• dale travers
• dan turner
• europe
• hopeless tour
• julian coulter
• road trip
• tour

28 days later and we’re back home in the UK again. Thinking back, we’ve…

-Covered 2900 miles in the car (= 4650 km).
-Travelled through 7 foreign countries.
-Made countless new friends.
-Visited 9 different skateparks.
-Crossed paths with 3 other groups of skaters touring Europe.
-Eaten more ham sandwiches than ever before.
-Dislocated an elbow.
-...and had a hell of a lot of fun!

I can’t think of a better way to spend 4 weeks of my summer.
It’s a trip none of us will forget… and hopefully neither will you.

Look out for more pictures from the tour and a documentary edit coming soon from Dan Turner! For now… peace out.

-Julian Coulter

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The last stop of the tour was to be Amsterdam. We had a 6 hour drive from Hamburg to Amsterdam, made longer by us deciding to take the scenic route through small towns to look for random spots on the way. Julian and Dan spotted a couple of rails from the car in a small town on the way out of Germany. We had been driving for a few hours so we stopped to skate them for a little while and after a few minutes the weather turned and started raining. Typical.

I stopped skating but Julian carried on and got savannah to alley oop topsoul full cab out on a flat rail. He was then going for alley oop topsoul and missed the rail with his soul foot and got a pretty painful dead leg from hitting it on the rail. This put him out of skating for the rest of the trip and out of driving for the next couple of days.

We carried on to Amsterdam and after a bit of confusion with hostels, found a place not too far from the centre. This was my first visit to Amsterdam, and after getting off the main roads and entering the city I quickly found out that driving in Amsterdam is a nightmare. Loads of locals choose to ride bikes which have right of way over pretty much anything. Bikes are cool but when you’re not used to so many it can be awkward dodging the crowds of cyclists, and the trams and general road system can also get confusing.

On the first night we did the tourist thing and went round the red light district and sampled Amsterdam’s nightlife. I didn’t really like the atmosphere at night in the centre, didn’t see too many hot girls, loads of dodgy characters and no police presence. The same can’t be said for during the day. By day the city was a lot nicer with lots of canals, small back streets and alternative shops and has a really nice vibe. There weren’t that many obvious street spots so we headed to an outdoor bowl about 10 minutes walk from the centre. Dale skated the bowls getting creative with some cool lines and airs.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet any locals in Amsterdam which was a shame as we didn’t get to see what the local scene was like. We all enjoyed what we saw of the city however and I myself am planning to visit again soon.

– Mark Houltram

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Our host on this stop was to be local skater Mark Stamer, who we met at the skatepark in town on our arrival. Mark explained that the skatepark is subsidised by the local council, which means it’s free during the week… and everyone has to chip in and sweep up at the end of the session. At first I thought he was joking, but just look at the pictures!

We later headed into central Hamburg for a look around the city. This is apparently the richest city in Germany… and it shows. People dress immaculately and there’s not a second hand shop in sight! It also happens to have some really sick skate spots, which Mark gave us a quick tour of before busting out on a square drop rail for a photo.

Back at Mark’s flat we spent the evening watching some skate videos, including “Frated” which Mark produced himself. This sheds some light on the scene in North Germany and Denmark and is a really well made video with sick skating to boot. Check out http://frated-dvd.com and get hold of a copy!

The next day we hit a spot in town full of steep flat banks, where we filmed some tricks for the tour edit before heading back to the park for another session – this time with some unexpected guests. A crew of skaters from Marseille (France) and Geneva (Switzerland) were doing a tour across Europe, like us, and were spending a couple of days in Hamburg on their way north to Denmark. It was fun to skate with so many people and the session went off!

Local skater Alex Deutschmann effortlessly laced every coping grind you wish you could do. Him and Mark, who is as stylish-a-skater as you’re ever likely to see, sessioned a huge launch onto the vert ramp’s coping, lacing hurricane everything whilst trying not to fall 12ft down the vert ramp! The Marseille crew were ripping the bowl to shreds at lightning speed, while Stephane De Freitas from Geneva and Dan (still in plaster) both got high.

On the vert wall, that is.

It’s good to see skaters from all over the place are doing tours, making videos and progressing the scene. Hamburg was a good stop, and is a city with some seriously underrated skaters. Thanks to Mark Stamer for hooking us up!

