News items posted on the original IWID&FSC website from 2002 to 2005 are now available to view in the archives (see the right-hand sidebar), filed under December for the appropriate year.

The archives are a great opportunity to see what some current club members were doing all that time ago, to go over past glories, to discover what national-level skaters such as Charlotte Aiken and Matthew Kershaw used to do, and to find out information such as who was in the line-up of the original Wight Diamonds synchro team at their first British Championships.

The archived files are PDFs created direct from the old website’s pages, and the hyperlinks have been deactivated because some relate to the way that website worked. In short this means you will have to scroll down to read each item.

You will need to read the full post in order to activate the link to each PDF file.

The news items for 2002 have no dates under the headlines. Way back then, the website just posted what was happening with no thought that items might be read what is comparatively far into the future.

With the first news item dating back to 27 February 2002, you can deduce that the club website is just over eight years old. And from that item you learn that at Bristol opens “Thomas Eklund and Matthew Russell were placed second and third respectively in the Boys Novice competition (formerly Inter Silver level).” That’s the same Tom and Matt that now teach ice skating at Ryde.

The archives are just as they appeared, red in tooth and claw, with all the mistakes still intact.