Grey Skies, Green Waves Read online

  For me, this was the point at which I could really begin to enjoy the stoke of a surfing experience as intense and fulfilling as any I'd known – on or off this little group of islands I called home.

  Drained of the ability to do much more than hold his head up, his voice husky, eyes reddening and glazed – Jem drove us a few hundred yards back in to town, where we pulled up at a Tesco.

  'I'm too tired to eat – but I need to or otherwise I'll never wake up again,' he mumbled, walking in a daze towards the fruit section.

  Ten minutes later, he was snoring upright in the driver's seat of his van. After driving all night, and surfing for five hours in surf of such force many people would have been worn out within one, we figured he deserved the chance to recharge a little.

  'We should offer to do some of the driving on the way back,' Rhino suggested, discreetly closing the door. 'But I reckon we leave him for now. Fancy a walk to the seafront?'

  It was about a mile back to a point from which we could watch the North Atlantic, now unrecognisable, ushering in the rising storm. Grey skies were giving way to patches of darker cloud as we crossed the main river on a bridge. Below us brown, peat-tinted water rolled towards the sea from a river current. Between bouts of drizzle, the town still appeared to have barely come to life, as we passed empty pubs and hotels. A neat grid of streets hid behind a low-key seafront. Gloomy and under-populated, I noticed most of the shops were closed – apart from a chippy in which two teenagers waited, gazing at the floor, for their food to be cooked. A car pulled up to a crossroads, where a red light held it for far too long, with no other movement in sight – and still the driver waited, unquestioning. It looked as if the place lived on permanent call for a tourist season that I imagined to be brief and frustratingly fickle. With one of the moodiest patches of ocean on the planet just offshore, this would forever be a sea-battered, beleaguered town – clinging to the edge of an energy most of its inhabitants could barely understand.

  We'd taken some snacks with us and sat down to eat. From a sea wall we were able to look over at the great, rolling mountains of white water that had overrun the line-up in which we had, only an hour before, been harvesting waves it may take us years to find again.

  There was little sign now that the patch of reef in front of that timeless castle could host such a display. No evidence that surfers the world over stared at images of its almost mythical perfection.

  As a gust lifted my hood from my forehead, my mind was taken back to that one wave – that almost-ride.

  'Rhino?' I asked. 'How close was I to making that one – you know, the wave that clipped me?'

  He paused.

  'I mean, if I'd ducked just a little…' I began.

  With a mouthful of Mars bar, he raised his hand. I stopped.

  'Don't worry about that,' he said. 'Inches or metres, it's all the same. You didn't make it, and that's that. Better you go home with something to regret, anyway. If you'd had a perfect session then it'd be time to quit. This way, you've got something to make up for next time you catch a wave like that. Coz there will be a next time. You know that, don't you?'

  I nodded.

  And then I wondered what chance there was of that being on British shores. Yet again, like Jem's staring in at me from that shoulder, my eyes had opened that little wider. I'd caught the best tube of my life – almost. In Britain. Almost.

  CHAPTER 4

  LOSING TO AN INVISIBLE LONGBOARDER: THE GREAT NEWGALE RIP-OFF

  Many, many weird and wonderful things can happen at surf contests around the UK – after all, it takes a screw loose to want to attend the things in the first place. Most are run in conditions ranging from the sub-standard to the utterly dire, during freezing weekends in places that take an age to get to, while all the rest of your mates are at home, warm and entertained.

  And yet people still lap them up, including me. I've wasted hundreds of hours shivering in car parks, waiting for an announcer to confirm that my reason for being there was, well, not good enough – and yet for some reason I'm still drawn to competitive surfing. Some people don't even think the act of wave riding can become a competition, but I've always enjoyed the challenge of trying to convert rides into points and line-ups into game plans. Perhaps it adds a dimension to the otherwise highly frustrating life of a British surfer – if the act itself of riding the pitiful waves isn't that riveting, then solving the conundrum of how best to string a heat together can hold some reward in its place.

  Something else I have to admit to liking about contests, though, is the sheer farcicality of some of the situations you see. As I said, something needs to be slightly amiss for you to want to go to them in Britain, and when a large group of similarly minded people – who are all missing some aspects of sanity themselves – get together in the cold to grumble over dreadful waves, there usually comes a point when you realise it's actually a cracking laugh. Until you lose, of course.

  However, I do fondly remember one contest in which even losing was funny – because it was to a surfer who didn't seem to exist, in a contest so supremely weird in organisation and purpose that it stands forever in my mind as one of the best I've ever been to. It was such a great event that it didn't even have a name.

  When rumours of this speciality surf-off first started, it was under the name-tag 'South West Student Championships' – which was in fact pure plagiarism. I later learned that the real South West Champs, run with clockwork efficiency by some huge sporting governing body, had taken a two-year hiatus due to lack of funding – allowing a hotelier in northern Pembroke to run a pretend version of his own. What could go wrong?

