That was France

Surf patrol, Capbreton

London, UK – I’m back home in London now. The memory of a fortnight spent surfing in boardshorts, the cheap but excellent red wine and and the slower pace of life is already starting to fade.

In the end the surf didn’t turn on as much as I was expecting. It was fun, sure,  but apart from the one afternoon I never saw the perfect waves the place is famous for.

I was also quite surprised at the large crowds in the surf. The French beachies didn’t stretch for miles into the distance, instead the good waves tended to be concentrated in a handful of areas and that’s where people flocked to.

Mind you, I don’t know where they all went afterwards because the few beachside bars that were open were mostly empty, as were the main streets of Hossegor and Capbreton outside of the weekends.

But what I did dig about France was getting back into the groove of surfing, being outside all day and living in a pair of boardshorts. It was a bit like being back in Australia, but with better food and more fashionably dresssed people.

A daily routine might go something like this:

Morning: Wake up just after dawn, around 8am this time of the year. Break yesterdays promise to have a light breakfast and instead fill up on criossants, yoghurt, toast and espresso coffee.

Load up a baguette, a big bottle of water, surfboard and towel and walk or ride down to the beach to check the surf. Before 9am the surf would be almost empty. An hour later it would be filled with French locals, loud Australians, roving bands of Spaniards and anyone else keen to get some warm water waves before the looming European winter closed in.

Midday: Drop the surfboard in the spare room,  have a shower and tuck into a filled baguette. My favourite was a slightly twisted, rustic loaf that cut my gums to pieces most days with its thick crust but was entirely worth it for the flavour.

Afternoon: Check the swell charts on the internet. Maybe a sleep. Review the morning’s shots on the back of the digital SLR. Whatever, it didn’t matter. The shops were closed and the wind was usually up. Nothing to do until…

Evening: Mosy on down to the beach for an evening surf. Not dark till 8pm and still warm enough to surf in boardshorts. Maybe get out just on sunset and shoot a few frames of the waves and the sky. Repair to the house for a meal of carbs and a decent bottle of red before crashing out.

Line-ups photo album

Hossegor, France – This is for my friend Ben, who expressly asked me for photos of the waves.

He didn’t particularly care about pro surfers with their stickered surfboards, he just wanted images of the line ups, of the French beach breaks in all their different shapes and sizes and flavours. Here you go mate.

Pro land

Ace Buchan

Hossegor, France – There was an all-star cast of Aussie pro surfers out at the local sandbank this afternoon. Despite the frequent rain storms and bad light I went down there with the long lens and tried to capture some of the action.

Taj Burrow

Josh Kerr

Taj again

The cafes may be shut but there’s still crowds in the surf

Little Superbank

French super shorebreak

Seignosse, France – This evening I took a drive north past the beaches of Hossegor into the pine forests and found an almost exact replica of the Superbank.

I stumbled on a weird stretch of beach that had a bend in it, almost like a bay. On the high tide the small swells came in at an angle and broke down the shoreline as perfect little righthanders. The water was so clear and shallow I could see individual pebbles below me as I surfed past.

The wave basically broke along the shore, so there wasn’t much room for error. One wrong move and you’d get washed up on the beach. But get it right, and you could surf for a hundred metres or so, racing a glassy little wall down the bank.

It reminded me a little of the early days of what is now the Superbank in Queensland, but was then I suppose Snapper and Greenmount. Back when you could surf it in small swells with just a handful of people in the water.

Les Bourdaines

High tide bank at Les Bourdaines, just north of Hossegor

Hossegor, France – The move to Hossegor has coincided with a new swell. For the first time this holiday I saw what this area is famous for: perfect beach break tubes.

On the afternoon high tide the swells came in from deep water and pitched and roared over the shallow sandbanks.

I was out there in a flash, surfing just in boardshorts and a wetsuit vest in the warm evening. But it was exhausting stuff. Every take off was a real heart in mouth event, never sure if I would make the drop or get tossed onto the sandbar.

Get it right and you could be inside the tube looking out at surfers paddling up the face and even people on the beach. Get it wrong, as I did a few times, and the wave would take you with it down onto the sand bottom.

The hardest thing to get used to was just how close the waves broke to the shore. There was barely enough time to take off, pull in and maybe jam a turn before the wave ran dry onto the beach.

The French way of dealing with the end of the wave seemed to be simply step off the board at full speed and run up the shore. A bit like stepping out of a moving car and trying to stay on your feet, if you ask me.

French beachbreaks

Me splitting the peak with a friend

Capbreton, France – Surfing in France is a strange thing.

The difference between high and low tides can be two metres plus depending on the day. So what in the morning might be a small, unsurfable mess can be a perfect peak by lunchtime.

