Cambridge is a brand-new
state-of-the-art Ice Arena. It's opened in
the last year, it's taken 30 years to
plan and has cost millions. But what's the
point? I'm here to find out.
An alumni of the University David Gattiker
studied at Christ's College in late
nineteen twenties and he played hockey.
When he died he left a million pounds to
the University which was specifically
designated for a new ice rink.
So Cambridge is another ice rink. Why is
this important again?
The university team have got certain contracted hours so
they come along, they skate, they do their
hockey training here. Before we were
commuting an hour on a late Sunday night
and for our whole history we've only ever
practiced one hour a week and now our
whole club gets ten hours a week for all
of our four teams and it will be amazing.
And the ice itself is beautiful like the
best ice I played on in the UK, for sure.
There's also quite a demand for as far
as a figure skaters concerned. We've got
a lot of figure skaters that were
training at Peterborough or Milton Keynes
were actually closer to us. So they will
start to move over as well.
The Ice Arena is more than just skating. There are new
local sports to support although, not
well advertised, between September and
March Ice Hockey games take place
most weekends are free to watch.
It's dead busy here. Loads of people having fun and I really want to get on and I've never skated
before so I've got a coach and I'm
really looking forward to it. Thank you
Put your feet in a V position. V yeah that's
it.
From there with your arms out, you
wanna be stepping. We're walking. We're just
walking. Ah jesus christ. Nothing crazy.
Keeping those toes
turned out.
Steady, good save good save.
Actually this is, arguably the most
eco-friendly rink in the entire of
Europe. So we've got solar panels
installed on the roof which again helps
to bring everything down Carbon wise.
We've also got one of the most effective
energy efficient client systems in the
world. So that's the mechanism that actually
cools the ice. A build of this size will of
course impact the climate slightly but
at the same time we're actually using
the rink to raise awareness. So, we've got
some posters that have come over from
Scott Polar Research Institute in
Cambridge, they sort of highlight the
issues with climate change and ice and
how we come in impact us. So we trying to
use the rink as a tool for educational
purposes and actually use it as an
example to teach.
As it turns out, there seems to be more here than I first
anticipated. The environmental issues
seem to be tackled. Also the arena is 
used for a multitude of reasons like being
for schools and education and the ice
hockey teams for the
university. Also, learning to skate was really fun and
luckily I didn't fall over.
