Kenton Bar Estate - A Blast from the Past

This is bike route 2. Just as fast but all on pavement and IMHO twice as dangerous except for the death corner on route 1. This route is Very bad for pedestrians. Start at the top of Ryal Walk, pedal like crazy al the way. Hill starts to flatten out around the area where Byrness Close and Ryal Walk cross. Keep peddling uphill towards the shops. Tear past the entrance to the infants school and hurtle past the mail box, keeping it on the right of you. Approach the top of the Pyrry bank and apply read breaks whilst turning skidding into the bank itself, foot down is a sissy option……. storm down the Pyrry bank and do a left or right skid at the bottom onto the tarmac. Voila – route 2 completed. Skid zone at the top of the Pyrry bank is marked in a red crescent. This ropute is more exciting than route 1 because of the dangers of pedestrians and also because the route itself is much narrower with houses on both sides almost all the way. Skateboarding this same route is equally exhilarati...

This is what I would call the premier bike route. It was certainly the fastest, I never tried it on a racing bike but I did do it full pelt on a Chopper a few times and reached a speed of approx. 45 MPH in the old money. The route was Hazeldene all the way. Starting at the junction of Hazeldene Avenue and Kenton Lane the first sections was a shallow incline followed by a flat section in front of the T1a houses. A 90 degree right turn into the first hill section, pedal like crazy….. and reach maximum phase 1 speed at the bottom of the hill around Byrness Close then into a flat section until just after Dr. Raj’s surgery then into the second hill. Down, down, down – peddling like mad – max speed reached around Laverock Place and if you are bold – keep peddling like mad…. and into the hard right death corner at the bottom of the hill. This is marked with a red dot on the diagram. This corn was notorious for car crashes and in fact the fence here was always a different colour from the rest ...

Bike routes – these spammed the length of the estate as bicycles by their very nature are sort of powered (by your legs you fool……). Personally I remember only two really memorable bike routes one of which I managed to do on my Chopper at 45 MPH as measured by my speedo. Skate routes – these were mostly confined to the top part of the estate and sometimes as far down as the Pyrry Bank if you could get enough speed. For some reason not a lot of skating was done down past Reestones/Mallowburn – I guess because of the large flat part along Hartburn/Stubbon (sic) Walk made it harder to skateboard here

When I was young on our beloved Kenton Bar Estate I remember watching this film...I was fascinated by it, and in particular the war cry of the Basques...I distinctly recall playing out after watching the film with some other green(good zone) vecks under the flats by her majesty(The Pyramid)at Reestones and jumping of the binsheds to the garage roof etc doing the warcry(Under the flats you got good echo) AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYEYAAAAHOOOOW!!!!!

Two photos courtesy of BK and a nice appropriate themed Haiku poem from me. pyramid's cherry spring of the kenton! the love's pyramid through