Spit and Sawdust

An indoor skatepark and café in Cardiff whose own welcome reads: for the mini shredders or the silver surfers, the novices, amateurs and pros, everyone is welcome. A £1 lifetime membership, then £5 an hour with no fixed session times, so you can do a power hour or a whole afternoon under a roof.

Very few parks say in their own words that older skaters are wanted; Spit and Sawdust does, and backs it with a pricing model built for adults with jobs. Pay for however long you want to skate rather than for a fixed session, and if you would rather have the place to yourselves, private sessions on Saturday and Sunday evenings can be split between friends as a lock-in.

Open sessions take skateboards, BMX, inline and quads from age seven up. The park’s own honest note: it is hard to predict when it will be quiet, but it is usually calmer when the sun is out and the pavements are dry. There is a café on site with local suppliers and homemade food, and a Beginners and Safety section on the website worth reading before a first visit. The riding surfaces are a mix of wooden ramps and concrete.

Cardiff Skateboard Club on Church Street, with its dedicated beginner-equipment range, is the shop to visit first.