Bit of an oddity this week folks. It’s a gang of sidewalk surfers from way back when. 1978 to be precise. These dudes were carving some wicked lines in Abergavenny long before the town would get a skate park to call its own.

Like a Welsh version of the Z-Boys, these skaters were power sliding, tick-tacking, and perhaps even popping the occasional ollie during the original skateboarding boom of the late 1970s.

They were members of the Abergavenny Skateboard Club and regularly turned up to Sunday sessions at the town’s Leisure Centre. Recognize anyone?

When skateboarding fizzled out in the early 1980s, it resurfaced with a passion in the late 1980s, and this time Abergavenny had its own team in the form of the EJ Team-riders.

The team riders took their name from Eric Jenkins Motorcycles, which, as you may know, used to operate out of Abergavenny’s Cross Street.

“Why on earth were a skateboarding team sponsored by a motorcycle business?” You cry in great vexation and bovine belligerence. Simple peeps! Eric Jenkins’ youngest lad, Rob Jenkins, was both a bit of a boy on the motorbike and a keen skateboarder. Jenkins the younger decided to combine his twin passions and found a skating team named after his dad’s business.

As the years passed, the EJ team riders, or the Lords of Monmouthshire as they were sometimes known in Newport, spread their net far and wide as talented skateboarders from all over Wales were welcomed to the ranks of an organization somewhat notorious for it’s strict selection criteria.

Rob, alongside, his fellow co-founder, Lee Jenkins (no relation) now reside in Perth, in Western Australia.

Rob is now more renowned for his highly-acclaimed paintings, and his company - Black Mountains Art, than he is his skating. Meanwhile, Lee, can be found touring the world as a drummer and singer in a number of punk rock bands.

Both of the Jenkins boys, who are now in their 40s with young families of their own, refuse to let the straitjacket of middle-age constrict them. The two rad dads still regularly take to the streets and skate. And both still carry old mother Aber around with them in their hearts as they cruise the streets of Perth on their four-wheeled chariots.

If you’ve got any engaging and striking pictures from the past (they don’t just have to be sport related!) that could do with an airing and benefit from the oxygen of publicity, then why let them

linger and gather dust in the drawer a day longer? Send them to [email protected]. Alternatively you can do things the old fashioned way and pick up the telephone and ring Tim Butters on 01873 852187 (30).