Dominic Daniel

If you’re a skater in the UK, chances are you’ve heard of Camp Rubicon or seen a sticker at a skatepark saying something similar. If not, let me explain. CR is a residential skateboard camp held every summer, spanning multiple weeks and hosting riders from across the UK and around the globe. Riders stay at a bunkhouse-style camp and are taken to four, five, or six of the best skateparks the UK has to offer each day, with every day being different.

Campers get three meals a day, ranging from big camp cooks to pizza nights and toasting marshmallows around the campfire. I’m lucky enough to work full-time for Team Rubicon, coaching primary school kids through their first steps on a board during term time and, during the holidays, as a camp leader on the various camps that run throughout Easter and summer.

But right now, I want to focus on my favourite week of the summer calendar: Girls Camp. When I was considering writing this article (and I have been for a long time now), I felt hesitant to even start. Not for any bad reason or laziness, more because Girls Camp is bloody brilliant, but in a way that I’d struggle to conceptualise. There’s a magic to it, a sort of invisible energy that’s captured or harnessed that week, which weaves itself into a fabric so brilliant that, even at 29 years old, I still look back on my weeks at Girls Camp as if I were 13, making memories like that for the first time again.

The girls make it. I’ve been writing for years now, and in fact talking, as most of us have, from a very young age. If you’re unfortunate enough to have met me in person, you’ll know I’m very rarely left speechless. Still, I’m genuinely struggling to put into words the energy, connection, and vibe that the girls at Camp Rubicon bring. Some of them have been coming for a few years in a row now, and we’ve created a family with inside jokes, hierarchical roles, the lot — and it works.

On the last day of camp every year, the girls are intent on letting me know that they will 100% be there the next year. This one little week in August has created friendships within the young and upcoming female skate community that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible, and from what I’ve seen, they are bonds that will last a lifetime. This has resulted in 75% of the competitors in the 2025 Girls UK Championships coming from Camp Rubicon. And the best bit? Compared to the boys, when they arrive at these competitions, they all want each other to win more than themselves, because they are friends before anything else.