The importance of just rolling around, Cramond.

If Cramond was a level on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

Today was the first day I'd stepped on a skateboard in three years. No big deal maybe, but in that time I've gained a fair few pounds and am still recovering from a back injury which has basically ruled out any proper physical activity for nearly two of those years. Hopefully the latter has subsided enough to let me skate a fair bit and work on the former!

Every board I've ever owned has rolled along the coastal path at Cramond, from the first plastic "banana board" to the various fish tails, hammerheads and bottlenoses of the '80s and '90s (why were those boards named after marine wildlife?). A fair few twintails from the strange era when wheels barely covered your bearings and some more modern lollipop sticks have also graced the tarmac here. 

Silverknowes Rd. on the way down to the beach.

Getting there was easy, I took the train to Haymarket and the number 41 bus from Edinburgh's west end takes you all the way there. I got off about a mile ahead because I knew there was some cruising to be had.

Silverknowes Road has a very smooth pavement of completely uninterrupted BitMac. I don't imagine this pavement gets a great deal of foot-fall so it's in a very skateable state for it's age.Took a leisurely cruise down seeing as it's been a while!
 

Basically it's just a big path alongside a beach for as far as you can see.

So this was it, I was about to enter my twenty-sixth (non-consecutive) year as a skateboarder, this was what it was all about... But something wasn't normal, it was nothing tangible, but it was there.
A triumphant return to skating wasn't something I was anticipating and in a sense it wasn't what I got either. However, that's not a negative viewpoint.

Could I pull a switch heelflip and land it straight off the bat? No.
Could I ever? Well.... I've been close! But, did I ever give a damn? Of course not.

The pillars on the way to Cramond Island were part of a solid wall to stop small boats and protect shipping lanes.    .There was also an underwater anti-sumabrine net at one point which stretched from the island to Fife.

So that's what it was. I went out and I skated and there wasn't the pressure to perform that you have at skateparks, so what did I do? Nothing, I did nothing other than roll around. Not even the satisfying crack of plywood on tarmac that a simple ollie provides, I skated and skated and skated and it was glorious!
 
I've always found skating to be a very personal thing, I skate by myself, for myself... Because I can.
I started alone and spent a lot of my formative skateboarding years skating alone. Having never really garnered any sort of sense of competition or desire to out-trick my peers perhaps made me lazy in developing a bag of tricks because I've never really had to pull something out of that bag,

Today was about reconnecting, making friends with the board if you will... It was back to basics. It was contemplative. It was, dare I say, zen-like.

What's wrong with this picture? Took me a while to notice...

The way I see it, if you appreciate the art of rolling around, the very fabric of what holds it all together, then it's all good. You roll in and roll out of every single grind, flip and air. So if you mess it up a little in the middle, the beginning and the end, the rolling itself should more than make up for it.

I'll probably spend a lot of time just cruising this time around, pondering the metaphysics of it all, but getting gnarly is on the agenda too...