Videos

Raiders of the Lost Park 9 – Kirkby-in-Ashfield Tarmac Pump Park

Pumps, bumps and flumps - Raiders of the Lost Park hits the moon (sort of)

And we’re back with Raiders of the Lost Park 9 – Kirkby-in-Ashfield Tarmac Pump Park.
Here’s another bizarre gem to add to the list courtesy of Instagram, and more specifically the Insta feed of Nottingham mainstay and good friend of Sidewalk, Chris ‘Bambi’ Price.

Now, Kirkby-in-Ashfield’s Tarmac Pump Park is by no means an example of an objectively ‘bad skatepark’, (as opposed to some of the more recent atrocities featured in this Raiders of the Lost Park series), so let’s just clear that up first. The inclusion of this one is really down to its anachronistic construction/design and its overall oddness. With that said, despite its strangeness, it is actually really fun to skate, even if the tarmac mogul design harkens back to an earlier period of UK skatepark construction.

Mogul parks like this one were very common back in the early 90’s, with numerous examples being constructed across the Midlands and West Yorkshire in particular, (see here for a very similar but 20-year-old version in Wibsey, near Bradford). One can only assume that these types of parks were popular with local councils back then as they required no particular expertise to build and could be constructed in-house using council workers and materials that were already on-hand.
Additionally, these kinds of mogul skateparks, (or to give them their more modern name ‘scoot parks’) were popular back then because they ticked boxes for skateboards, bikes, ninja scooters, rollerskates, inline skates and just about everything else on wheels whilst being relatively cheap.

As far as the provenance of this particular place is concerned, after chatting to a few of the local scooter kids, it turns out that the park was built back in 2017 as part of a larger project encompassing the Acacia Recreation Grounds that serve the nearby village of Annesley Woodhouse.
The Scoot park sits next to a newly constructed children’s play area and behind the Acacia Centre itself, a community hub offering various activities and facilities to the local area.
As the friendly young Scooter maniac we spoke to explained, “Scooters are massive in Annesley but there was nowhere safe for us to do it, so our parents petitioned for a Scoot Park to keep us off the roads.”

You can find the Scoot park on Acacia Avenue (behind the community centre) at NG17 9BH.
The locals are friendly, there are shops nearby and if you bring an open mind, you’ll enjoy this weird little moonscape like we did.
Big thanks to the assembled crew of Nottingham and Derby heads who turned up to give this place a session and test what could actually be done on it – cheers to Ryan Leech, Romy Haynes, George Worthington, Adam Gaucher, Daz Pearcy, Nick Roberts and everyone else.

For footage and photos from previous outings – including a resurrection session at Sheffield’s Kelvin Bowl, a trip to Dagenham’s weirdest skatepark, an exploration of Milton Keynes Pennyland skatepark, Huddersfield’s most awful council parks with the Endemic Skateshop crew, and days out to Nunroyd skatepark and Tunstall skatepark near Stoke-on-Trent with the Welcome Skateshop squad and assorted friends – be sure to head on over to the Raiders of the Lost Park tag.

One last thing though – given that the surface is tarmac, despite the park being fairly new it’s not that smooth, so if you fancy a blast around this place (or anywhere similar) maybe consider grabbing yourselves a set of soft cruiser wheels – you can find a few ideas below.

Topics:

Videos

In Search of the Canna Ramp reaches Boardmasters

After nearly a week of exploring skateable terrain across the West Country, finally the search for the Canna Ramp reaches Boardmasters and the ramp is...

In Search of the Canna Ramp reaches Boardmasters