He’s So Punk He Doesn’t Even Have a Website

The Polzeath trip – so punk he doesn’t even have a website.

The weekend’s jaunt to Polzeath started off in the usual fashion. I woke up on Friday morning massively excited, jumped out of bed and did the final prep for the trip.

I got my car all loaded up with my gear, but stood there scratching my head thinking “I’m sure I’ve forgotten something”. So, I went through everything. Tent? Check. Clothes? All present and correct. Wash kit and things like first aid kit? No problems there. So what was it? After some thought it struck me :  If I’m going on a surfing trip, taking your board and wetsuit is generally considered an advantage. With this little detail sorted out, jumped in the car and headed for my mates house (with a brief stop at the local supermarket to pick up some beers).

When I got to Chris’s and after a sarnie and a cup of tea , it was time to pack the car. Please bear in mind Chris has a big old estate car and we were only going away for a few days.

To say the car was full was an understatement. My board and gear, tent, clothes and a slab of beer. Chris’s 3 longboards, his tent, camping equipment, clothes, his bodyboard and wetsuit stuff. You couldn’t have fit a ciggy paper extra in the motor.

Before we departed, Chris had received a letter from the university he was studying his masters degree at. He got a distinction for his first year! Nice one Chris, you brainy sod! Anyway, another reason to have a good time , as if we needed another one.

• seriously, we were only away for four days....
• Even getting this shirt in was an issue
• How much kit do two blokes need?
• A silly amount of gear!

Anyway, the car loaded to the gunnel’s, we headed off , me sharing head space in the passenger seat with the nose of a long board. The traffic was horrible and very slow going, but we passed the time by re-counting tales of our past – surfing and non-surfing. We stopped at a  bizarre little roadside cafe for a much needed cup of tea. A massive mug of builders tea was consumed but that wasn’t the stand out thing about this eatery.  As well as selling teas, coffees, overpriced lunches etc. they also sold a vast array of bric-a-brac and accepted Euros as payment. I had a little chat with the guy behind the till and apparently the owners sun had a nice little sideline buying dinged surfboards on Ebay, fixing them up and selling them to people like Chris and I who were heading off to the West Country for the weekend. Bloody good idea if you ask me.

Tea drank, the necessary toilet functions performed and after taking this lovely photograph of me, we continued our odyssey west.

Arrival in Cornwall

When we were getting close to Polzeath, we were both hungry enough to eat a scabby donkey, so we stopped at a little chippy for a bite to eat. A nice portion of sausage and chips later, and worrying about the wind howling around our ears we carried on. 20 minutes later we arrived at Robbie Loves camp site. To say this camp site is a little different from the norm is like saying blu-ray discs are a little better than VHS tapes. At this point I’d add a link here to Rob’s website, but as one on-line review of his site says “Robbie is so punk He doesn’t even have a website”. So you’re just going to have to seek him out for yourselves!

• View from our tents
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• Our home from home
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We couldn’t find Robbie anywhere when we got there, so before pitching the tents we drove to the beach to check out the surf conditions for a little sunset bodyboarding session. Not great! The wind was howling on-shore , blowing out any of the small waves that were coming through.

We were a little disappointed. After much debate and study of what was going on in the water, we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth putting the neoprene on. It looked beautiful though, and I was psyched to think I would be surfing this lovely spot in the very near future!

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• Polzeath at sunset

Back to the campsite and unable to find Robbie, we abandoned the car and headed to the village for the evenings entertainment. The local pub was the Oyster catcher, a great little place with some stunning views of the beach. If you are ever in Polzeath, I can heartedly recommend this pub/restaurant/hotel . The place was full of folk having a good time, locals and Holiday makers alike.

I phoned home to let people know I had arrived safely on my “emergency only , really doesn’t matter if I lose this phone” mobile and that was the last I saw of it for a while, but I’ll get more into that in a while.

