Words / park photos / video: Martin Grainger
Riding photos: Adam Lievesley

The silver lining to seeing a digger tearing apart a well-used skatepark is that it could allow a brand new park to be laid in its place. That is exactly the case for Deeside, a couple of years after being torn apart to make space for hospital beds, 414 have created a new and improved skatepark with plenty of flow. With a physical split down the middle for a walkway to a fire exit, this park is nicely split between a flowy transition park and a smaller and still flowy plaza section with a mini-mini ramp and resi set up for good measure.

The transition section features everything you could want: volcano, jump box, step-up, wall rides and various size quarters that flow into the next obstacle. The park flows naturally more in an anti-clockwise direction making it feel natural for the right foot forward riders. There is plenty of scope for new lines and transfers thanks to the transition running 90% around the edge of the park meaning that wherever you end up transferring, you’re more than likely to be heading towards another transition than a dead end.

The ‘street’ plaza section holds the flow still with small quarters at each end meaning you can drop in and keep going back and forth, rolling up and down the multiple levels and obstacles in between. It has everything you’d expect, straight rails, kinked rails, ledges, flat bars and hubbas. At first it may look a spacious but when you’re riding it feels perfectly spaced between obstacles. There’s nothing super-sized so it should suit any level of rider, we can expect this to be a very popular park.

The skatepark is located in Deeside Leisure Centre, there is ample free parking, a café for quick food fixes and a couple of superstores located close by for more food options. To enter the skatepark you must enter through the leisure centre, and there’s a seating section for parents/bags.