Meeting Mark (of skateinstructor.com), my fellow instructor at Eurostar always means we are off to Paris for two and a half days of great skating and lots of fun.

The trip is very flexible and different clients join us at different times based on their travel arrangements and accommodation, but we always meet for the three skates (Friday night street skate, Saturday all day city tour and Sunday street skate), which totals about 13 hours of skating. Some people don’t do the fast Friday night street skate and as such I found myself without clients to assist for the Paris Roller street skate. The sheer size and numbers is what is most exhilarating. I spend as much time as I can practicing my fast backwards skating, even venturing onto my bad side to test out my new Roces skate composite heel brake, which is a tad longer than I’m used to. Clipping a heel brake on a back crossover at this speed is not a good idea. I also discovered that my newly learned (in Madrid) inverted backwards powerslide is actually extremely user friendly. My execution of this manoeuvre correctly has been about 60%, so using it in real need stopping situations isn’t very pleasant as it’s a tricky position to get out of safely. However I discovered that if the sliding skate doesn’t slide for some reason (wrong angle, too much weight) I an twirl around it to forwards using it as a pivot. This discover of course starts to produce more and good perfect inverted back powerslides as my fear of cocking it up reduces and so my technique becomes more consistently correct. I believe the Paris Friday night street skate offers every skater of every ability level (above UK Sunday stroll level) the opportunity to advance their skills.

Everything is happening faster than normal as you are often skating a lot faster than your normal UK (rough) speed. This means you experience everything in your skating differently; a mistake at higher speed can be much more reactive, the ability to glide can begin to develop more and more, but equally, poor technique at any level will show itself at higher speeds and this is where this street skate holds its value. There are a fair number of French Gumbie skaters on the street skate (as in the UK), with their wobbly, straight legged, down hill Ready position stance which makes me instantly start crossing over to the next lane in order to be as far away from them as possible. I am very aware of my limits when skating so it is other people’s limits which I worry about and the seemingly incredible amount of people who feel ‘comfortable’ in that ‘nearly out of control’ state. I have sometimes asked them in pit stop breaks, “I saw you nearly loosing it on that last big hill, are you ok?”. “Yes, but wow it was horrible, I couldn’t stop and even though I had the stupid brake on it didn’t work, these skates are crap, I just hope there aren’t any more hills”. My summary is always that different people have different comfort zone edges and that mine are firmly rooted in preserving my life and not endangering those around me. When a street skate stops, I always stand still facing sideways to the skate so that I can see any of these  non-stoppers approaching and protect myself as much as possible.

Our group on Friday night consisted of Ivor, Annie and Sue from Eastbourne, Hannah from Portsmouth (although she skates in London), Chris, Jeremy and Alison from London plus Mark and myself. Unfortunately one of our group experienced visa issues getting into France and couldn’t join us. The lovely Vish and Christina who timed their own weekend break to coincide so we could all skate together, also came along. Vish’s photographic skills can be seen here, all the good ones are his!

Annie and Sue completed almost half of the street skate and superseded their expectations. Talking to Annie afterwards, this is what she said, “Asha, as I was going down through that tunnel, I have ever gone so fast in all my life but I felt great, I knew I could stop but I just let it roll and I have never in my life felt anything like it, it was such a buzz”.

Congratulations to Ivor who completed his first full Friday night Paris skate (after making it part way through last time. A true sign of improvement on his part.

We all met up in Republique afterwards and had a fabulous beer, kir royal or tea (the first of AMNYteas I would witness being consumed by Sue) and then skated on into the night to St Denis and various other fun adventures which I missed, in favour of sleep – it was 2am already however!

Saturday
Cheap hotel breakfast was as usual replaced by fabulous Breton Crepes at our favourite breakfast place, a lazy downhill skate off Rue de Magenta. Salmon and leek, mushrooms and cheese, or classic lemon and sugar…the perfect wake-up-skate food.

The whole group finally met up at Montparnasse when Mike joined us and we began the Asha tour of Paris (using her previous job experience as a tour guide in Portugal). Single file on the pavements taking it all in, cruising past parisiennes having coffee and cigarettes, skating through parks, food markets, squares, bridges, residential and shopping streets, this really is the way to see Paris.

First stop, Jardin de Luxumbourg in autumn colours followed by the Parthenon where these fadulous statues provided us with the perfect arty background….

