“Thousands of people just passing through.” – That’s the best way to describe Summer 2021 in Newquay Cornwall.
For the past few months home has been the busiest I have ever seen it, wave upon wave of sunburnt tourists as far as the eye can see. It’s cool, we have a lot in common. I travel a lot and I’ve been away loads this Summer – I’m often the person that is “just passing through.”
First half of July we were in the Lake District, beautiful. The finale of the trip was a 25 mile run around Derwent Water via the top of Catbell’s followed by a few ice cold pints of Estrella in Keswick town centre.
August is not the best month for waves in Ireland but this year we scored. We surfed twice a day every day, the water the warmest I can remember. One sunny afternoon we were in Easkey. A light Southerly breeze groomed the empty line up and perfect waist high waves were breaking out on the reef. My mate Tony was sleeping off a massive all day breakfast in the van. I’d just had a quick swim amongst the kelp in my boardies and was feeling like a true cold water swimmer. Grabbing my towel to dry off, I spotted two local fellas about to paddle out in full wetsuits and booties.
They reached the line up without getting their hair wet, it looked so tranquil I knew what I had to do. Grabbing my foamie I skipped down the rocks, jumped in and paddled out. I was about to surf Easkey Right in my boardies and I can honestly say I have never seen anyone do that !! As I paddled up to the locals they turned, looked at me as if I was mad and started laughing, “no way man ya must be crazy.”
I sat there for less than a minute and a set appeared on the horizon. Slowly it made its way towards us and I could see that the 3rd wave was the biggest. The two local dudes paddled in front of me and lined themselves up. One of them caught the first wave and I called the other into the second, leaving me with the third !!!
The wave was perfect, peeling flawlessly down the reef. From take off I took the high line gaining as much speed as possible. As it hit the inside the face went vertical, I cut through the section and was now in 1 foot of water with no where to go but the dry Irish slab in front of me. I couldn’t kick out and I couldn’t straighten out so I crouched and lay down on the foamie grabbing the rails in full survival mode as I hit the slab at full speed. Everything went into slow motion, the foamie stopped dead and I shot forwards like a torpedo bouncing off the edge of the slab and rolling to a halt in a kelp filled rock pool.
Lying there I looked up at the sky whilst mentally checking my body to feel if I was injured. Amazingly I wasn’t! I had a cut on my knee and that was it. I climbed out of the rock pool, some lads from Westport who were watching in their car started beeping their horn and “whooping”. Laughing to myself I picked up the foamie and walked back to the van. As I got nearer I could see that my mate was busy making a cup of tea – he looked up and I could see that he was laughing too; “radical guido, that was so funny, there’s a lesson to be learnt there mate; don’t surf in Ireland in yer boardies !!”
We got home the day Boardmasters started. It was the biggest and best so far. 150 000 people descending on Newquay for 4 days of surf, music and sunshine. Town was super busy, the atmosphere electric. Every morning I’d buy a coffee and sit in the precinct watching the world go by. In the evenings my other half and I would sit in the sand dudes at Fistral drinking wine and feeling the epic vibes from the dance tent.
Three days later we were in Malaga ready to strike on the Andalusian dirt. We stayed with my mate in Estapona. I played massive and we had a wicked trip. The rest of the Leverton Tennis team were at a tournament in Nice while I was leading the charge in Spain.
It’s September and we’ve been home for a week, the mornings are fresh and Autumn is in the air. I’m meant to be at work tomorrow but @magicseaweed says there might be a little swell on the South coast, perhaps work can wait for one more day…