A little bit tipsy, we returned to the camp-site and pitched our tents in howling winds by torch light. Just as I was getting ready to hit the sleeping bag for the night because we had a “dawn patrol” surf planned for the next morning, a couple of lads walked past us and invited us to their caravan to carry on the party. Chris was absolutely knackered from the drive so he sacked out, but I took them up on their offer. More beer and some bongo playing later, I headed back to my tent.

The first session.

I awoke nice and early, being an insomniac has its advantages sometimes, and the wind had dropped off in the night and it was nice and sunny. Result!

We excitedly jumped in the car and headed to the beach. The glimpses we had of the sea on the way there weren’t that encouraging but when we got there we saw conditions that were surfable – just. Still , as we had driven all this way to get there, we suited up and hit the water. To my delight, Chris decided to Bodyboard for this session and we had a nice little “dawny”. The waves weren’t that great if I’m honest, around 2 foot with not a lot of power behind them, but after nearly 2 months of flat seas at my local break, it was lovely to surf again. I had maybe 3 decent rides that session, but picture the scene : Clean water, lovely locale , early morning freshness and only about 6 other people in the water. This is what it’s all about.

We surfed for maybe an hour and half to two hours before tiredness and the cold ended the session. Poor chris, his wet suit boots had gaping great holes the heals, so we needed to source him some new ones.

We got back to the camp-site to shower and change into some warm clothes, also we needed to move the tents to a more suitable place. This is when I first met Robbie Love. This guy is a legend! Friendly, funny, Cornish through and through and a real “have fun, enjoy yourself but don’t be an idiot and we’ll be fine” attitude. One of the first things he said to me was “That’s the first time I’ve seen a tent pitched in the car park!”. Hint taken, tents moved, breakfast was the next   order of the day. This was when I discovered my phone had disappeared.  I searched everywhere, tent, clothes I was wearing that night, ruck sack. No luck , it was gone. A bit pissed off about that but it wasn’t a great loss as it was a really old phone with a PAYG sim card in it, but it was my emergency phone . Oh well, c’est la vie.

We drove to Wadebridge  to seek out a big old fry up and we found a lovely little cafe, but for the life of me I can’t remember the name of it so sorry Cafe owners, I can’t put a link on for you! All baconed up, we had a little look around the shops, for one Chris really needed some new wet suit boots! There are some lovely shops in Wadebridge and its well worth a look if you’re ever in North Cornwall.

For dinner that night we decided to have a BBQ so obviously we needed to get some food in for it. As I get a staff discount in the local supermarket, we headed off there. That drive was an adventure in itself! We took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up on a magical mystery tour of the Cornish countryside! A few random turns later and much “I don’t know why but I think we should go this way” decisions, we eventually ended back up in wadebridge! we found the supermarket and stocked up on BBQ goodies. Also as one of Chris’s boards was damaged, we needed to perform some emergency surgery on it.

Emergency board repair!

Back at Robbie Love’s , sat in the sun, chicken and sausages cooking away and contemplating a surf later, it was at this point that I decided that frankly this was the life for me. When we were cooking, the camps handyman came over to us with a gift. This was the top off a gas bottle to put our bbq on, or have a fire in if we wanted to. Obviously we had a Health and safety brief to go with this “careful lads, its sharp as F*ck”. Excellent!

Then we met Tilly. I don’t usually like dogs, not scared of them, just don’t like them. Tilly was different. I love this dog! She came over to us, obviously on the scrounge for sausages but she stayed for a fuss. All belly and no legs, great little dog.

Tilly – the best dog in the world. So punk she doesn’t even have legs.