Next and final stop: Amsterdam.

– Julian Coulter

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Yet again, too much partying and bad weather would stop us from skating on this stop, but good times were had nonetheless.
Berlin is known for its electronic music and clubbing scene, so when we rolled into town on Saturday evening we were determined to put its reputation to the test and headed straight for the local night club. On reaching the door, we were bizarely turned away (seemingly for being foreign!) and were forced to wonder the streets… although this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Before long we had stumbled across a huge free party full of hedonistic locals, which was symbolically going down under a bridge next to a stretch of the old Berlin Wall with not a police car in sight. Once this rapped up we followed some locals to another big rave party, this time a legal one, where we stayed until sunrise.

Waking up the next day at 5pm (!!), we realised we had just a few hours of daylight left to see Germany’s capital, so we left our skates in the room and headed into town. It was interesting to see how pristine and grand the centre of town was compared to the suburb we were staying in, with its graffitti-covered walls and manic party scene. After seeing a couple of touristy sights we spotted the most amazing skate spot – a huge V-shaped flat bank under the famous TV tower, which we book marked for the following day’s session. Later that night we crossed paths once again with Laurence and Soul from Edinburgh, who we had met in Prague, so we all headed to the Ping Pong bar to catch up whilst playing a few rounds of half-drunk ping pong (yes, they have a ping pong table in the bar!). By this stage everyone had planned what tricks they wanted to session on the big ‘V’ spot, so we agreed to meet up in the morning for a session.

When we woke up it was pissing it down with rain. Shit! I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to skate a spot so much… but it wasn’t to be, so we gave up on skating and headed straight to our next destination, Hamburg. Our stop in Berlin might have been short but we all left with good first impressions of Berlin and hope to return sometime soon, hopefully with better weather and more skating contacts next time!

– Julian Coulter

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I’ve visited Dresden in the past after winterclash for a few weeks to spend some time with my friend Marian Sorge who had just returned from his Australia trip, so i know how good the spots and the skaters are. I also knew that we had to add it to list of places to hit through Germany.

Arriving at the skatepark in the centre of town in the afternoon we met up with local skater Sven Haussman to have a small warm up then hit some street spots.First spot was a new building in town that was just finished and had new rails everywhere. A 100-foot long rail was in Sven’s sights and not even thinking about it he laced a Royale first try before Dan even got his camera out.The guy has balance and got to the end everytime.I spotted a kink rail with a transfer accross the field that has never been skated,again Sven is always keen for skating so he starting hitting the transfer only to realise that it went unbelievbly fast and the light was fading.Sven is always up for a challenge but could not take the kinks so ended up calling it a night.

Second day was spent with another warm up at the skatepark and a roll on the vert ramp then off to the street.Dresden has great street including heaps of kink rails – Julian’s favourite! Sven stepped up to an 18 kinked rail with Julian and tried to get to the bottom. Unfortunatly again no one finished it. Needing pics we headed to an estate were there were more kinks and skatespots.We found a nice kink hop which Julian stepped up with a topsoul to topsoul and then linking it in a line with a nice long frontside.The rain began to fall so we called it a day waiting around for my mate Marian to make it into to town so we could get a place to stay.

Sven informed us of a session going down in Cuffbus, a town we had to go through on our way to Berlin, so we headed there the next day.Meeting up with around 20 skaters can be a logistical nightmare.Skating some minor warm up spots we headed to the local university which included some flat ledges and slight down ledge over a few large steps. Georg, the local skater who organised the session and also helps the scene out a lot started off by charging the ledges with topsouls and fishbrains joined by Mark with a top torquesoul. The spot was done so we headed to the last spot – a downrail with a short run-up. Georg again ripped it up with a sweaty then a fishbrain finishing our time in Cuffbus so we headed to Berlin. Thanks for the boys in Cuffbus for coming out and Marian and Sven in Dresden for helping out with accomadation and spots.

Dale Travers

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From Slovakia we drove to the Czech Republic for the next stop of the tour. This was my second stop of the tour as I only met up with the other 3 guys in Slovakia the night before.
First impressions of the Czech Republic were the differences between the 2 cities we had driven from and to as both countries used to be one – Czechoslovakia. A lot more touristy, much better skate scene and shit loads of obvious spots (unlike Bratislava in my opinion). Just over knee height marble down ledges, weird architecture with banks to grinds and little rails and roll-ins.