  A lot, of course, but this didn't seem to trouble the bold entrepreneur one bit, as by the time people realised they'd entered a joke contest he'd already sold them a hotel bed and too much alcohol to be able to drive home. It was a genius business plan. Dragons' Den would have backed him in an instant.

  I should have known something was fishy about the whole deal when I asked him on the phone about entering. You needed to be a student to get in, which was fine because I was in my third year at Glamorgan Uni at the time, but still the lack of rigour shown in vetting my entry was the first hint that his contest organisation may turn out to be a little, er, laissez-faire…

  'Oh, we loosely say "students",' the middle-aged organiser, Terry, explained, 'but a few locals sometimes fill the draw if it's needed. Ones who go to college up here, see.'

  He meant Haverfordwest, and the contest was being run at Newgale – which is, without exception, the worst beach break in Wales that anyone is yet stupid enough to try and surf. But bad beach breaks are a prerequisite for Welsh-based surf contests, so nobody was going to bemoan that at this early stage. (You leave that gripe until the mid-point of your round one heat – when you can do nothing about it other than surf very poorly and blame the conditions.)

  'Yes, we run a relaxed event, you know. It's just a chance for some people to come and stay here off-season for a cheaper price and have a good shindig. I reduce the beer too – since you are all students. And then there's a surfing championship on the side.'

  'I see,' I said. By 'reduce the beer' did he mean lower its price tag, or was he talking about some horrid distilling process that made the stuff worth less anyway?

  'Yes, yes, you'll like it up here,' Terry continued. 'We always like to reward something different in the surfing. Judges can be a bit, you know, boring sometimes, I think.' Finally, here was a sentiment that I could relate to.

  'Cool. Sounds good.' I said.

  'Yes, you should have seen last year's final. The chap who won – local lad he was… Well, he rode off the back of one wave and then, before he'd got off his board again, the one behind picked him up and he carried on and rode that one in to the beach instead!'

  At this point the thought crossed my mind that Terry might not know a lot about the conventional judging criteria of a surf contest, but I refrained from interrupting.

  'I mean, you had to be ther
e to believe it. It really was spectacular. Stood out to me by a mile, you know. So I said to the judges that they needed to make him the winner, and everyone was very happy with the outcome. It's nice for a new face to win something.'

  As someone who mounted the podium all too rarely, this was music to my ears, and I resolved to ready myself to try 'spectacular' pull-outs – whatever they might be – at the first opportunity. I had just got some insider information on what the judges were looking for, and was going to make a good go of becoming the 'new face to win' this time around.

  When you study English Lit and Media at uni the lecture timetable can often be a little light – which is great for surfing. However, luck would have it that the Friday afternoon before the South West Student Championships coincided with one of the few lectures that I could not miss at any cost, as I planned to write an essay on its subject material. This meant there was no chance of making it up to Nolton Haven – where the event's on-site accommodation was situated – until after dark. Not only did this prevent a practice surf on the eve of my round one heat, but it also allowed the full force of a bitter winter frost to set in before I got there.

  Shivering in the dark, I set about finding two friends who had agreed to attend the contest with me – a pair of Irish brothers called Andrew and Al, who were always game for a surf-off – as well as working out where exactly I was going to sleep.

  Andrew and Al lived in Plymouth at the time, where they were both studying. Although surfing was usually an individual sport, some events did keep a tally of 'team' points – like the way an athletics meeting will log medal numbers. This was going to be the case here, although it wouldn't mean anything to me as nobody else from Glamorgan Uni, to my knowledge, did contests.

  That was far from the case in Plymouth, where Andrew and Al enjoyed being the best of a deep field of surf enthusiasts. They were both of them pretty humble about it, and took the lifestyle very seriously, letting their antics on a wave do the talking – rather than getting sucked in to the other popular habit of the student surfer: telling tall tales to members of the opposite sex. Their car was parked at the side of the road, so I pulled in behind it.

  Terry had promised to put us all up for a tenner each, which sounded great. However, we had failed to anticipate the fact that this tenner would see us all shivering to sleep in one double room, curled into foetal positions in all our clothes. It was out of season and therefore the heating had been switched off. The sight of your own breath blowing steam into a room bathed in moonlight due to the lack of curtains is never conducive to a good night's sleep.

  'You should have come down to the pub and had a drink with everyone else!' Terry berated us the next morning, when Al told him how we'd all developed backache in the overnight freeze. 'That's what everyone else does. You have no problem sleeping if you take proper advantage of a pound a pint.'

  'But we kind of wanted to surf well today,' Al explained.

  The hotel Terry ran, although right on the coast, was a ten-minute drive south from the beach where the event was being held. Arriving by night we'd seen little of the drive across Pembroke, but this early morning run along a winding ocean-side road to the car park that would become contest control was a chance to see the clear, cold and powerful Atlantic, grey and plumped with swell. As we left the little village we'd stayed in behind, heading north for Newgale's beach, trees and buildings seemed to back off. A basic landscape of light green fields was all the regular and relentless sea wind allowed, along with a handful of smaller stone buildings, most of which were boarded-up booths intended to serve the summer influx, and an almost deserted track. Its discreet humility allowed us to feel the dominating presence of the sea, as well as helping us to forget our uncomfortable night. The idea of a drunken rabble of students descending on this quiet place jarred with me.

