One last ride before Gull jnr arrives in late November....
I've been getting bored with the crap surf we've been having all summer long in Wales so decided action was required.
Pass secured I message by mate in Derry to see if we could sync up our time off from work with a decent weather chart and within 3 days it had all come together!
I'm hopping on a sleazy jet flight from Bristol to Belfast to hook up with my Oirish surfing crew and find some Donegal gold at the end of a soggy rainbow.
My new board is virtually unused so I'm really looking forward to putting it through its paces in what will be some pretty epic surf - probably the best I've had all year.
A nice onion shaped, 980 is beautifully lined up for the north coast, moving through on Saturday and sitting on top of us right through to Monday so it's going to be absolutely cranking with sw veering w winds meaning offshore winds at certain spots :)
My surf guide MP has lined up 3 x regional classics for me, one of which I've surfed before - a fearsome rivermouth break with grinding left hand barrels that tube for about quarter of a mile!
It has to be seen to be believed and involves a nice rock jump paddle out int a deep channel with a forboding rip but the exit is fun at low tide walking back across the estuary.
It is completely beserk, more so when you see its location on a map. There is no way on earth that it could ever have surf? The swell has to wrap at some acute angles at least twice just to get anywhere near it - but it does!
Last time I surfed it, I was on a borrowed, delaminated surf tech thrustery thing and felt completely under gunned and twitchy. It's never a nice feeling paddlign out in serious waves on aboard you've never ridden before which feels too short and light for you.
I still had great fun and scored some nice waves but was never particularly relaxed in solid 6-8ft freight train tubes. You could have comfortably driven a mini through some of them - wide open pits of doom.
The other spot on the north coast is somewhere I've visited before but never seen a rideable wave so I'm looking forward to that, it's another left point/reef onto sand.
It's always strange seeing a spot completely flat and trying to imagine the set up, where you sit, where the wave breaks, how long the ride is, is it hollow, where are the rocks?
And finally some ghastly wedge that goes double overhead with another sketchy jump off the end of a pier. All fun and games!
The forecast is riduculous, 5.5m @ 12 seconds on Monday so at least we won't be driving around all day looking for surf. It will be a matter of finding something small enough to ride.
I arrive on Saturday morning at 8:40am so should hopefully be stroking into some serious waves by 10am :)
Wednesday 26 September 2012
Thursday 20 September 2012
Welsh European Junior Surfing championships, France
This from Andy Williams (WCSC) who recently went over to France help out and watch his daughter compete:
Just got back from a week at the European Junior Surfing championships with the Welsh junior team, I went over as van driver and bag man, any excuse for a trip eh!
I’ve no connection with the WSF other than my daughter competing and I’ve known a few of the people involved for years (as do most of us who live and surf in Wales) so this post is totally my own views and nothing to do with the WSF so flame me if you feel the need.
I've had a few people asking me how the team performed and their final placing, so I had to comment.
I was gutted when the team finished 10th, the final table just does not show how well the team actually did!
The way the Euro’s is scored penalises teams who don’t have a full team.
If we had fielded two more bodyboarders (one in U 16,’s one in U18’s) and even if they had finished last in their events, we would have finished 6th.
Pretty impressive for a country of our size and a very young team, most of whom will be around for a couple more Euro Juniors.
Take out the bodyboard results totally and we would have finished 5th, right up there with the big four of France, Spain, Portugal and England!
We had the highest placed British surfer (Well done Connor Griffiths - 2nd in the longboard), a 6th place in the Under 16 boys shortboard,(Rhys Barfield, who snapped his favourite board just before his heat started) and a 9th in the U 18’s (Rhys Poulton).
The other groms backed this up with a bunch of mid field placings. Please don’t take this as a rant about team selection or whatever.
My only reason for posting this is so that people do realise we do have Welsh kids who are prepared to work hard, take a few beatings in French beachbreaks and can actually surf pretty well.
I’m bloody proud of the way the kids surfed and behaved, if you are Welsh you should be too!
If you see one of the team pat them on the back and let them have a wave.
You can do the same for any of the support staff as well because we had to put up with a van full of pissy wetsuits that even frightened the French customs officials - or it may have been Herbie’s attempt at speaking French!"
