The Way The Cookie Crumbles

Brad's backhand foam climb, somewhere north of Hossegor.

"We've got plenty of time, I'll definitely make my train." were the famous last words that I uttered as I walked backwards up the beach with Harry, still firing off shots of the rest of our friends surfing an empty, head-high peak on the beaches somewhere north of Hossegor.  We ran up the sand dune, got back to the car and set off along the track through the forest to rejoin the main road, both pretty confident that we would get there on time and that I'd catch my train.  Well, get me there on time we did, but I hadn't accounted for the queue that I would face at the ticket office which was clearly running on a skeleton staff.  I watched the clock tick down from quarter to twelve towards the departure time of midday; I was fidgeting, huffing and starting to get anxious.  With three minutes to go I left the queue and tackled the automatic machine which spat my ticket out at 11:59.  I ran under the underpass and up onto the platform where my train to Bordeaux was waiting and, just as I reached out to press the button to open the door, I heard the ominous clunk of the doors locking.  "Non, c'est parti monsieur.  Le prochain train est à quinze heures" the conductor shouted down to me, as I watched my train leave without me and taking with it any hopes of me making my flight home and getting back to work the next day.  Harry doubled back to pick me up, and on the drive back to Hossegor the exhaust fell off his car on the péage.  Clearly it wasn't our morning.  We limped back with the car sounding like a motorbike and rejoined the rest of our friends who were spending the afternoon watching the WCT surf contest, and I fired off a few frames of the world's best surfers in action.  

Sometimes a morning really doesn't go your way and there's nothing at all that you can do about it apart from try your best to make the most of the afternoon.  It's just the way that the cookie crumbles, but at the end of the day cookies still taste good.   

Julian Wilson, teasing me for missing my train 

by pointing straight at 12 o-clock.

Ol' green eyes on a nicely backlit green wave.

Contest winner John John Florence entertaining the crowd 

way down at the southern end of the contest zone.  

The beach was absolutely packed in front 

of the peak and the grandstand.

Miguel Pupo casting a shadow in round 3.

Taj Burrow and a rooster's tail.

Smells Like September

I stepped out of my car into the sunshine at Sennen this morning and it smelt like September.  I mean, I had a real definite waft of the smell of September hit me, and it hit me like some sort of catnip.  I got so excited.  I don't know what that smell was…  the ozoney smell from the breaking waves of the small groundswell?  Cold sand and a warmer ocean?  Warm surf wax?  Coffee?  I couldn't place my finger on it but it was a clear aroma and it made me realise that it was September 1st.  It was an instant reminder of the beaches when schools are back in and work slows down for everyone who works a seasonal job, dawn surfs that aren't still "last night" as they can be in midsummer, bare feet on cold sand, French boardwalks over the sand dunes, Portuguese custard tarts and hurricane swells.  Oh!  September, how I've missed you so.  

Don't Be Disheartened By Dane

Frontside grab out of nowhere.  Dane Reynolds, La Sud, September 2012.  

Imagine this:  You're on holiday in South West France in late September, probably camping out of the back of a van or car in the pine forests with some friends and wringing the last joys out of summer before returning to University perhaps.  You're from somewhere in Europe, probably not near to a wave-blessed coastline.  You've surfed a bit in summer's past and really enjoyed it, but you've not been able to put the hours in required to get particularly good.  You love it though and you'll get in the sea any chance you get, even if the conditions aren't A+, because in a few week's time you'll be back to your daily grind.  
You pull up in Hossegor late one afternoon.  It's grey, stormy and the waves are a junky mess, but there's lines of whitewater to ride.  You suit up and walk down the beach, south of the square towards the rock groyne at Le Sud.  There're a couple of other surfers out, and a huddle of people and photographers a little further south, so you decide to surf away from them.  
At waist depth the longshore current running south is strong, and after a couple of waves you've drifted south, past the little rock groyne.  The waves are awful.  Onshore and as messy as they come.
Some guy in a black wetsuit, on a white board, takes off and races towards you.  He hits a dumping section of lip and stomps an air reverse right in front of you; a full 180 degree rotation on a wave that plenty of surfers would have been unable to even get to their feet and go straight on, and he rides out of it.
Don't be disheartened, it's just Dane doing what he does.

