Setting-wise Bradley Skatepark was kind of a ‘win’ – nestled in the middle of a sedate housing estate on the outskirts of Huddersfield and looking out onto glorious Yorkshire countryside, so, as long as you kept your eyes above ground level – things looked okay. Sadly though, once you made the mistake of casting your eyes towards ground level you were ‘treated’ to one of the worst attempts at building a skateboard park that we’ve ever seen.
I’m guessing that the design consultation process involved in building Bradley Skatepark consisted of little more than Googling ‘skatepark’, looking at the first two returns and then ringing the local scrap yard to buy a few grand’s worth of scrap steel.
The centre-piece consisted of a driveway with a flat bar running along the length of it – the only problem there was the fact that the drive way itself was only a foot high, there were gaps between the bottoms of the driveway and the floor on both sides, (so you have to ollie to get off the driveway), and the rail was so low that you couldn’t actually ollie onto it. (See the pics for a better explanation of how bad this thing is construction-wise).
Aside from that magnificent ‘obstacle’ (in a literal sense of that word), Bradley Skatepark also served up two flat bars, (again so low that ollieing onto them was virtually impossible) and a selection of metal benches that were either intended to function as skatepark obstacles, or as vantage-points for the huge crowds of spectators attending Bradley skatepark on a daily basis to watch Tony Hawk practice on his regular visits there. (I’m opting for the latter).