We excused our way past a normal looking crowd of students outside the Sorbonne and then chose our lunches in the market off St Germain, just like Freud used to perhaps. Bread, cheese, meats, olives, strawberries…..great anticipation to lunch.

We skated onto the island of Notre Damme and took to the road for a quiet dash along another perfect smooth street and onto the lovely bridge connecting bot islands in the Seine, behind Notre Damme (which is the most beautiful view of it). This bridge is my favourite stop. It seems on Saturdays there is always a jazz bank of some sort with dark suited old gentlemen playing lovely music to a small crown, framed by water and elegance on all sides (this is the posh part of Paris). We stop and begin to learn some easy dance steps, acting also as a rehearsal for Asha and Alison who will be joining the London skaters on 8th November for our appearance in the Lord Mayor’s Show. We twirled, grapevine, new york shuffled and laughed and laughed. Hope the rehearsal in London that day was as much fun!

The ‘Cake break’ came next and the tartlette aux framboise had my name written all over it (and not because its pink)! Lunch stop is in Place des Vogues, the majestic interior park to a king and queens house (he lived at one end and she at the other). Its also the park where you cant wear skates on the gravel and you cant sit on the grass in October (but May is fine). Skates stayed on, benches worked well. Best strawberries I’ve tasted this year.

The tour now heads west and through the tiny back streets of La mare, past the Pompidou centre, town hall and back onto the islands for a quiet, uninterrupted south bank trail all the way to the Louvre. A much needed post-lunch coffee break followed with some outstanding French slalomers to watch (and the odd jumping over a gate).

With the Eiffel tower in sight and our final resting place, we continued onto Invalides for another water break and some slalom and skating ourselves. Asha discovers newly found tap for refills in the area with very few shops!

The house covered in moss is a particular modern favourite of Asha’s and is the final regroup before we hit our destination, the Eiffel tower….which on Friday night looked incredible decked out in blue lights all over with yellow stars.

It is amazing how much of Paris we see in one afternoon on skates. I believe it is the perfect method to see cities and with some planning really creates an experience not to be forgotten. Our night ended with some drinks near our hotel in a lovely (but rather hot) brasserie where they poured potatoes and cheese from a great height onto people’s plates. Why did we not have any of that? Next time…

Sunday morning and Mark was greeted by Asha wearing a red tutu and a lot of fake blood. Poor man, hasn’t been the same since. Luckily the waiters at the crepe place know us and didn’t mind serving a half mad rolling She Devil on a Sunday morning in their rather elegant restaurant. No one else had taken Asha up on the offer of following the French Sunday Stroll’s Haloween dress up skate, so she was alone in her goolish attire until Jeremy accepted the offer of relieving her of her mask (it got in the way of the horns), and it rather suited him even with the helmet!

The post breakfast skate down to the start of the Sunday Stroll was a wonderful leisurely, trip led by Ivor. We found a smooth lesson space and killed some time teaching some backwards skills, spin stops and generally on consolidating some of the new experiences learned in all the hours of skating so far on the weekend. Annie and Sue, not from London and unfamiliar with Asha’s methods were more than surprised to realise that her version of ‘bend your knees’ involved rather more than they bargained for. However they both grasped the concept and have improved over the weekend and leave Paris more confident and wisely than when they arrived.

The Sunday Stroll had a disappointing number of people dressed up for Haloween, but they did have some impressive face painting going on, with the marshals making up for their lack of costumes (yellow STAFF T-shirts instead) with sewn up mouths. Mike had impressively intuited to wear red and black in order to match Asha’s outfit and ensure we didn’t get separated! The skate was lovely, it appeared to be mainly flat or downhill with any up being gentle and not very noticeable and only 2 or 3 patches of cobbles. A quick celebratory glass of wine before a mad but fun solo dash up Magenta (still dressed in tutu and blood) to the hotel, change and get Eurostar back home. Into London 10.30pm, iinto my front door in Brighton 1.15am. A very tired, but very happy and skately satisfied Asha returns home.

Next spring’s Paris trip is being replaced by a new Skatefresh trip to Amsterdam in May. Details will be come available after Asha’s prep trip at the end of November where she will be researching routes, tours, windmills, canals and fields of spring flowers for us to skate through!

We will however go to Paris every autumn and the next Paris trip will be 16th-18th October 2009. Join us!

Asha
Skatefresh

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