I guess my mum got it wrong.

She bought me a tiny yellow fibreglass skateboard from the local hardware store for my 7th birthday expecting it to be a passing fad. In fact, thinking about it she got it very wrong.

I have always skated since then, always had a board of some shape or description. The tiny fibreglass board got wrecked. The strips of black grip replaced, a wedge made for the tail. It got so bad that I would itch for hours after from the glass in my skin.

I was in for the long haul though, every Christmas and birthday for years and years all I got was deck, wheels or trucks shaped parcels.

I went away to school, started boarding when I was 7, I think. We used to skateboard inside the gym, round and round getting our 360’s dialed. Schools changed; I upgraded to a variflex board (with copers and a lapper!) and we used to bomb the drive on our knees. Someone built a jump ramp and we killed ourselves on that. Next up was my first proper board - a Santa Cruz Roskopp with Gullwing trucks and Slime Balls. Ollies and no complys became the order of the day.

Every weekend I went home and spent all my time at Southsea Skatepark. The trip there involved a 3 mile skate, a ferry crossing and then another 3 mile skate. Get there for the morning session, then go street skating for a few hours, back for the evening session then skate the journey home. Saturday and Sunday. I loved that place. When it rained we used to hang around with squeegees ready for a break in the weather. Southsea at this time was the park in the UK. The Zorlac boys ruled the vert ramp; The Abrook brothers, Gary Lee, Sean Goff all became Idols. The Bones Brigade visited. Lance mountain skated the same bowl as me! Shut Up and Skate comps - amazing times.

Then skating died. All my friends at school stopped, Southsea became a ghost park. I spent all my time watching and devouring the videos – Hokus Pokus literally changed my life. I kept ollieing, getting them higher and higher. What else was there to do?

By the time I left school to go to University I only used my board to get to the shops and back. My degree involved a lot of outdoor activities and I loved being in the mountains. Snowboarding was just kicking off and I jumped straight in. I had been snowboarding years before for a few days on a school skiing trip (I guess around 86/87 on a crazy banana board with ski boots) and it had changed a lot.

I came away from University as a qualified teacher and got a house near London, close, as it happens, to a dry ski slope. (For those of you who don’t know what one of these is – imagine a concrete slope covered in toothbrushes!) We made our own ramps, rails and generally had the best fun ever. I started hanging out with a chap called Rob who invited me up to Radlands (R.I.P.) skatepark in Northampton. And so it started again. Rob knew the people who ran the park so we got in cheap, stayed later and had monthly overnight sessions skating till we dropped, playing Tony Hawk on 10ft high walls and sleeping in the bottom of the vert ramp.

After a few years I moved down south, the snowboarding stopped and the skating picked up. I worked in a local skate shop at the weekends and was part of the legendary Basement. If heaven was a cramped, poorly lit, smelly, damp basement then this place was it. You couldn’t leave anything there overnight because it would grow a layer of white fungus, everything rotted. Sessions started with pumping the water out from under the ramp. We built everything on site managing to squeeze a 60ft wide ramp in there, wall rides, spines, a roll in and at the far end a 7ft high vert!

After a few years it closed and I picked up on slalom. Skating Brighton seafront with a great group of friends defined me at that time. Slalom appealed to my competitive streak (only with myself mind you) and I stopped everything else.

The ‘Pig City Slalom’ scene got bigger. Slalom is very gear orientated and after a while it got too much. People who had just started were spending fortunes on new set-ups and the latest wheels. Too much for me. I got into a bit of downhill, the corners were always the best bits.

My girlfriend of the time was a photographer and through the skate shop I heard about this guy who was going to skate across Australia. He was looking for a photographer and I knew a girl who might be interested. Holly drove the support vehicle for Dave Cornthwaite’s warm-up skate and I joined him at the weekends. When Dave and his team, including Holly, set off to Australia, I stayed behind and spend most of my time skating distance. I bought a rollsrolls board and put hundreds of miles down. Then an Idea popped into my head. The sort of Idea that you can’t forget about. Skate across New Zealand.

After Holly’s return from Australia it all started to break down. Within a few months of returning she left. Every bit of my energy from then on went into Skate New Zealand. Adam Colton wanted to come and skate with me, tickets were purchased, a few more people joined up and it was on the 6th of January 2008 that I arrived in Auckland to begin the drive north to Cape Rianga and the start of Skate New Zealand.

In the run up to New Zealand I had been on loads of forums drumming up support for the trip. We had had loads of support from people and the donations were coming in. On a New Zeland backpackers forum I posted info about the trip and amongst the replys was one from someone called SugarJ,

‘hey, it’s pretty rad what you guys are doing.’

The picture next to it was of a girl wearing huge comedy shades and pouting. She added herself to the Skate New Zealand Facebook group and I, because I thought she was cute, added her as a friend. We messaged each other over about a month, talking about our situation, our families and our lives. When she left for NZ we promised to meet up for a beer.

So to last year. Skate New Zealand started on the 11th of January 2008. 2 months of skating 50-80 miles a day on some of the worst roads ever. The mountains in New Zealand are big, the drivers insane and the roads are basically rocks stuck into tar. However on the 4th day of the journey I met up with Julia ‘for a beer’. We got on, and seeing as another team member had dropped out, she joined the team.

Skate New Zealand changed my life. Long distance skateboard journeys are truly amazing. What better way to see a country than travelling at 10mph. We met some amazing people, experienced wonderful hospitality, saw breathtaking views and made it to the end unscathed. After the trip finished Julia and I hung around in NZ together. I was beginning to like this girl!

I’m 33 now and I can truthfully say that skateboarding has had a profound influence upon my life. I would not be where I am now, be friends with the people I hold closest, been to the places I have seen and be the person I am had my mum got me a different birthday present 26 years ago.

As for Julia and I. Almost exactly a year since we first met, we are engaged, going to get married and are expecting our first baby all because of a tiny yellow fibreglass skateboard.

Actually, come to think of it. My Mum got it right.