dreams burn down......

Last one of the four shots rescued from the expired film debacle. Seems like a long time ago now, back when summer still seemed a promise of good things to come and not the damp, grey cold reality we've suffered again.

Incidentally the random post title is from a Ride song that my ipod threw up. Shoegazing was a huge musical trend there in the early nineties but most of the bands are long forgotten. Made me smile to hear the intro to "leave them all behind" on Steve Clevelands last movie. He always picks good soundtracks i think.

just add sprockets

Turn the volume up, close your eyes and chill to the honeyed sounds of Real Estate.....

get in the van

Finally finished the film that i took in the holga up to the lake district at easter. Not sure if i posted much about the trip before but what a beautiful part of the country! There aren't many places in this country i could imagine living but cumbria is now on the list, assuming i could cope with the seperation anxiety from the beach. The scenery really is breathtaking and there's a real "active" feel to places like Keswick and Ambleside, makes you feel like you want to get out walking or on a bike.


Like most of our trips away, we drove miles exploring, "up and down dale" as they say, through steep narrow roads and up close and personal with errant sheep and some dry stone walling. In fact just millimetres away from explaining "aggressive livestock damage" on my van insurance claim form!


 I took plenty of photos but in typical toy camera fashion, only a handful came out. This one is from Fellfoot park boathouse on Lake Windemere and you can't see how heavily it was raining from the shot but it's a good job the camera is purely mechanical and therefore showerproof! Most of the rest of the roll (including some shots that i really liked the composition of) ended up wrecked, i think purely because it was expired film. Thats what you getb for trying to be all arty and clever! Frustrating but i guess it's all part of the "fun" of these things!

quiver in transit...

Every option covered! Lovely bespoke Oddsocks board bags too!

So FINALLY a little bit of swell to write home about, the sun has been shining and the water has warmed up a little. The new Nineplus 3/2 retro full suit has been keeping me toasty, if only i could say my arms have been performing as well! It's depressing how quickly you lose paddle fitness, well i do anyway!

This time last year i was surfing Rincon and i can't help wishing we had booked flights this year too. Subscribing to the coastal push is not helping. The bank manager is happier but i miss surfing right hand pointbreaks! Next year hopefully.........

On the subject of subscriptions, i've recently had the first couple of issues of Foam Symmetry magazine. It's an Australian mag with Justin Bevan and Dane Peterson at the helm so you know it's going to be visually beautiful. It's high on content, low on advertising with creative use of design and paper stock, much closer to surfers journal than surfer but with more edge. I'd probably describe it as a paper distillation of the exciting stuff that's happeneing on the innumerable blogs out there. It's well worth a look if you get the chance. There's a cool article on the UK hip wigglers by Russ Pierre in issue two.

It may just be me, but whenever i've been out of the water for more than a couple of weeks, i'm always thankful i can still remember how to surf. I guess it's like riding a bike but it's always nice to get that first wave out of the way and know you can still make stuff happen. I've definately been feeling rusty this week though, bogging rails at stupid moments, making the wrong split second timing decisions.

Still it's been hella fun and thats the whole point when you think about it! Long may it continue.....

factory effluent

Just around the corner from the american road (so named as it's a remnant of WW2 military excercises) i sits this sign. It reads "Factory Effluent" and sat in the middle of a lush green vista, it's incongruity with it's surroundings made me pause for thought.

The shot, sadly, is a typical holga near miss, in my minds eye, the sign was a lot more legible! It's certainly not my best photo but if this truly rubbish run of "summer" conditions continues i am actually going to run out of photo's to post!

 It's on the way back from a short mountain bike loop that BGA took me on. I'm sure he took some sort of satisfaction form watching me hyper ventilate up the hills but the rush of bumpy downhill single-track is worth it and a new pleasure i've been introduced to recently.

Meanwhile the ocean went from flat to howling onshore mess and as i type looks like it's heading back to flat again, while i heroically fought some kind of stomach bug from under the duvet. I hate being ill - i'm really bad at sitting still!

 I did watch Steve Cleveland's new movie "Paradigm Shift" which runs along similar lines to his previous films. It's got some great surfing in it and some clever editing. Jai Lee and Dane Peterson probably have the best parts but Knost, Warren and all the other usual suspects are all present and ripping.

It didn't totally blow me away although that might be because i've hardly surfed at all myself recently and my stoke is at a low ebb. I think maybe watching it made me sad i'm not about to hop on a plane to california this year rather than get me excited about going surfing later as it usually would, which isn't Steve Clevelands fault!
 It might also be because the progression in logging seems to have slowed a little - there's no new noseriding trick that i hadn't seen before, nothing really made me stop and rewind. The level of noseriding is now so high it's inevitable it will plateau a bit before the next climb.
I certainly can't put my finger on anything that's wrong with the film, so ignore me and buy it, you'll love it and i'm sure i will once the flat spell is over!

