Surfland

2007 fashions available here

Soorts Hossegor, France – Hossegor is Europe’s surf industry ground zero, which I suppose means lots of marketing jobs for washed up ex-pro surfers and conversations punctuated with the word “brah”.

Happily, it also means Hossegor is the location for a bunch of surf outlet stores that on any given day sell surf clothing for between full retail price and 20 or 30% off.

Which is good news if you’re in the market for a cheap wetsuit vest to cope with surfing in boardshorts in the coolish mornings, like I was.

The bad news is most of the gear is last season’s range. And if you take into account the fact that most surf clothing is around two years behind most fashion anyway, buying anything from these stores puts you in the stone age.

Great if you like your sneakers bright white and the size of tissues boxes. Bad news if you’re older than, say, 15

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.

France

Capbreton, France – I’m in south west France for the next fortnight to try and catch some Atlantic swells.

I can remember first reading about the waves here when I was just learning to surf. My favourite magazine, Australia’s Surfing Life, had a feature on France and it ran photos of beautiful beachbreak waves peeling along the miles of coastline between Biarritz and Lacanau.

For a young surfer still scared of surfing over reef, this seemed like heaven to me. The tales of tasty French food and topless sunbathing didn’t hurt either.

18 years later and I’ve finally made it. After a typically unpleasant experience with Ryan Air (which involved watching their baggage handler throw – yes throw – my surfboard into the plane), we reached Capbreton late in the afternoon and had just enough time to walk down to the beach for an evening surf.

The waves were good, the water boardshort warm and the baguettes and red wine later that night was delicious.

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.

By the seaside

St Ives harbour

St Ives, UK – Whenever English colleagues found out I was a surfer in my former life, their next question was usually to ask if I’d been to Cornwall to surf.

Until recently my answer was no. Instead I’ve surfed Moroc, Portugal and Spain. It hasn’t done much for my carbon footprint, but its certainly helped my wave count.

But with the Great British Staycation all the rage in these recessionary times, I took a week off and shot down the A30 leaving London – and a possible bout of swine flu – behind me.

The destination was St Ives in Cornwall, almost as far south-west as you can get. Surprisingly for a small island nation, it really is a long way from the big smoke. It took us five or so hours driving in torrential rain to get there, but thankfully once we pitched up at our hillside campsite the rain disappeared and the sun came out.

A little about the area. It’s beautiful, in that quaint English seaside way. Neat and tidy houses with low roofs and cheery flower gardens line the narrow roads. Seagulls caw in the breeze (more about them later). Even the fishing boats are quaint, bobbing about in the picturesque stone harbour.

There was only two things marring this idyllic scene (okay three, but rain in summer is just a given):  those aggressive seagulls, and northerners.

The seagulls were hated for obvious reasons. They’re big birds, much bigger than your standard Australian gull. And they’re very bloody good at what they do, which is swoop out of the sky and snatch whatever food is not carefully guarded.

At Porthmeor Beach they would hover above the crowd and then swoop down when a stray sandwich came into view, much like a cormorant dive bombing into the ocean to grab a fish. My friend lost half a croissant as she was lifting it to her mouth. Others on the beach lost ice creams, bags of crisps and whole sandwiches.

And its not like they were sitting out in the open, this stuff was snatched from hands. People were lucky not to lose a finger. When we left the beach, one chubby man who had lost a sandwich was looking at the sky and holding a cricket bat, waiting to get his revenge.

Northern invasion
The other scourge was a little more subtle. To my Australian eyes and ears I could barely pick them up, But my friend assured me they were in town. Northerners were making their presence felt  apparently, what with their strange accent, football t-shirt and beer belly (I was oblivious, that description sounded like most English people to me).

We couldn’t talk about it openly though. It had to be through raised eyebrows or words said under our breaths. And no one could tell me exactly why we didn’t like them. It seemed to be a vague sense that they were a bit uncouth, a little too loud.

Late on Saturday night in town, while we were piling into the bus to take us back to the campsite, a group of people outside the vehicle struck up a conversation with the driver. It turned out he wasn’t driving where they wanted to go. They called the driver a bastard, jokingly at first, and then a little more drunkenly aggressive.

My friend elbowed me in the ribs. “Northerner,” she murmured.

Then one dropped the C word, directed at the driver but in earshot of a whole bus full of families. There were gasps of shock.  The driver slammed the bus doors in their faces and drove off.

The lady in front of us tut tutted, turned to her husband and said “see? Northerners”.

Notes from Spain (Part Five)

The author tasting Luarca’s finest plonk

Luarca, Spain – I’ve given up on the waves, now its time to focus on Asturias’ strengths: eating and drinking.

MagicSeaweed.com tells me the swell is small, small, small and will stay that way until after I’ve returned to London. So there’s not much point wasting all my time looking for non-existent surf when I can just stay local and make a glutton of myself.

I mentioned before the native blend of cider, or sidre, they do here. It’s a low alcohol, flat brew that is poured from a great height to introduce some bubbles into the mix.

Most Asturian males, while seated, simply hold the green sidre bottles high over their heads with one hand, their tumbler glass low to the ground with the other, and pour. It generally splashes all over the floor, their hands, feet and the feet of anyone near them.

What does make it into the glass is drunk straight away in one gulp and the dregs thrown onto the ground (which by now is awash with cider).

I calculated that out of every 750mL bottle of cider, you’d be lucky to actually drink about a third. Good thing it only goes for about 3 euros a pop.

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.

Notes from Spain (Part Three)

Waiting for the fog to clear

Luarca, Spain – After arriving in Luarca, I lapped the town’s  one way roads four times before finally finding the narrow street the fishing house is on.

It’s so narrow it requires a three point turn at each switchback. God forbid if a car comes the opposite way. I hope your reversing skills are up to scratch. Mine are (now).

I had to do it all again after dumping my stuff and heading back out onto the road to find some waves. It was 6pm, but in this part of the world it doesn’t get dark until after 10pm, so I had a few hours up my sleeve.

Either side of the motorway the landscape is flat and agricultural. The smell of cow shit drifts on the breeze. Low-roofed sidrerias serve the golden-hued local cider (more on that later). The small churches that make up this part of the Camino Santiago pilgrim trail stand tall and proud. All of it set to a backdrop of the baize-green mountains that stretch away into the clouds.

Turn down one of the many roads to the coast and things get interesting. Pine trees line the very edge of the cliffs. Almost every beach has a rivermouth of some sort, carrying the run-off from the rain-drenched mountains. The sunlight filters weakly through the thick sea fog. Deep gullies are filled with gum trees. Sometimes it feels like I’m back home in Western Australia.

It’s also this fog that is making my search for surf pretty difficult. On that first afternoon I wasn’t able to see beyond the shorebreak, let alone make out any surfable waves.

Since then, I’ve checked a couple different beaches to the west of Luarca. It might be sunny and warm on the highway, but down on the beaches among the cliffs and valleys, visibility is down to metres.

Unwilling to spend hours smoking joints and waiting for it to clear, like the band of surfers in the maroon hatchback at one beach, I usually push on and do some sightseeing inland instead, vowing to strike for the beach as soon as the fog lifts.