The Slow Movers tend to meet during the public skating sessions on Saturday mornings at Dundonald Ice Bowl
An adult ice skating community in Belfast is thriving just months after beginning following a chance conversation.
"One Saturday morning, I happened to skate past an adult who looked very out of place on the learn to skate programme because she was a grown-up. I skated past her in the public session and just said she was doing a really great job and well done," Ross told Belfast Live. "We started a WhatsApp group but we didn't have any big aspirations, we didn't think it would be more than half a dozen people involved. Within the first week, we climbed to 20 members, and now we're about four months in and we just hit the 50-member mark. It's really grown very quickly.
"The whole thing just from a chance conversation has turned into an unbelievable support network. It continues to go from strength to strength and has continued to grow in a surprising way none of us could have ever expected." He added: "The ice rink has completely jumped behind and supported this as have the coaches. As it's quite a child-dominated sport, a lot of people didn't realise there's a big need for adults to make a connection, it's very hard as an adult to meet new friends and to break into a new sport. It's a community, not a club, so there's no politics that comes with it, and no joining fee.
"It's just spiraled to be all-encompassing, and it's great to see adults being supported across everything, we've even seen people in the group being given job advice. You can see this group just offering support regardless and that's what people need sometimes.
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