Jack Coleman's "Polyester" is worth a watch too especially if you're an Alex Knost fan. Be warned it is SUPER arty, all scratched painty super 8, weird angles and a velvet underground type soundtrack. It's reminiscent of early Volcom films and definately in the "art piece" category but a good diversion for half an hour and i really like it.

 There's (pleeeeeeese!!!) a small chance of a loggable wave at this end of the week. If there's anything at all in the way of tiny clean waves i'm breaking the sup or a belly board out, i NEED some kind of sideways sliding action and at this stage i'm really not being choosy!

checkpoint charlie

Massive congratulations to Tim and Louise who got married on Saturday. Hope you enjoyed your day as much as everyone else did!

Probably a good thing that Mr Heyland only got to dress you for your stag, not the actual day eh?!;-)

In other news, Gulfstream just sent their first epoxy prototype shortboard to morrocco with Nigel Cross who's loving it apparently. Stay tuned for their upcoming epoxy high performance thruster range. Jools is, as ever, fully stoked on making custom surfboards and has plans for a few new shapes to add to their range over the summer.

Meanwhile in California, plumber about town and lovable drunk Cotty was quite frankly robbed by the Billabong XXL commitee and missed out on taking the prize for biggest wave. He did get the satisfaction of having towed Garret McNamara into the portugese beast that won and some beer money as a result. Well done mate! Incidentally, if you don't read his blog it's well worth a click and a few minutes while the kettle boils!

solvang

Solvang is kind of a weird place. It's west of santa barbara and inland of the ranch and was founded by Danish settlers in the early twentieth century. Those settlers took their heritage VERY seriously and so the whole town has an "olde worlde" danish theme complete with faux old buildings and windmills! It's kind of like going to a bit of disney land but weirder since it's not actually part of a theme park and (i think) devoid of irony!

It's kind of fun all the same. If you happen to find yourself there, there's a bakery that makes, in the words of Mr Kipling' "exceedingly good cakes!"

commuting.....

Couple of promo shots of Pete Robinson, founder of the museum of british surfing on his way to the beach keeping the chill off in his finisterre jacket. The museum is open now and finisterre helped support the opening.

Most of you probably know about finisterre but if not, they make exceedingly fine outdoor type clothing, perfect for dealing with our climate pre and post surf. It's as ethically sourced as possible and great kit.

tugs like gravity

I started typing "i'm going to be landlocked for the next week" but as i'm off to the lake district, i'm not sure how true that statement is! I'm really looking forward to visiting a part of the country i've never been to before and hopefully getting some good photos.

It's Good Friday today and while i'm heading north, no doubt lots of people will be heading south west towards the coast. If you are, please remember to be courteous to other surfers, especially locals. There's no excuse (or need) to drop in on people and ruin their wave and it can be dangerous too. If you're bringing an SUP, do the decent thing and find your own peak.

Today is also the official opening day of The Museum Of British Surfing in Braunton. The opening party last night was super fun and featured the music of one of my favorite musicians, the excellent Neil Halstead who very kindly donated his time and talent. The museums's first exhibition is "The Art of Surf" and it's well worth yor time. This is what they say

‘The Art of Surf’’ is an exhibition created from the Museum of British Surfing’s collection of surfboards and artwork dating back more than two centuries.
Many people describe the act of surfing as an art, and creativity has been at the heart of the wave riding experience for hundreds of years.
Early explorers sketched surfers; surfers decorated their boards, took photos and made films; advertisers plundered surfing’s rich imagery – and today in Britain there’s a flourishing art scene inspired by surfing.
Now it’s time to immerse yourself in ‘The Art of Surf’.
The exhibition runs from April 6 to December 24, 2012.


Finisterre are having a sample sale at the museum today and tomorrow as well so if you are in the area, please make the effort to come and lookn around and support/ reward all the hard work Pete and Howie and eveone else have put in over the last few years!

room with a view...

So recently i've been listening to Elise by The Horrible Crowes a lot. It's a side project from Brian Fallon of Gaslight Anthem ( who are currently recording their fourth album ) and it's really very good.
More introspective, darker and less urgent than Gaslight. Fallon is a fine songwriter and lyricist who's stature is growing with each release.