The result is that my daily timetable is dictated more by the tides than the wind, meals or such inconsequential holiday activities as say, sightseeing.

Right now the surf seems best around high tide, which is just before midday. That means long sleep ins and then a flurry of activity from late morning until mid afternoon. Lunch at three or four o’clock, a sleep and then back down to the beach for some photos at sunset.

God help me when the high tide coincides with dawn, which is a very late 8am here. That’ll mean waking up in the dark, early morning surfs and then hanging around for an evening surf. Very unFrench. In just a few days I’ve gotten use to -  demanded even – rich food, long lunches and moving very, very slowly.

Quiksilver Pro photo album

Quik Pro contest site at Les Bourdaines Beach

Ben Dunn

French grom

Bede Durbidge

Kieren Perrow

Bede again, such a smooth style

Taj Burrow

Quiksilver Pro

Aussie Taj Burrow tearing it up in the quarter finals

Hossegor, France – I love watching surf contests so the chance to combine a surf trip to France with also watching the Quiksilver Pro world tour event was one I couldn’t miss.

Today I spent the day at Les Bourdains just north of Hossegor watching the last day of competition. Afer a summer of going to sporting events in London with their high ticket prices and queues for entry and food, it was nice to just rock up to the beach and find a patch of sand for free to watch the action.

The contest ran heats of 30 minutes between two surfers. They’d each catch half a dozen or so of the slowish lefthand waves wobbling through and fit as many turns in as they could before the wave washed up on the shorebreak. The backhand turns were vertical and the speed they generated in the small waves was impressive.

But we were then treated to a 45 minute expression session before the final. A dozen or so surfers paddled out and went mad. Instead of fitting in turns, they raced along the wave face at top speed before blasting out into crazy aerial rotations. We saw backside 360s, pop-shovits, reverses – everything. Even the stuff they didn’t pull off was exciting.

The French crowd loved it and oohed and ahhed with every turn. When a surfer stuck a manoeuvre, like Julian Wilson did with his sky high backside 360, a polite golf clap ensued. Hilarious.

And then the finalists paddled out and proceed to hit the lip four times in a row – up down, up down – on their way into the shore. Fast and skillful, yes. Exciting? I’m not so sure.

Not that it’s the surfers fault. In waves like today they’re judged by how many turns they can do. Four turns to the beach still beats one big aerial most times.

But it got me thinking that surf competitions are still a long way off from showing the best surfing. Check out the stuff the Modern Collective are doing – half of whom don’t regularly compete – its much more exciting that what I saw today.

Surfin’ UK

Porthmeor, St Ives’ surprisingly fun back beach

St Ives, UK – Even though the weather didn’t fully cooperate for the week I was in Cornwall, it was good enough to get some waves at a couple of different beaches.

I had the most fun surfing at Porthmeor, the main town beach in St Ives. Parking was a real bugger due to the town being so busy during summer holidays, but once that was sorted it was actually a really nice atmosphere.

On the beach families staked their turf with wind breaks and trenches. Bat and ball sets came out. Seagulls dive bombed children.

Out in the line up I traded small, junky waves with the handful of local surfers. As the winds were onshore for the whole time I was there I didn’t get to surf much more than messy windswell, but it was better than a poke in the eye.

Gwenver line up

The following day we did a circuit down around Land’s End and then over to Penzance. We checked Sennen and Gwenver, which is about as far south west as you can go in Britain, and the latter had a few waves. But the strong wind and cold weather (maybe 17C?) made me think the better of it.

Porthtowan on an overcast Sunday

Right at the end of the trip I got the biggest waves at a little town called Porthtowan, about 30 minutes north of St Ives. Like many beaches around the area, it had a big, broad expanse of beach that seemed to be subject to large tides. The bottom contour seemed quite flat too, so the waves never seemed to have much power behind them.

Then again, it was summer so I was just happy to get any sort of swell at all.

Notes from Spain (Part Four)

Surfing in Asturias: beautiful landscapes. Small waves.

Somewhere near Luarca, Spain – I finally got some waves this morning. Small, glassy and kinda fun.

Unfortunately, it was also bloody freezing. I only have a 3/2 wetsuit, good enough down to about 18C. I suspect its colder because in between sets I was laying on my board with my hands and feet up out of the water like a sky diver, trying to stop them going numb.

It worked, sort of. I could almost feel my surfboard under my feet when I stood up.

I also packed both my surfboard and Mum (she got the front seat) into the car and headed all the way west to Tapia de Casariego, Asturias’ surf city. They have a WQS surfing contest here each Autumn so I thought if anywhere was going to have waves, it would be here.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. Neither did the beach further west near Villadun. But it had potential. And they were both very pretty parts of the world.