by Tom Anderson
Retelling number one million and one had amused me just as much as the first. It got my mind off the imminent announcement of the final results – so much so that I was still grinning to myself as I stepped up to accept my bronze medal ten minutes later.
CHAPTER 8
CHASING BILL: CORNWALL (PART TWO)
I suppose it was a measure of the different experiences available in Cornwall that these memories were returning to me as I sat on one of Padstow's sea walls. So what if most of my best experiences of this place involved fooling around on land? And anyway, I'd finally scored a good dose of great surf to add to the rest of it.
Seagulls gathered around me, swarming in off the low-tide sands to slurp up the remains of fish and chips cast aside by day trippers with dreams of Rick Stein seafood. Rich, obviously maturing in outlook a little himself, had shunned Tesco and McDonald's for the option of an authentic Cornish pasty – warmed and filled with ketchup. Weighing me down, its soporific effects were pushing surfing again to the back of my mind for the moment.
I looked at the row of shops and hotels, and the start of the winding streets behind them, across to the wide inlet of water bustling with boats cruising across the calm water. Here we were in the lee of the wind, and the view was one of total serenity. Here was the picture-perfect image of a quaint southern English coastal town. It did exist after all, if only for brief moments here and there.
'Good place to chill this, innit?' said Rich.
'Yeah. It's kind of… removed from surfing and the beach, isn't it?'
'Exactly. That's what I like about it. If we were eating and looking out to sea at Harlyn now, we'd be getting jumpy about going back in. This way we can properly chill and then go back in a bit feeling fresh to go and shred a few more.'
'In a bit though, eh?' I suggested.
'Oh, for sure. I'm just gonna lie here for a bit.'
He stepped off the wall to a bench that had now been left free as the town began to slow for the evening. The transition between the daytime and evening crowds had led to Padstow having a sleepy feel, while there was still enough warmth around to make you want to bask.
Rich stretched himself out, lying on his front, and pulled his hood over his head.
Turning to face back out over the Camel Estuary, I let my mind wander again.
For the next two days, this Cornish mini-trip continued to feel like a journey around my own past. Only this time it felt as if, by revisiting it all, I was able to see things from a point of view that had eluded me the first time.
This is the essence of travel. You have to be searching for something to get that sense of quest, and while we'd begun by simply looking for swell from Hurricane Bill and a chance to finally enjoy the simple act of surfing in Cornwall, I'd ended up finding something more.
Not only that, but I'd also, yet again, been reminded that this sense of self-discovery, that traveller's euphoria, existed as close to home as the other end of a car journey. You didn't need a cross-continental flight to somewhere that would put ink in your passport. The components were all here; old friends, a car, a swell – and a hurricane to chase.
'You wasted your time driving round Yankland, man!' Rich kept saying. 'Could have done it here, easy. I told you there's sick surf in Cornwall.'
It had taken barely twenty-four hours to get that idea over to me. A series of sessions in Harlyn Bay had already sated our appetites, despite the remnants of Bill blowing in and making almost every other inch of North Cornwall's waters resemble the swirling cauldrons of winter ferocity that normally render surfing impossible. Sheltered from the bigger gusts, and angled so as to receive the wind from an offshore direction, Harlyn continued to fire. Barrelling, A-frame waves the length of the beach had greeted us when we awoke in the Harlyn Inn car park on day three, nursing slight hangovers after an evening watching a ska band in the pub. A second night in the car had passed smoothly, so with sunburnt faces and aching shoulder blades from all the paddling, we logged one final session before two friends of Rich, 'Cheeks' and his girlfriend 'Coco', put us up on their floor in Truro.
As often happens when I crash on floors, I was up an hour earlier than everyone else, and took a walk through the town – recognising little features and side streets here and there, but with no more recollection of when I'd previously been there.
Coco and Cheeks's place was in a neat little estate that was just beyond two objects that seemed to sum up this part of Cornwall. One was an ultra-modern skatepark, with various tailor-made rails and ramps being shredded to bits, even first thing in the morning, by a load of red-hot kids. And then there was the viaduct that loomed over both the estate and nearby park. Each of the stubbed streets showed evidence of surfer residents, with VW vans and ageing, stickered-up and salt-corroded cars – as well as the occasional board visible through a window or wetsuit draped over a washing line.
I walked up to the top of the hill, around a loop that passed the train station and dropped down towards a couple of curry houses and bars.
Everywhere I turned, something looked familiar.
It wasn't until we sat eating some Tesco-bought sushi for lunch, overlooking the riverbanks and marinas of one of Cornwall's only cosmopolitan areas, that Rich reminded me.
'We stayed with my mum's friends around here when we were like fourteen or something. After going to the Headworx Comp. Remember that?'
'Headworx? Oh yeah, Headworx! What happened to them?'
'Fuck knows. Good comp though, eh? You know, that was the first time we ever saw pros surf in Britain, wasn't it?'
Immediately I was there again, in the back seats of his mother's car, with us as teenagers winding his little sister up by continuously taking her Spice Girls tapes out of the communal Walkman and replacing them with NOFX, Good Riddance and Propagandhi.