This is the standout track for me, one i find popping into my head at quiet moments......behold the hurricane

flare/flair

A couple of weeks ago i had the chance to ride a Bing Lovebird model. 9'6 x 18 3/8 x 23 x 14 3/4 x3 and beautifully finished as all Bings are with the distinctive 3/4 deck fabric inlay charcteristic of this model.

It's not an out and out noserider, more of an all around single fin with a medium weight, shallow nose concave, a relaxed rocker, a lot of v in the tail and a tucked under edge to the rail in the back third. It's a board i've always liked the look of and it's quite similar to a gulfstream log i had a couple of years ago.

The day i rode it was a really glassy thigh - waist high with Saunton doing it's best slow pointbreak impression. Good clean logging waves but perhaps lacking the zip that the Lovebird is designed for.

Off the tail the board is lively and the vee is really noticeable having a slightly different feel to more bellied logs but getting the board on a rail and turning with ease. The board trims fast, zipping along as soon as you take your first steps forward. The weight feels good, heavy enough to give momentum but light enough to feel manageable.

On the nose it's solid enough. It has more rocker than my own boards and that felt a little strange. Getting five over is easy enough but it's not as easy to get all ten pinkies over as it is on a loggier board, though i guess thats not really the only point here. It's also true that the shape is designed with faster or slightly bigger waves in mind than i rode it in.

So overall i quite liked it but i wasn't blown away. It's not ideal for small waves and personally i dont ride a log in anything over 2 ft at the moment. Not for me right now then. I do think it would be a good choice as a one board quiver for the travelling traditional minded surfer or a versatile single fin for those who are still on longboards from shoulder to a little overhead waves.

Obviously it's all just my opinion and what do i know really!

a solitary pursuit

alone in a crowded place...

Hopefully everyone had a few fun waves over the weekend. Once the fog cleared up here there were some beautiful glassy chest high waves on sunday and some small clean loggable peelers on Monday. Perfect conditions to show off our beaches to my visiting Californian friends, Jake (who works at the excellent Almond shop) and his girlfriend Anna

I think they had a good time, i certainly got loads of pleasure from showing them around. Seeing it through their eyes reinforced how beautiful and relatively unspoilt our coastline is and how much fun our waves are when it's good. I think Devon exceeded their expectations. They're in Spain now, hopefully getting fun waves there too.

Anna has a cool little blog thats worth checking out here.

betwixt sea and sky.....

Winter surfing here is a pretty grey experience mostly, grey skies, grey sea, muted countryside, grey tarmac coloured only by the brown of mud.

Some days, like this one, the sea and the sky are so similar you can't see where one starts and the other finishes. Waves loom unexpectedly and the water is cold enough to burn your face as you dive beneath them.

respect the vest

There's a really interesting interview with Joel Tudor about logging, competitions and his Vans duct tape series in the newest issue of Slide magazine. Worth checking out if you get the chance!

Hopefully everyone had a slice of the swell we were treated to over the weekend. Sunday for me was particularly fun before the crowds of straight lining longboard crutch wielding masses turned up. I learn't a couple of things:

1. Competing for waves while riding a 5'2 in a line up of 9 foot plus boards is hard work

2. Catching up and overtaking longboarders who drop in on you is exceedingly fun on said 5'2

3. Tyler Warrens bar of soap design is one of the fastest, most exciting and downright fun surfboards i have had the pleasure of owning!

horse

a horse is a horse of course, of course
and no one can talk to a horse, of course
that is of course,
unless the horse,
is the famous Mr Ed!

today's trivia question is which old skateboard video did the song appear in, answers on a postcard..........

a tin shed

 Totally papped through the railings at the edge of the whole city block that makes up the patagonia headquarters in ventura. This is the original tin shed where, legend has it, yvon chouinard started making pitons for climbing and started the giant that is patagonia clothing and what became black diamond mountain equipment too. Call me sad but i was excited to spot it!

petro cruising

le bistro

At last! i have been surfing and i am really pretty relieved i actually still know how! Really fun to have a couple of small clean logging waves, especially in the sunshine at the weekend. Extra rubber is definately not helping how un paddlefit i feel though!

Yesterday was cold, grey and properly felt like winter. Difficult to leave the house with the prospect of a damp wetsuit in a windchilled car park but well worth it. Couple of fun ones and good to catch up with some faces i haven't seen or a while. Mr Bott was styling as usual on his new bing (levitator) hopefully i can try it and report back soon!

The rest of the week looks small and clean, i just need to work out how i can squeeze time in the shortened daylight hours!

boats@noirmoutier

do you see a theme?

hidden in plain sight

a diamond in the rough