Venues
Every course is assembled from the same reusable sections. What changes is the surface, the pinch points, and how far there is to fall.
Bowl Nine
“The Bowl”
A continuous circle with no straight anywhere in it. Everything runs the same line for the whole race, which sounds peaceful and is not.
Chute Tower
“The Drop”
A galvanised laundry chute running the full height of the building, opened up for competition in 1994 and not inspected since. Nobody has ever described it as safe. The fabric sections were added after the first season, at the insistence of people who had watched the first season.
Crossbones Field
“The Crossing”
Two roads at right angles and no bridge between them. The oldest circuit on the calendar, the shortest average finishing field, and the only one with its own ambulance bay on the infield.
Dogbone Junction
“The Junction”
Two circles joined by a neck four metres across, taken twice a lap in opposite directions. Not at the same moment, usually.
Floor Seven
“Seven”
Poured concrete, in an office block with the other six floors still in use. The panels go in whole rows, alternating ends, which reads as a wave crossing the building.
Kidney Flats
“The Flats”
Two long straights and two hairpins tight enough that the field arrives as one object. The back straight has no drive in it at all, which is where the racing is.
Long Mile Basin
“The Basin”
The biggest circuit on the calendar, cut into the floor of an old quarry, with a real hill in the back straight that has to be climbed nine times.
Nan's Landing
“The Stairwell”
Fourteen carpeted steps, a banister nobody trusts, and a landing at the bottom that has ended more campaigns than any other structure in the sport. The carpet went down in 1958 and is described in the league's own survey as the deepest surface in competition. Nan has never been asked about any of it.
Ramp Canyon
“The Canyon”
The only arena that falls away from the rig, and the reason every distance record in the sport is held here. Two hundred metres of downhill and a very long tape.
Saucer Park
“The Saucer”
A hundred metres of rolled clay banked at fourteen degrees, with a grandstand on the outside of turn two because that is where everything ends up.
The Ashtray
“The Tray”
Rebound posts in two bands round a gravel flank. The shortest bouts anywhere and the loudest crowd: nothing survives the crown for long and very little reaches the apron in one piece.
The Balcony
“The Balcony”
Toughened glass, which nothing holds on. Every lurch is a landslide and the field spends the programme in whichever corner is currently lowest.
The Basement
“The Concrete Room”
Bare concrete, one strip of ruined carpet running two-thirds of the way down, and a water heater that has never been moved and never will be. Cold, loud, and unkind to anything that needs grip. The carpet is the only forgiving thing in the room and it stops eleven metres short of where it would do any good.
The Big Wok
“The Big Wok”
The championship mound, and it is simply the Wok built half again as large in every direction. No furniture, no tricks and nowhere to hide — the title has never been won by anything that was not shoving properly.
The Birdbath
“The Bath”
A short, broad mound in a park, with turf on it and a gravel apron. The gentlest flank in the sport, which means the longest fall and the most time to watch somebody realise what is happening.
The Board Track
“The Wall”
Twenty-six degrees of varnished pine, built the way the old velodromes were. Nothing chooses its line here; the banking chooses it for them.
The Bollard
“The Bollard”
Poured concrete columns on a retail park. Square plinths rather than round ones, which sounds like nothing and is the difference between a pile that leans and a pile that goes.
The Bounce Park
“The Trampoline”
Vulcanised rubber end to end. Nothing that lands here stays landed, and the record was set by something that touched the ground eleven times.
The Cake Stand
“The Cake Stand”
The championship. Formica, narrow, tall and rocking, and nothing has ever been stacked four high on it. The record is three, twice, and both of them went over eleven seconds after the tape.
The Cardboard City
“The Flatpack”
A whole town in corrugated card — skyscrapers, a water tower, a crane, a parade of shops and about forty billboards, rebuilt between every attempt by a crew of eleven. Nobody comes for the distances.
The Coffee Table
“The Table”
Eight rubber-topped plinths in a municipal hall, level and unhurried. The venue everybody learns on and the only one where all four regularly stay where they are put.
The Colander
“The Colander”
Two rings of kerbing set into the flank, which is what the name is about. Almost nothing that leaves the crown reaches the apron without being sent somewhere it did not intend to go.
The Cold Store
“The Slab”
Polished concrete under a film of water, in a refrigerated warehouse nobody has used for storage in years. Whatever you arrive with is what you leave with.
The Conservatory
“The Conservatory”
The championship. A glass floor in a glass room over the deepest pit on the network, with the fastest lava anywhere climbing under it from the first minute. Nobody has ever survived the full programme.
