Words by Jay Mills
Photos by Robin Pearson

‘Bury Skatepark Experience’ was set up in the late 90s. It was a group of like minded youngsters and adults coming together with the aim of raising funding and applying pressure to the local council in the hope of securing a skatepark facility for our small market town.

Living in the rural area which we do, there were a few ‘off the record’ objections to the name, in the times of mass cattle slaughter the ‘B.S.E’ initials didn’t go down well with certain members of the local council – it was clear that those very councillors weren’t going to be onside with the project moving forward anyway. We drew up a tidy logo of a mad cow on a skateboard and got organised!

Local fund raiser band nights called ‘Skate Pop And BMX Rock’ were set up to raise a little dough and build awareness for the project. After a period of time the local council hooked us up with the land we needed, we tapped up a few organisations for help with funding (the National Lottery being the most notable) and in 2000 our skatepark at Olding Road was born!

Suffolk was now on the rad map! Updates to the park were added in the early noughties thanks to the ongoing work put in by our strong user group. But by 2010 it was clear that our wooden skatepark was getting to the end of its life, our meetings stepped up, and with some fresh faces now involved in our committee we set ourselves up as a registered charity and set about getting neck deep chasing every pot of funding that was available to us.

It took a while but with quarter of a million smackers in place we started talking to contractors and drew up designs. The group were stoked when Wheelscape won the tender, then in May of 2014 our concrete wonderland was made open to the public. The skatepark is undoubtedly a massive asset to the town and has a perfect design serving our strong BMX and skate community. The tarmac pump track at the location has turned out to be a godsend, because at busy times many use the loops in a ‘follow my leader’ fashion, which disposes of a huge amount of park traffic. That said, it’s a decent sized park that can accommodate a ton of users at any one time, definitely not ‘locals only’. So come visit us, we’d love to see y’all!
–Jay Volunteer

Bury Skatepark Experience Committee Member / Treasurer
Hardcore Hobbies Owner