Mimizan Plage, Les Landes, South West France
Another beautiful morning. Its’s offshore, the sun’s out and there’s not a cloud in the sky. Perfect shoulder high waves are breaking on the shoreline in front of me. There’s a freshness in the air, autumn has arrived in Aquitaine.
It’s early but there are already plenty of people on the beach. I’m sat in the sand dunes, sipping on an espresso, listening again to the conversation I had with Guy yesterday
- So, what have you been up to during these strange times?
- Well, it’s been cool. We’ve had loads of waves during the last few months so all I’ve done is surf
- Lucky you live in the UK’s surfing capital
- Yea mate, wicked, surfing loads, drinking coffee, painting and playing on my playstation (laughing)…sick !! Newquay has been super busy, so many people, the town has been pumping and the water has been packed. I counted over 200 surfers in Fistral the other day but it’s cool, you still get loads of waves
- Really?
- I paddle around, smile, say hello and then take off, boom !! (laughing)
- And what about work, have you been playing tennis?
- It’s been a radical year so far. Everything shut down in March so I went surfing for 3 months because there was nothing else to do. Then as soon as they opened tennis up again the phone started ringing and we started training. I haven’t been coaching much but I’ve been playing loads. We had some tournament trips lined up; the first one to Monte Carlo in July got cancelled, then we were booked to go to Bree in Belgium, they called that off and then we went to Paris. We had one day striking on the dirt and had to leave in the middle of the night to avoid quarantine
- Crazy times, it’s hard to plan anything at the moment
- I know! The next trip to Serbia in a couple of weeks has been cancelled, but that’s cool. I’m going with my mates to Ireland instead. The waves always pump there this time of year
- Awesome! I saw that Wavelength Magazine opened a Drive in Cinema on the Boardmasters Festival site at Watergate Bay and Blue Juice was the premier movie, did you go?
- Carl Prechezer, the writer and director called me and suggested that we hook up and go to the opening night but he cancelled last minute so I didn’t bother. Everyone said it was wicked. It’s such a cool, “feel good” movie and my role “Crab” was so much fun to do.
- What you got coming up?
- Loads of cool stuff. We got tournaments in Spain and Majorca, the University is open again, I’m presenting and tutoring for the LTA, but with everything that’s going on around the world at the moment, anything could happen, you just gotta go with the flow