Roller Blading in Canberra

Disposable – surface there is pretty smooth, like a old road surface. And it’s a massive space (~4 basketball courts) with a small gutter around the whole thing (no lost balls if you’re practicing inline skating).

Not sure on durometer sorry. It’s a little rougher than say the lakefront, and isnt the crazy smooth bitumen. On softer wheels you might see some wear and tear I guess, but it’s not like the apparently unskatable stuff.

kaydo said :

– Basketball courts at Rosary primary at Watson. A great big empty space to practice, very good for trying out hockey skills;

Hey Kaydo, what’s the surface there like? What durometer wheel would you be able to get away with?

Been a little while since I bladed, but the best lake loop is Kings Bridge down to Scrivener Dam and back, stopping at the Yarralumla nursery cafe for refreshments. As long as you’re confident with hills, this is a great work out. Bridge-to-bridge for the less adventurous. Tuggers lake loop is okay from memory.

For beginners, the Parliamentary Triangle lake front (the international flags) down to Lennox gardens makes for a nice, flat run. The flags/lakefront are also well-lit for night blading.

On wet weekend days, carparks around Parkes and Barton and the National Art Gallery carpark were good fun.

Would be interested in an organised blade meet. Might be a good excuse to try out the baby trailer for blading.

Just want to add that roller derby is done on roller skates not roller blades. They could probably tell you some good places to go, but they wouldn’t actually qualify as a rollerblading group. A pair of skates is about $100 or you can buy them second-hand at op shops sometimes. Apparently you can’t do roller derby on the blades at all.

Recently most of the paths around Belco have been resurfaced with a very rough bitumen type of material that make it next to impossible to rollerblade safely on. It’s a shame as there were some wicked paths there.

One of the best spots would have to be along the lake in front of Questacon. There used to be social blading groups but I am not sure if they exist anymore.

Inline Hockey has been dead since January last year. The rink is long gone now.

Disagree with Gungahlin Al, but it’s a great tangent. You just need different wheels to deal with the rougher surface

There was a post here a while back about roller derby, there’s also a pretty active Inline Hockey league run from Hume. Both don’t answer the question but might source you some like-minded folks.

Are you into rollerblading along paths are out for the more hardcore blading in a skate park?

Best places I’ve found so far:
– Down by the international flag display by the lake (overdone, but still great pathways). Even heading up the hill towards old parliament house / high court is good if you keep an eye out for pebbles;
– Around Yarrabi pond in Gungahlin. A fairly high quality pathway all the way, with very few obstacles;
– Lake Gininderra is ok to circuit. The path is a bit sketchy in places, and you want to start out in the direction of the mall -> Lake Ginn college or you have a crazy steep hill to go down at one point;
– Basketball courts at Rosary primary at Watson. A great big empty space to practice, very good for trying out hockey skills;
– New suburbs, we used to take to the unpopulated streets of Harrison or new McKellar by night. Both are too busy now, but there’s a sweet spot right after they build streets for a suburb but before there’s houses.
– Surely the sealed part of Stromlo Forest Park would be perfect. I’ve looked into it before, but you’d need numbers to make it worthwhile.

Interested in organising something if there are folks interested, I’ve never found similar. Will add more to the list if I think of it.

Well if the ACT Government keeps resealing Canberra streets with that cheap and nasty spraypave, you can forget about rollerblading on or even across any streets…