you know it makes sense

seasons greetings..

Merry Christmas, seasons greetings and happy holidays to you and your's, from me and mine

the curator...

Pete with the oldest board in the collection of the british surfing museum. It's a belly board from the 20's on loan from a family in Jersey and has their family crest painted on the nose. Interestingly belly boards are an almost uniquely british wavecraft, apparently Brits believed our waves were not suited to standing up to begin with!

There are plenty around and in use even today, for more ply related eccentricity check Mr Isaac's Prone to belly blog here

the german...

Many of you will have heard, but for those that didn't..... Surf action won the ITV vote and were presented with a cheque for £50k to carry on the good work. Well done to everyone that supported to them, Russ and Rich are beyond stoked and excited about continuing their good work.

a private view

Behind the scenes, work on getting the surfing museum off and running by next summer is in full swing. At the moment the collection is housed in a store at a secret location. Last week i spent a couple of hours lugging boards around helping out on a photo shoot. It's the first time i've been to the store and seen the whole collection, the place is a true Aladdin's cave of surfing memorabilia. There are some beautiful vintage and not so vintage boards and loads of posters, newspaper clippings, belly boards, old boardshorts and wetsuits.

The pic above (not mine i might add) shows an old Tiki board catalogue and an old photo from Putsborough in May 1965. It's a weirdly timeless image, a longboarder in forward trim in shorts and a neoprene jacket, it could just have believably been taken this week & posted on a blog from So Cal!

See more pics from the shoot here

Hopefully everyone got some waves this weekend. There was plenty of swell around up here on friday and saturday but plenty of wind and plenty of people. Still there was some fun and some beatings to be had if you were in the right (or the wrong) place at the right time. I saw one friend who suffered a scary post leash breaking swim in at croyde and another local that has an arm in plaster after an incident at Saunton on friday evening!

Sunday brought some really fun logging waves despite the kooks and it was fun to get back on a board over 6 foot for a few. Pretty much flat today unfortunately but at least it's sunny.

The green gulfstream below still needs a good home.....

cruiser

Possibly the most impractical bike to own given how hilly it is around these parts but guaranteed to put a smile on my face with each turn of the pedals!

f in good news!

One of Randall's stock boards already has a new home, inside the vintage splitty owned by Pete from the British Surfing Museum, along with a bespoke surfing museum pivot fin to finish it off perfectly.

Understandably Pete is stoked, not least because the Museum of British Surfing is officially happening. As of last week, there is funding guaranteed and the paperwork is being signed to give a permenent exhibition and event space in the centre of Braunton, North Devon. Official opening is set for summer 2011 and the team have lots of exciting plans to go with it. All pretty exciting news and full credit to Pete and B for slogging through the hoops to get it done.

click here for the official word

The Museum Of British Surfing is getting closer.......

Completely failed to come up with a witty title or repartis for this post so read no further, just click here to visit the new British Surfing Museum website.  I can't tell you anymore about the progress with the plans as i'd have to kill you all afterwards but believe me it's getting closer and it's very exciting!

baggy is back?

Nice surfboards, friendly faces and nice coffee (eventually eh rob?) One of my go-to haunts to kill some spare time on the rare days when i'm free to play all day.

On this particular day Mikey (who's almost certainly a better surfer than you ) and Stent (who is very definately a better snowboarder than you) discuss the finer points of paddling the devon coast. Meanwhile Rob manages to get the coffee right first time!

in full bloom

Back home and lucked into a week of small clean and sunny waves. If it was actually like this all summer you'd barely need to consider visiting california, though a nice cobblestone righthanded point or three wouldn't go amiss either!

It's been great to get my new Dano Old Pleasure (pics to follow) out in waves that i know really well and begin to properly get to know it. Impressions so far are really good. It's heavy and is less foiled than i expected but that is probably no bad thing especially as saunton is hardly a racetrack type wave. It's pig influenced wide point back shape mean you have to use your feet but with your weight right on the tail it is the loosest noserider i have (possibly have ridden) and even though the nose is only 17.25 it locks in really solidly on the nose in the pocket. It's definately designed for surfing in the pocket and feels sluggish if you try and get too far away from the wave's power zone. It definately likes a bit of "body english" cutbacks feel sweet if you really throw your weight through the back foot in a more exaggerated fashion than my more paralell templated noseriders demand, but the reward is a really sweet feeling pivoty cutback. It's easy to see how surfers like Knost's style has developed riding these sorts of boards.

Forecast looks promising over the weekend for further testing and i'll post some photos once i've finished scanning the film!

light leak?

Introducing stylish logger, loose fit coffee monkey and currently the occupier of a tented palace somewhere in Georgham........Rob Morgan
 Given the lo-fi nature of holga's this is almost certainly the result of light leaking in and nothing to do with Rob's aura or the force of his personality ;-)

Whatever, it's pretty cool!

playing place

As you read this i am either sat at Heathrow or sat on a shiny Virgin jumbo winging it's way towards LA and (right hand) points south. I am hopefully going to be "mining the stoke" in So Cal for the next 2.5 weeks and "excited" barely covers it! Stay tuned for future posts to find out if the reality actually lives up to the dream!

winter wonderland

Rare to get this much snow round here but certainly made my walk to work a bit more picturesque (& treacherous!)

silver lining

One of the few good things about shorter days is the chance to witness more lovely sunrises & sunsets. Another case of iphone & opportunity, just yards from my house

The Present

I was lucky enough to see Tmoes new film a couple of weeks ago (thank you christiaan) & it is really good. Maybe didn't blow me away quite as much asa the sprout or seedling when i first saw them but it is a super surf film none the less. Too many highlights to mention but the alaiia footage will blow your mind!

Anyway, there is a showing in braunton on may 16th so treat yourself to an evening of fine celluloid surfing dreams!