This shot encompasses almost the full range of the surfing ability spectrum. 

You'd be forgiven for catching a wave in and hanging up your wetsuit for good.  You've just had one of the best surfers on the planet show you just how far you've got to go in this whole pursuit.  Or you could scoop your jaw up, appreciate what just went down right in front of your face, and decide to practise until you can do that to some unsuspecting learner in the whitewater too.  Hopefully it'd be the second of those options.

Dane and Spain

Swimming in the Sea

Swimming in the sea is one of life's great pleasures.  I've banged on about the joys of bodysurfing and the benefits of negative ions on here before (No Surfboard?  No Problem, and Negative Ions = Positive Humans), but bear with me.  I was fortunate enough to hitch a ride down to Hossegor back in September and, as usual, I stuck a handplane and swim fins in my bag.  

We pulled into Hossegor late in the day, with about an hour of light left. By the time we'd sorted the keys for our accomodation and parked the car, it was already starting to get dark.  No time to unpack boardbags, screw in fins and rummage around for a leash; wetsuit on, handplane and fins out and in we got.  Half an hour of getting properly whomped in the shorebreak at La Graviere was plenty to wash off the feeling of having been sat in a car for almost twelve hours, and a good introduction to the new swell starting to fill in.

Now let's be clear, when given a choice, I choose to surf.  Bodysurfing is just another way that I enjoy the ocean, and the fact that it's not my main aquatic focus was bought sharply into focus the following morning when I discovered that there was a bodysurfing contest taking place right where we'd been swimming around the evening before.  Some of France's best torpedo-men were swimming themselves into the heaving shorebreak, throwing themselves headfirst over the ledge in a suicidal search for judges points.  The waves were un-surfable here; overhead and with thick lips, detonating into little more than waist deep water.  These guys were revelling in it though.    

Every evening for the next two weeks, having spent the day surfing and driving the coast searching for good sandbanks, we'd get back and jump in at La Grav for a bodysurf.  Not with the intention of filling our wetsuits with sand ready for the following day, but to actually swim in the sea, engaging every limb and immersing ourselves fully in the Atlantic rather than floating on it.  An aquatic cool-down.

 The bodysurfer on the right, under the lip, is rolling down the face before trying to get barrelled.  Skills.

 The judges truck, with a rare make-able left in the background.

All images and the short movie by Mat Arney.

Handplane featured is the "Hand Baggage" model produced by Otter Surfboards.  Check them out here.

As usual, please take care when bodysurfing.  Be aware of your limitations and protect your head and neck.  Getting drilled head-first into the sand in shallow water can have awful consequences so exercise caution.

France: Dix Points!

Hurricane swells; sand dunes with wooden boardwalks; the smell of pine trees; croissants; short hollow rights; long reeling lefts; cafe au lait; offshore mornings; cheese; red wine; baguettes; bodysurfing the shorebreak; not being allowed in E.Leclerc without shoes on; citroen meharis; sand in your wetsuit; paddling (a lot); bicycles; barrels.

J'adore le Sud-Ouest de la France en septembre!

I hitched a ride down through France with my friends from Surf Simply in Costa Rica who're out here for the next five weeks hosting a series of week long, all inclusive residential surfing courses.  We've spent this past week driving the coast "checking the sandbars" ready for their first guests who arrived today, and I've been babysitting a funny small dog in-between surfs and shooting photos.  They're fully booked apart from the final week, October 13th-20th, which still has some space.  If you like the idea of being driven around to go surfing, getting some great video coaching and then returning to an amazing house full of incredible surf art to a dinner prepared by a private chef, then e-mail: kerianne@surfsimply.com

EUroad tripping

About this time last year I was on my way back from a surf trip through France and Spain with my friend Krede, an old housemate who was over visiting from West Australia. The month long road trip was bi-polar: if anything could go wrong then it did, but we scored some incredible surf and I came away with some good photos. We ended up at Mont Saint-Michel having missed a ferry due to various reasons, so used the spare day until the next sailing to go sight-seeing, and arrived here early in the morning.

On the way back to the port the bolts on one of the wheels on our van sheared off, which just about sums it up.