The Decking
“The Decking”
Scaffold boards over a garden pit, and by some distance the most domestic venue on the network. Warm underfoot, forgiving, and it goes in a spiral so there is always somewhere to be for one beat longer.
The Dog Bowl
“The Bowl”
Loose gravel over a low mound, with sand at the bottom. The smallest crown on the calendar: there is about a metre of it, and everything else is somewhere you are already sliding.
The Gantry
“The Gantry”
Open steel grating, so the whole crowd can see the lava through the floor for the entire programme. Grippy, loud, and the slowest collapse on the calendar — which is precisely why it is the hardest to watch.
The Glasshouse
“The Greenhouse”
A hundred and sixty metres of float glass, standing in ranks, and a rig at one end pointed straight down the middle of it. Sweeping takes longer than the event.
The Gravy Boat
“The Boat”
Vulcanised rubber over a tall, narrow mound. Nothing settles anywhere on it, and the crest is high enough that a competitor coming off the top is airborne before it is halfway down.
The Hubcap
“The Cap”
Polished glass over the whole mound. Nothing grips, so the crown runs nearly to the flank and a bout can stand still for ten seconds — and then it ends in about a fifth of one.
The Ice Track
“The Rink”
Two hundred metres of prepared ice. Attempts here rarely bounce and almost never stop; the clock runs out more often than the tape does.
The Industrial Yard
“The Yard”
Girders, drums and crates, arranged by nobody in particular and moved only by competitors. Heavy, loud, and the only arena with a forklift on the infield.
The Ironing Board
“The Board”
Baize over ply, and the first venue to introduce the rock. Slow, dead and generous underneath, and moving the whole time — which turns out to be a much harder combination than it sounds.
The Lectern
“The Lectern”
Somebody put ice on the plinths. It was meant to be for one meeting and it has never been taken off, because the sight of a pile assembling itself and then quietly leaving in four directions is the best thing in the sport.
The Loft Conversion
“The Loft”
The smallest deck in the sport — five by five, with the beams still showing. Everything is a pinch point and the whole thing is over inside two minutes.
The Mezzanine
“The Mezz”
Steel deck plate over a nine-metre pit. The floor everybody learns on: it collapses from the edges, it lurches on the beat, and nothing that happens to you on it is a surprise.
The Mixed Terrain Arena
“The Mixer”
Every surface in the sport and every kind of breakable, in one arena, in an order nobody has ever been happy about. The championship is held here and always has been.
The Patio
“The Patio”
Sprung rubber matting, laid by somebody who had clearly never seen the sport. A lurch here does not slide anybody, it launches them, and the programme is mostly competitors arriving somewhere they did not choose.
The Pinball Field
“The Table”
Varnished board, angled boards down both sides and forty-odd bumpers between the rig and the far end. Nothing crosses it in a straight line and nothing ever has.
The Pinch Works
“The Works”
A disused rolling mill with the oval laid through what used to be the loading bay. The gap in the wall is under four metres and sixteen arrive at it together.
The Pouffe
“The Pouffe”
Low, broad and soft. The most forgiving venue on the network and the only one where a club has ever finished with all four still standing.
The Sand Pit
“The Pit”
Deep sand, no rails and no mercy. The main body dies where it lands, and every mark ever set here was set by something that came off it.
The Scaffold
“The Scaffold”
The heaviest lurch anywhere. The slab goes over far enough that the far edge moves most of two metres, and the panels come out at random — which the sport does not otherwise do and does not otherwise want to.
The Sink
“The Sink”
Prepared ice, kept at four below. Bouts here are almost entirely standoff — the crown is enormous and neither competitor can get any purchase on the other — and then somebody moves and it is over.
The Sticky Zone
“The Tack”
The shortest marks in the sport and the widest splatter patterns. Whatever lands here stops; whatever comes off it does not.
The Stool
“The Stool”
Bare board, and the narrowest plinths on the calendar. Nothing fits beside anything, so everything has to go on top of it — which is the sport, and is also why so little of it survives.
The Trestle
“The Trestle”
The tallest plinths in the sport and the heaviest rock. Four seconds of a Trestle pile standing still is worth more to a crowd than a whole meeting anywhere else.
The Wheelie Bin Lid
“The Lid”
Steel plate, in a depot, with the bins still in use behind the stands. Hard, loud, and a Nugget arriving on it goes somewhere else entirely.
The Wok
“The Wok”
The oldest mound on the circuit and still the one everybody learns on. Varnished board over a steel flank, a crown you could park a car on, and no excuses available to anybody.
Washboard Yard
“The Shakes”
Fourteen metres of corrugated deck plate across the main straight, run nine times. Nobody is ever taken out by it and nobody ever finishes intact.