent arrow labled "L E base", this foretold the quality of the organisation of the event we would all soon be part of. In short everything that was promised turned up and we were well looked after thoughout.

There were some pretty impresive satelite dishes where some of us managed to meet up initially. With more meeting up for the shoot "on location". The quality of the surface was about as varied as the skill level of the skaters - ie we had just about everything! There were a number of cyclists as well. Some of us were allowed to take our skates off as we were finding the unusual combination of surfaces and rain soaked surfaces at that - a little too demanding. However the tv crew just built that in too!

The first shoot was a slow plod to get the idea, basically skate round a corner making lots of noise and try to leave the actors and cameras standing! Once it was clear we could do it we were allowed to try it again at full speed. After about 6 times we were getting pretty good at it, meanwhile those taking the shots were getting lots of angles on essentially the same thing.

Later after a slap up feast of soup, pie and various drinks (ok some of us had a little, some earlier in the queue had a lot!) we were asked to try something different. This time we had to skate up from battersea powerstation and "attack" a van and set a CCTV camera alight! Anyway it happened again from many angles, till by 10 at night we were actually getting pretty tired. Still everyone enjoyed it and were glad the took part in a truly unique skating experience.

The program will be aired sometime around october on the bbc. I expect those that took part will be glues to the screen!

Due to the incredible demand, Sk8school have started the Eastbourne Sk8school Heely Club, which has it’s own website and meetings. Check out the videos and sign up for the newsletter to get all the info!

The website is:

http://heely.sk8school.co.uk

36 people enjoyed our hugely successful trip to the Ice skating rink. At only £15 including coach trip, entry and skate hire, it maintained the London and Eastbourne inline skate schools reputation for quality and value :)

Many thanks to Teresa who led the trip in my absence and Sue for taking so many great photo's.

With so much possitive feed back we're sure to run this trip again!

If you want to join in the theory lesson on the 26th November there are still places.

The February course has plenty of places at the moment, but be quick if you intend to book this course as historically the January Open skate takes any remaining places! After that you need to wait till April!

As you can see there was quite a mix of ages and abilities, split into groups so everyone can learn at the pace that suits them. Find out what the fuss is all about at the theory lesson or the December Open skate (10th Dec 10am)

Starlight Express is on Tour and coming to the Congress at Eastbourne on Wednesday August 27^th at 7:30. The best seats in the house are £26.50 (but £15 to the Sk8School group) and we’ve just added 35 more to Sk8schools allocation because of such high demand.

So if you only made it to the reserve list on the first round, you’ve now managed to reserve tickets – no need to reapply!

If you haven’t registered yet, you’d better do it soon as there are only a very limited number of tickets not yet spoken for. As usual – first come first served. If you are not quick enough to reserve your ticket and only make the reserve list, don’t worry all is not lost! Those tickets not paid for by 15^th July are offered to those on the reserve list (in order of registering).

If you’re thinking of registering “a block” for other people bear in mind that if that “block” is the last few tickets and straddles the reserve list, you’ll have the less than enviable task of having to decide who in your little group has the tickets allocated and who goes without! Much better to let each person register themselves!

We are not likely to get another extension, so once they are gone – they are gone!

EASTBOURNE INLINE SKATE SCHOOL (SK8SCHOOL) & SKATEINSTRUCTOR.COM MERGE !

The February class is underway and its a sell out. We thought we'd try something a little different to finish with and introduced some dance steps. The whole class joined in and here's some of the feed back we've had emailed since:

"Thanks so much for that. I really enjoyed myself this morning. Can’t wait till next week."

Check out the extra pictures for just some of the people in the class - sorry we only managed to snap half of you! Don't worry - there's always next week!

As the course progresses Sk8school will introduce more dance elements in the free skate sessions after the class.

Huge numbers of people came along this morning to sample Sk8school's free lessons via the skate shops in town. Quite a successful time was had by all, we had everyone rolling and stopping in half an hour

From Sunday 23rd - right through the summer - sk8school will run their group classes at the turning circle. Anyone that managed to collect a half price voucher at Eastbourne Extreme mid July will only have to pay £2.50 !

Sk8school will be teaching everything from the basic "how to stand up" right through to cartwheels!

Groups will split into similar skills under the guidance of sk8schools instructors and NSP trained staff.

Booking is essential.

In a bid to help Eastbourne’s image the council has been using a variety of images that go against the first thing you might think when you hear a word associated with Eastbourne.

Time for T show's a golfer T'ing off! Blue rinse, shows a hang glider and Rollers... that’s us!

Sk8school had a very busy day at the festival - we had our whole rental fleet out on all three sessions and packed attendance all day.

Hopefully the festival will be repeated next year.

The perfect weather also helped as October is not always so kind.

Eastbourne skate school managed top spot on the Advertiser with our colourful Seaford picture and catchy writeup.

This was the perfect advertisment for the start of indoor skating lessons in Eastbourne, one of the many courses and lessons offered by Eastbourne sk8school.