  Terry brought us back to reality, though, with a nonchalance that meant we were starting to feel like the outcasts for turning up rested and sober – as if by behaving like athletes we'd in some way dishonoured the event.

  'Yes, do it your way, but don't forget the spirit of things!' said Terry, as he wandered off towards the motley bunch of contest officials he'd assembled. His two judges looked more like over-worked farmhands than experts in the art of surfing. One was haggard and lanky, with fingerless gloves and rotting teeth, which he surely wasn't helping by chain-smoking throughout the morning. The other was a little more physically healthy in appearance, with a shaved head, stocky frame and small eyes (which were exceptionally close together) in a chubby, freckled face. From the way he nodded at everything the other said, he didn't seem to be very keen to think for himself. The third judge did not exist.

  Already this is a huge problem for a surf contest. Three judges are needed as a minimum or you risk either having split decisions or identical wave-scoring when they confer. Ideally there should be enough to have three on the panel for all heats, while others rest and a head judge oversees the whole thing to make sure that the scale is appropriately met.

  Terry claimed to be that head judge, although as he was also doubling as beach marshal, runner, tabulator and scribe – not to mention contest director, hotelier and pub landlord – it was clearly not a role he was going to be able to perform to maximum effect, even if he'd known anything about the criteria.

  As if these carefully chosen officials weren't already making this contest something of a lottery, the waves also posed a significant challenge. Having warmed up a little in the car, I stepped out into the wall of freezing air and walked towards the edge of a barren and almost infinitely long pebble beach to assess what I would shortly be paddling into.

  February is probably the most excruciatingly cold month of a surfer's winter, and the dreaded phenomenon of the 'ice cream headache' was ever present. If you dipped your head below the surface more than twice in a few moments, even with a wetsuit hood on, your head would seize as if in a vice. The ice cream headache is instant and excruciating, running around your temples and forehead as all the blood vessels spontaneously constrict in reaction to a sudden change in water temperature. Because of this you don't want to have to duck-dive a lot in winter surf.

  You needed to duck-dive a lot in this surf, though.

  The merciless sea at Newgale Beach had thrown up a solid swell, breaking a long way out to sea. Normally such clean lines, stacked way out to sea and groomed neatly by a frigid offshore breeze, would be a welcome sight to good surfers, who'd see the waves on offer as being worth the paddle and head pain. In clean conditions you'd often be able to slip around waves on your way out too, rather than having to duck-dive every set. Not here, though. Any hope of reaching the line-up without your head almost dropping off faded at the sight of uniform close-outs.

  A uniform close-out is a wave that closes out, or shuts down, with such blanket totality that there is not one point along the entire beach at which a surfer could ride across it for even a nanosecond. This is what Newgale was doing that morning. Sorry – this is what Newgale does every day of every year since the dawn of time. Or every single time I ever go there, at the very least. And it's a long beach too; well over a mile, so that's a hell of a close out.

  Slipping into freezing wetsuits, we contemplated the sight of these waves, shutting down and exploding like an Old Spice advert, blowing trapped air out of the back as thousands of tons of cold ocean folded in on itself. A few miles in either direction we knew there were probably surf spots firing, while we set about the task of negotiating a heat of hung-over beginners in thundering close-outs. There was probably more chance of needing to resuscitate your opponent on the wet sand than getting a decent opportunity to prove your surfing ability over him.

  Fortunately, Andrew, Al and I survived round one with little more than bodies frozen to the core. All three of us had formed identical heat strategies: take the smallest wave, drop straight down it as early as possible and then try gliding across the already broken white water for our only manoeuvre. The bigger sets would bre
ak too powerfully to allow you any chance of getting back up the wave after dropping in, so this would only work on the tiniest ones – otherwise the bounce of foam would just smash you, offering no reward other than another horrid paddle.

  Even this plan of attack was not effective enough for some of the more serious competitors – and by eleven that morning we'd seen a very accomplished surfer from Plymouth, who both Al and I had considered one of the event favourites, lose to someone who looked as if they could barely swim. He'd spent far too long fighting to get out the back, only to pick waves that threw him straight off. Meanwhile, to the jubilant applause of a group of mates, beer cans in hand, an unknown on an eight-foot mini-mal (a round-nosed board often used to give extra balance, at the expense of manoeuvrability) had waded out to waist deep and proceeded to catch a series of already broken waves that he rode straight to the beach, tentatively squatting for fifteen seconds a time. In theory any surfer who catches an unbroken wave out the back should, just because of the degree of difficulty involved, be rewarded with a much higher score than someone employing this inferior approach, which was basically that of a complete beginner. But throwing in a healthy dose of appalling judging, miracles were likely to happen. It meant we would have to treat a surfer of any ability as a serious threat.