The year he was referring to was 1997, we were seventeen, not fourteen as he remembered, and it was indeed the first time I ever saw professional surfers riding waves in the UK. Both of us had seen the pros in France before, but that wasn't nearly as impressive. We'd grown up with this belief that there was something exceptional about British surf – something exceptionally bad.
Watching the obligatory thousands of hours of Taylor Steele films (a groundbreaking San Diego-based surf filmmaker) we'd seen some of the world's best surfers leap through the air, swoop through tubes and carve great scars in walls of powerful water. That was what happened everywhere else on earth, we thought. It was no surprise to us when on junior trips to continental Europe we got to see the same kind of surfing, and it would rub off a little too. But arriving home would always lead to a loss of momentum – your imagination would desert you, your turns would get slower, your timing slacker; you'd start to jerk horribly as you tried to milk non existent speed out of impotent Bristol Channel wind swells. We didn't believe such surfing could be done in our waves – or at least that was our excuse.
Then came that three-hour drive in the back of Val's car to Newquay, whereupon, in knee-to-waist-high British summer surf, a large chunk of the world's best set about proving to us that an excuse was all it was.
At the Headworx Pro, in the hunt for vital World Qualifying Series points, we got to see, among others, Rob Machado, Cory Lopez and the two most formidable brother duos in modern surfing: CJ and Damien Hobgood and Bruce and Andy Irons.
A great thing about surfing, unlike almost any other sport, is that you can go and practise right alongside these demi-gods of professional sport. It's a free beach outside of the contest area and if they want to loosen up or test ride a new board then it's in with the rest of the rabble.
As easily as I can still see Rich's little sister, Lizzie, fuming at the sound of surf punk usurping their mum's tape deck, I can still close my eyes and visualise a particular wave CJ Hobgood caught at low-tide Fistral. He got to his feet on an already broken wall of white water, which was backing off into deep water. On a wave I had always thought required the most earnest of frantic pumping just to keep afloa
t in a straight line, he smoothly stroked his board back and forth across the unbroken face, never once letting his rails out of the water. When the wave finally held up, enough to close out unimpressively on a sandbar covered with ignorant bathers, he coolly hooked himself into the tightest corner of the lip he could find, coiled his body and then stood crouching, poised to pounce as soon as the critical moment arrived. The faintest trace of energy washed through the wave face as the lip began to crumble and then, with an instinctive scoop upward, Hobgood elevated his board off the top, hoisting his tail skywards to lift into a seamless, three-foot-high, front-side air-three-sixty reverse.
Whatever we'd thought before went out the window. This kind of surfing could be done in Britain and the excitement that came with that revelation bubbled within me for the remaining two days of the contest.
By the time the normally cool-headed Rob Machado trudged up the sand, venting fury at the judging decision that had seen him come second overall to the Brazilian Renato Wanderley, our doors of perception had been blown wide open.
And then, just a short drive south to stay at Maureen and Pete's – family friends of the Groves – we were plonked back in what felt like the real world, eating tea and embellishing the stories together, ready to make our mates jealous when we got home the next day.
That is the bubble-like feeling that the Newquay microcosm can give you. It took us less than a day to start feeling as if the pros shredding on UK shores had just been a dream. The next morning Val drove us out west again to surf tiny Praa Sands, with a strong offshore wind and crystal clear but freezing water. We spent the session trying sluggishly to launch even the smallest of airs, before returning stiff-limbed to the beach to serenely accept our status as the humblest of surfing mortals.
Now, as the Truro sun warmed my black T-shirt, I remembered why, all those years ago, I hadn't been upset in any way by our pitiful attempt to impersonate the pros that morning. Back out into the wilds, beyond Truro, Falmouth, beyond even Helston, the striking, desolate beauty of Praa Sands had helped. Surrounded by rolling fields, its deep blue water washed around headlands of heightened summer greens, making the British coastline appear alive and invigorated by summer's warmth. Although we didn't know it at the time, Cornwall's enchanting aesthetics had worked their spell on me then.
'Reckon there'd be a wave at Praa Sands today?' I asked Rich, who had pulled his shades down and was lying on his back.
He didn't flinch. I thought he was asleep, but then he lethargically offered a response. 'Yeah, but it'd be a massive paddle – still tons of swell there today and a bit of wind. Won't be anything like you remember it.' I wondered if he'd been going through the same memory process as me. 'And anyway,' he continued. 'I've got to work tomorrow. Didn't you say you wanted to meet that mate of yours as well?'
By 'that mate of yours' he was referring to the 'shaper' Luke Young. A shaper is someone who makes surfboards by hand, and for years Luke had been making every board I ever used. Math's older brother had gone to uni with him, which was how we knew each other. Luke was doing pretty well for himself these days, but remained just as keen to make a good board for the friends who, by testing them out, had helped him learn the trade. He'd been promising for ages to roll out a red carpet if I ever turned up at his home break near Plymouth, and it had been in the back of my mind to see if Hurricane Bill might facilitate this.
