Raiders of the Lost Park 3 – Fartown skatepark, Huddersfield

Ever since we started doing these Raiders of the Lost Park features we’ve been inundated with suggestions of the terrible council skateparks that litter the UK but honestly, when we received a photo of what Fartown, (just outside of Huddersfield) had to offer we were genuinely shocked.
This one is so bad that it almost operates as a philosophical exercise in terms of what the limits of the meaning of the term ‘skatepark’ are. Sure, there are two recognisable skatepark obstacles in the shape of a rusty flatbar and a launch ramp of sorts but the centrepiece defies all logic – we’re struggling to even come up with an adequate description of it.

In brief, Fartown skatepark consists of a downhill slope on a deserted basketball course in the middle of a council estate with a metal wobble board (for want of a better description), one flat bar and a metal kicker ramp that fires you out onto a degraded rubber surface and straight into grass. The most startling thing about this place is that, (according to the local residents we bumped into), it was genuinely designed, paid for and built by the local authority as a skatepark – as in, somebody actually designed this and then even more unbelievably, somebody signed a cheque to pay for it.

Nonetheless the crew from Huddersfield’s Endemic skate store were more than happy to take us to this sublime example of wasted tax-payers money and then, as far as was possible, skate it.
This one is definitely going to be hard to beat but, judging on the messages we receive every time we post one of these Raiders of the Lost Park features, Fartown skatepark probably isn’t the worst example out there.
Give the clip a watch, peep Tim Smith’s photos and be glad that you don’t have to try and learn to skate on this abortion.