up and down the coast looking for waves, as we would in the evening when we retired to the Café de Paris in Hossegor for one of many cold beers.
Wales’ based surf forecaster/photographer Paul ‘The Gill’ Gill has been making the journey to South-West France annually since the 70s and is in no doubt that it was better in the old days. “During the 70s and 80s we were pretty much surfing hippies and there were not that many of us living a travelling, surf-orientated lifestyle. Today’s city slicker-wannabe-weekend-warrior- hipster-dudes tend to bring attitudes and numbers into the waves, and often can’t even surf properly.”
I’ve even heard younger surfers claim that surfing must have been better in the old days because it was far less crowded and commercialised. But there were downsides to that too.
We were all self-taught, learning on high- performance, twitchy surfboards rather than stable, purpose-made beginner boards, and it could take a week of practice before you were at the level most people will reach in a weekend these days.
And catching the waves at their best was largely guess work; there were no surf guides or surf forecasts, Internet or otherwise, which could be dangerous as well as frustrating – myself and a friend almost drowned in a rip at a beach just north of Biarritz due to ignorance of the surf conditions.
Today your surf guide, whether printed or on your smartphone, will ensure you don’t even paddle out at such spots - but it will also ensure hundreds descend on the best breaks when they’re firing since there’s no longer any requirement for surfers to learn about weather patterns, oceanography, coastal geography and tides to score the best waves.
As Andy Middleton, one of my fellow travellers on that first surf trip (and now CEO of a successful outdoor guiding company) says, “We were guided then by conversations with locals and optimistic interpretations of synoptic weather charts to guess where the waves would be best, with no guidebooks, Internet sites or surf cams to steer us.”
Most would agree that’s a loss in terms of both knowledge and appreciation of the
©Col FL We were guided then
by conversations with locals and optimistic interpretations of
synoptic weather charts
©Col FL
Clockwise from top: 1963 Cote de Basques, SW France 1978 Jo Moraiz with surf trophy, Welsh surfers in Hossegor, France late 70s
surfing environment, for there are few things more satisfying than predicting where the best waves will be and walking over the dunes with your board under your arm to discover that not only are you correct, but only a handful of others have got it right too.
And do we really need surfer-specific accommodation, surf cafés, surf bars and more surf shops than you can shake a stick at to enrich our surfing experience? It seemed ok to me when you just hung out with fellow wave riders at any old bar and camped on any old campsite.
But we’re stuck with all these surfer- friendly facilities whether you like it or not, and that ain’t gonna change.
Fortunately, something else that won’t change any time soon is the quality of the surf in this corner of France, and as I walk down the beach at Mimizan Plage again almost forty years on from that first surf trip to Hossegor, freshly waxed board tucked under my arm and the warm sun on my back, I still experience the same frisson of excitement that I had all those years ago – and you certainly can’t put a price on that.
50 | WINTER 2019 | ONBOARD
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160
