Should I skate on holiday?

Absolutely you should, recently I was on a trip to London and thought about having a skate, found a really great skate shop in Kensington called Slick Willy’s here is the link– they are a great shop, very knowledgeable and great to chat to.  Also very helpful with giving advice on the skating groups in London.  They will rent you inline skates, pads, the whole lot.  I am confident that there are other rental places in other towns, definitely worth a check on google if you are around a city for a while and fancy a day on the blades.

If you are lucky enough to be going somewhere with an ice rink (I was in Aberdeen and Oxford both of which have great ones)  consider taking your own ice skates with you if you have them. Its a good chance to get them sharpened and get some ice time in the actual boots you will use.  If however you can’t fit them in your bag, just go along and all ice rinks will have rental skates which believe me are totally fine for a quick blast.

Renting skates… won’t they be rubbish?

Not at all!  These skate shops and rinks know how to look after their skates, and the ones for rental are specifically designed for rental so are extra tough, maybe not as refined or light as the ones you can buy or already own, but the inline skates I rented from Slick Willy’s were really good, I had them for 24 hours, and I got more than enough skating done in that time.  I had my own ice skates in Aberdeen so couldn’t really comment on their rentals, but the people I spoke to were happy with them, and they had decent edges so worth a go.

Routes for inlining?

There are often groups for rollerblading in towns and cities, the Friday night skate in london is fairly famous, here is the link if you find yourself there on a Monday, Friday, Wednesday or Sunday.  I bumped into them at one of their stops and they were a good bunch.

Apart from that group there are always good bits of advice from skate shops, parks or seafront with space to skate.  its well worth looking into, and if you arent sure, have a look around and see if anyone else is doing it.

Just give it a go