On the first night we headed down to the centre of town and met Michal & Petr; 2 locals and with them were 3 guys from the UK; Saul, Laurence and Ryan. It was a bit weird for me because I moved to Leeds about a year ago and one of my best friends up there (Robbie Calvert) used to talk about his mates from back home that were doing a tour, who happened to be these guys in the middle of Prague!!
They all live in Edinburgh, Scotland and were nearing the end of their European tour. They were on an epic 10 week journey similar to what we were doing but did it better(cheaper) as they had a camper van to sleep in with cooker and shit, saving maybe the most expensive outgoings; accomodation & food. If you plan a trip round europe, which you should, a camper van or something like that to sleep in would make it so much cheaper.

So the next day we checked out 2 skateparks. The first one we went to was a really well built smooth wooden park owned by skateboarders which I refused to skate as they charged more for rollerbladers. We then went to Petr’s park who we had met the night before which was a ghetto outdoor park. This park was at the opposite end of the scale from the last one, made from metal and had a pretty unique construction. It wasn’t as smooth as the other park but there were only rollerbladers there so I had a skate with the guys from Edinburgh and a few locals including Petr and Michal who both killed that park, along with a couple of other local guys. Petr had his own little shop at the park and the place seemed like a bit of an institution for rollerbladers. Unfortunately the park is going to be knocked down in a couple of weeks to build a fucking road, so the shop is moving but I’m pretty sure the park will no longer exist.

That night Dan, Julian and myself headed out with Saul and Laurence to what we were told is the largest club in Europe in terms of actual space not capacity. It was on about 5 or 6 floors and I thought it was pretty good, nice girls, good atmosphere and cheap beer. Laurence is a soldier and stayed out on both nights on his own until around 6am wandering the streets. They were heading on the same route as us up to Germany and Holland so we got phone numbers and hopefully we will meet up in Berlin or Amsterdam.

Mark Haultram

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When we first planned the tour, Brastislava was always one of the most important stops. It was the furthest East that we could go, and as such was going to be exactly half way round, and halfway through our trip. Not only were people planning to possibly join us, but also we would be at a good point to analyse how things were going so far, and what we needed to change and was bound to be a good rest stop.

It seems fitting then that we heard the most mixed reports of the town whilst on the road. At each youth hostel or town we have been to, someone will offer an opinion on the place. Stories of supermodels on every corner and a strange atmosphere were some of the most common. For us, it was the contrast to Vienna that made it all the more unique. Vienna and Bratislava are the respective capitals of Austria and Slovakia, and at an hours drive are supposedly the two closest capital cities in the world.

It was our first proper border control and it made the place feel even more alien. Previously the places we had been in Europe made us feel well within our comfort zone, with cities similar in atmosphere to the ones we are used to from home. Bratislava is different, the buildings are immaculately clean and picturesque for the tourists, but venture off the main streets and the evidence of Slovakia’s Communist history are there in the torn down building blocks and decaying architecture. Anchient Skodas are parked alongside brand new BMWs. You can buy a 3 course meal for the equivalent of under €3, and t-shirts reading ‘Bratislava – Ideal place to start new life’; I wanted a medium in white, but they were sold out and only had XXL, so I chose garlic soup in an edible bread bowl instead.

On our second day we were joined by Mark (Houltram), someone I’ve skated with for 10 years or so, and will be with us for the remainder of the tour providing the dead-pan sarcasm us English seem to love. Rumours of a brilliant club on in town spurred us on for a good one, but investigation later that night revealed nothing of the sort, it seemed there was a disco, or something, but it was on a boat, or something. A taxi driver seemed to have heard of it, but it was possible he was alerting us to the ever changing climate conditions in Lithuania. The disco turned out to be an under water strip/prostitution joint, something we worked out after a strange hour or so, and trying to make our way to the bar avoiding 27 Johnny Bravos and 13 sly girls of the night constituted our worst night out yet.