Sounds like an awesome performance from all concerned and just think - if we'd just have had two more bodyboarders in the squad - we would have come 5th in Europe!
Which is insane considering what a small country we are with intermittent surf! But clearly shows just how good the standard of surfing is now in Wales :)
Just got back from a week at the European Junior Surfing championships with the Welsh junior team, I went over as van driver and bag man, any excuse for a trip eh!
I’ve no connection with the WSF other than my daughter competing and I’ve known a few of the people involved for years (as do most of us who live and surf in Wales) so this post is totally my own views and nothing to do with the WSF so flame me if you feel the need.
I was gutted when the team finished 10th, the final table just does not show how well the team actually did!
The way the Euro’s is scored penalises teams who don’t have a full team.
If we had fielded two more bodyboarders (one in U 16,’s one in U18’s) and even if they had finished last in their events, we would have finished 6th.
Pretty impressive for a country of our size and a very young team, most of whom will be around for a couple more Euro Juniors.
Take out the bodyboard results totally and we would have finished 5th, right up there with the big four of France, Spain, Portugal and England!
We had the highest placed British surfer (Well done Connor Griffiths - 2nd in the longboard), a 6th place in the Under 16 boys shortboard,(Rhys Barfield, who snapped his favourite board just before his heat started) and a 9th in the U 18’s (Rhys Poulton).
The other groms backed this up with a bunch of mid field placings. Please don’t take this as a rant about team selection or whatever.
My only reason for posting this is so that people do realise we do have Welsh kids who are prepared to work hard, take a few beatings in French beachbreaks and can actually surf pretty well.
I’m bloody proud of the way the kids surfed and behaved, if you are Welsh you should be too!
If you see one of the team pat them on the back and let them have a wave.
You can do the same for any of the support staff as well because we had to put up with a van full of pissy wetsuits that even frightened the French customs officials - or it may have been Herbie’s attempt at speaking French!"
Sounds like an awesome performance from all concerned and just think - if we'd just have had two more bodyboarders in the squad - we would have come 5th in Europe!
Which is insane considering what a small country we are with intermittent surf! But clearly shows just how good the standard of surfing is now in Wales :)
Hurricane Nadine, will she or won't she?
Not a lot has been happening in the world of gull's surfing.
I've just realised I've not posted in a while. I have been blogging but the new blog app hasn't uploaded them! but never mind, there hasn't been any decent worth blogging about anyway - a handful of okay days at best!
Hurricane Nadine arrives on our shores next week so we should have some big, messy stuff next week but it's better than nothing! I'm off to the Maldives! Whoooopeeeeeeeee
Maldives perfection:
The trip is being finalised currently so we're all getting very excited about surfing in board shorts under palm fringed reefs pulling into crystal clear tubes and watching colourful fish below our boards :)
I even bought some new pairs in preparation, going at half price so seemed rude not to and I hate paying extortionate prices for boardshorts which cost about £5 to make in Indonesia and China and sell for £50+ a pair!
It's the European Fish Fry on this weekend down in north Devon and I was planning to go... but not so sure now as a surf pass for a quick trip to Ireland has emerged so I might take that instead of showing off my quiver and ogling other peoples board's! ;)
I've just realised I've not posted in a while. I have been blogging but the new blog app hasn't uploaded them! but never mind, there hasn't been any decent worth blogging about anyway - a handful of okay days at best!
Hurricane Nadine arrives on our shores next week so we should have some big, messy stuff next week but it's better than nothing! I'm off to the Maldives! Whoooopeeeeeeeee
Maldives perfection:
The trip is being finalised currently so we're all getting very excited about surfing in board shorts under palm fringed reefs pulling into crystal clear tubes and watching colourful fish below our boards :)I even bought some new pairs in preparation, going at half price so seemed rude not to and I hate paying extortionate prices for boardshorts which cost about £5 to make in Indonesia and China and sell for £50+ a pair!
It's the European Fish Fry on this weekend down in north Devon and I was planning to go... but not so sure now as a surf pass for a quick trip to Ireland has emerged so I might take that instead of showing off my quiver and ogling other peoples board's! ;)
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