Rich had a point – if he had to be home tomorrow then Plymouth was in the right direction, so I got out my phone and dialled Luke's number.
'Whassappenin', clart?' bellowed a voice after only a few rings. Luke loved to use the mock Newport accents he'd heard on Goldie Lookin' Chain tracks, having once been asked to make a couple of boards for the pseudo rappers to use in a parody photoshoot. 'You oroi' or wha'?'
'Not bad, like, tidy! What're you up to?' A testament to Luke's impersonation skills lay in the fact that I, despite being only half an hour down the road from 'the 'port', couldn't use the lingo as adeptly as this Hertfordshire born Plymouth transplant. 'I'm in Truro, like. Fancy a surf or wha'?'
'Oh, you're in Truro are you, spa? Safe, like!'
'So any waves in your neck of the woods, clart?'
He went quiet for a moment. 'You're really in Cornwall? No way!'
'Yeah, I'm really in Cornwall.' Was I this well known for being reluctant to head down here?
'Well, as it happens, spa, there is a bit of surf. I'm gonna check Chally out in about three hours' time. That gives you an hour and a half to leave Truro, if the traffic's OK.'
'An hour and a half? If there're waves your way, I'll leave now. What's it gonna be like?'
'It'll be smaller than where you are, but the sun's gonna be out – people are back in work after the weekend and there'll be some wedgy lefts.'
'Sounds great to me. I'll get driving, so we'll be on our way in five.'
'That'll leave you plenty of time. Safe!'
'Safe!'
I hung up and looked at Rich – for whom one side of the conversation had contained enough information. 'What d'you reckon then?'
'We've got time for the scenic route,' he said, stretching and standing up.
The scenic route, after a few sets of traffic lights, was the A390 to Liskeard, which first took us towards St Austell, passing through the Grampound area along the way. With the window down and one foot dangling in the air outside, Rich spent the first half-hour pointing to un-signposted turnings on our right and commenting, 'There's the sickest reef break down there,' or 'Me and my mate Stu checked this beachie down that road once and reckon in just the right swell there's gonna be a hell of a wedge off the headland.'
After St Austell, the road narrowed to one lane each way and began climbing and dropping through the parts of Cornwall that I'd never imagined taking delight in passing through. In the past I'd been far too insular in my approach to look out the window.
Great fir forests lined the flanks of rolling hills, broken only by the occasional spire or farmhouse. Some cool names began cropping up, every bit as novel as the ones you come across in Scotland. 'St Blazey' preceded 'Porcupine', 'Fairy Cross' and 'Taphouse' before dual-carriageways started again at 'Dobwalls'. For vast swathes of the journey, Cornwall looked sublimely desolate. Even the built-up areas appeared as old as the bedrock itself, with walls of thick, ancient masonry, thatch or slate roofs and knotted trees rising out of mossy-walled gardens.
By the time we crossed the Tamar Bridge and Plymouth started sprawling around us, I was, not for the first time on this trip, getting that feeling that events of the past few days had already slipped away into deepest memory. The stark contrast between lifestyles in the south-west has the ability to do that.
'Plymouth, man,' Rich moaned. 'In all the years I lived down here I always tried to avoid the place. Growin' up in Cardiff made me hate cities enough already.'
The Kingsbridge junction that Luke had told us about was east of the main city though, and immediately after taking it the rural serenity of the English countryside resumed. Another succession of quaint little villages rolled past our open windows, before a narrow lane bore a signpost for Challaborough. A few miles later, I started sensing sea air.
The road dipped repeatedly, each time around a bend that looked as though it would be the last before a beach appeared – until finally a thin lane led us down onto a small tarmaced ramp and a row of parking spaces. To our left was a pub and the entrance to a caravan park and out front a beach break. At the far end a set of cliffs rose from the reflective ocean surface, with a couple of quirkily designed homes sitting at the top and peering down over the swell lines that were moving in. Below these dream homes you could see that with a tiny bit more tide a left-hander would form, and beyond that was Bantham, the next bay over. Bantham was best known for the iconic Burgh Island and its famous hotel, which twice a day would get isolated by the sea washing in and cutting it off from the mainland. That event was due about now.
I sat on the wall overlooking the pebbly be
ach, watching the afternoon sun glint off the moving waves as their transient power moved towards the shoreline. A lone surfer was already in the water – a stocky goofyfooter (meaning he stood with his right foot forward). He had a zippy, agile style and was tearing in to the first few playful peaks of the incoming tide.
'Let's get in there, shall we?' I suggested to Rich.
'Shit yeah! Looks sweet.'
Slowly enough to enjoy the sun, but quick enough not to let too many more waves come through in our absence, we suited up, waxed our boards and stepped over a small stream that separated the car park from the surfing end of the bay.
Yesterday this beach would have been strewn with holidaymakers, but today only driftwood and a pair of dog walkers were in evidence.
Here in South Devon the water was much colder than North Cornwall and I yelped as I set foot in it for the first time. But with the sun unblocked and still holding on to most of its summer strength, I'd recovered within a few paddles.