The next day we left Bratislava and headed off in search of Prague, avoiding a head on collision with 2 hookers giving it large on the side of the motorway, at 3pm in the afternoon…

Dan Turner

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Leaving Ignition we bound and gagged Jojo and threw him in our car and took him to Vienna with us. Meeting up with Phillip Forstner and Michael from Be-mag, we found our hostel and went for a drink. As we were checking in, an astounding coincidence happened; 6 skaters just turned up outside on the street. After some minor chatting we had just run into another tour of skaters travelling around Europe. The Inter-rail was their form of transport and they’d been travelling for 3 weeks.

Vienna was an awesome stop because we finally got to know Michael and Stuff; the guys behind this website, and the world renowned print mag. Vienna is also an amazing city, known for it’s architechure and skatespots. Home of the monster ledge Fridolin tried, The Ucon Ledge, and the amazing Business District with skatespots every 20 meters. First day was hanging with Phillip while they began shooting photo’s in the Vienna heat. Phillip was our guide, knowing everyspot in the city and surrounds. Jojo didn’t last long unfortunately, smashing himself on a huge gap and also hitting his head. He decided to head back home to Ignition valley leaving us and the French crew up for a big night out. Micheal and Stuff came out, plus their friends, so our crew grew to around 20 people having some good times and conversation over a few beers.

Waking in the morning, we found some of the french crew on our floor, then later seeing them all asleep in the park accross the road was even more entertaining. Their train home didn’t leave till later that day so passing out in a park was their only choice. Julian and Dan wanted to experience the Vienna cafe lifestyle so we spent some time finding one. They claim it was the most “amazing breakfast of all time”. Julian needed fuel to skate and Dan needed 20 coffee’s to wake up so spending an hour at breakfast was a must. Check the photos to see how happy they were.

We went on our usual scout for spots finding a brilliant ledge which was part of a water feature right next to our hostel. After some major commitment from Julian, he found himself in the water but still lacing the trick. Then onto the business district. Phillip took us on a tour of this place the day before. An absolute mecca of spots; ledges, rails and banks everywhere. Visiting the huge famous Fridolin ledge was amazing and seeing is really believing. We ended up exploring the area but after a long day and the late time we just had enough energy to check out all the famous spots and then we ended up driving to Bratislava. Vienna was a great stop but due to time restrictions, we couldn’t skate nearly enough but plans are already in place to visit here again.

Dale Travers

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Ignition… not a great deal of skating happened surprisingly. If you want to see some pictures of the locals etc skip straight to the pics and stop reading, as I’m going to try and explain what it was like to be there for a while; it left a bit of an impression. The Ignition ‘valley’ is situated in a small town called Bad Reichenhall with not a lot going on. Our first introduction to the Ignition guys was pretty representative of how things are down there. As we sat in the car outside a tiny train station, we barely saw a car going passed until Gagi’s (Andreas Wagenblast) car screeched in, beeping it’s horn. Gagi jumped out and started rolling round on the floor whilst a few girls piled out, JoJo (Jacobi) in tow. It seems that in an area with nothing else going on, the Ignition lot are like rock stars. As we left a pub, post meal, it turned out some girls sitting at the bar were jealous that they hadn’t got to sit with us…

It’s almost cult-like how self-sufficient and inclusive Ignition is. Everyone dresses in clothes only bought from the shop, they make their own clothes, they make their own beer, they skate their own spots and they don’t need anything from outside the valley. It seems that whilst people will be continually coming to visit them to see how it is, life will continue in a way that will seem surreal to anyone else.

We’d like to thank Leo and all the boys for putting us up and showing us a great time.I’d urge anyone to travel there at least once not only for the amazing skatepark but just to see the shop and their range of products.

Dan Turner

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Leaving Munich for Ignition valley, we decided to take a detour into the Austrian Alps in search of The Cradle Skatepark. Legend has it that this place had the world’s first cradle, although few people we had spoken to even knew of its existence. What we found when we finally got there was concrete heaven – a huge skatepark wedged between an old castle, a cliff and some mountains, with a giant concrete bowl and a big streetcourse too. Dale and myself were quick to session the endless lines and get horizontal on the deep vert section of the bowl, while Dan cruised around filming some clips. A couple of hours later, the sun had set behind the mountains and we were heading for our next destination, Ignition valley.

A big thanks goes to Manuel Hinterholzer, who stayed behind extra late to keep the park open for us. Check out www.skatethecradle.com and start planning your trip there!

– Julian Coulter

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