After our dinner had gone down, we re-loaded the car with our wetsuits and boards and headed off to the beach. Such a disappointment. Really crap conditions, and neigh on unsurfable. Still, we spent ages deciding whether or not it was worth going in or not. In the end we decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of getting suited up and set out to explore the local coast line to seek out some surfable conditions.
We looked at a few breaks like Constantine but there was nothing happening at all. We got as far as Newquay and the famous Fistral Beach , but it was still as flat as an ironing board. Bummer. Driving around the town, we were shocked to see it was nearly empty of people. Pubs were once you had to wait outside to get into were only half full and many of the clubs had gone in place of flats. A real shame. This got me thinking, Has the surfing bubble burst? I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. On the one hand, if the scene is now only full of people who surf for the love of it and not just because it’s “cool”, then yes, that’s great, but on the other hand, a lot of people who are now great surfers and bodyboarders got into the scene for the cool factor. Also, what will happen to the prices of surf hardware? I guess time will tell.

Anyway, back to the story. We got back at Polzeath and headed to the Oyster Catcher again. Bingo! A live band was playing some really cool Ska music and the place was jumping, three deep at the bar. Another great night in that boozer! Long story short: music and some beers. Enough said really!

Sunday

We had planned another “dawny” for this morning, but something interesting happened to me. I suffer quite badly from insomnia and I can’t remember the last time I had more than 3 hours sleep in a night. I slept till 9am! a full 7 hours sleep. Surfing really is good for the soul it seems.

We hit the beach again after a breakfast of sausages in wraps, but again, there was nothing happening. We found a coffee shop with free WIFI, grabbed a tea and a pasty and had a look on the Magic seaweed website to check out the webcams of the local area. Everywhere was rubbish that day locally, even looking at the webcams on Eyeball website for North Devon yielded nothing worth driving for. Oh well. This is the curse of the British surfer. We do get some really good waves, other days we get periods of nothing. It’s part and parcel of the lifestyle and the reason so many surfers travel to exotic parts of the world to score good waves.

We had spotted a sign on Saturday for a Clearance surf warehouse, so we decided to check it out. It was an Aladdins cave of boards, clothes, wet suits…. How I didn’t buy anything frankly is a mystery! As we were in the area, we went back to Newquay for a wander around as it was a lovely sunny day. I saw a great t-shirt that read “Yes, I’m going to surf for the rest of my life” but there was no way I was going to pay £25 for a t-shirt.

Chris managed to get himself some new wetsuit boots from the bodyboard depot and after a bit more window shopping, we had a bite to eat in town before heading back to Robbies. There was a “open mic” night at the pub and I got up and had a bash. I somehow managed to get through “breakfast at tiffanys” and “knocking on heavens door” before my meagre talent ran out and I slunk back to my table. I’m going to practice some songs for next time!

The final day

Once again we hit the Polzeath beach nice and early and the Gods had favoured us. Was it brilliant conditions? No, but that didn’t stop me practically running down the steps to get in. It was about 2-3 foot, and the winds were ok, but once again not alot of power. Still I had an absolute blast, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Had a bout 3 decent rides and cheekily said “its very nice” in my best Borat impression to Chris as I slid past him on one wave. Fun times!

A strange thing happened though, My phone turned up. It was hidden in the bottom of my board bag. How it got there I’ll never know, but just glad to have it back. Given that it had spent the whole weekend in the bottom of my bag with my fins, wax etc and still was going strong and undamaged is a miracle!

Eventually , the waves died off and as we were freezing cold, so we got out of the water in search of tea and brekfast. Near where we had parked there was a little caravan called, if memory serves, “surfies pancakes”. I had a delicious savoury pancake with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and sweetcorn and a big mug of tea. Chris was rocking a bacon roll.  We had a few laughs with the guy there and the food re-fuelled us nicely.

We contemplated another surf, but as the conditions had died off , we decided to leave the surf to the guys on their hired boards and think about heading home. When we got back, showered and changed into warm clothes it was time to take down the tents. The rain started falling and the wind picked up so I became the unwitting participant in a sport I like to call “chase your tent”. All good fun though!

We somehow managed to get all the gear back in the car and set off around lunchtime. I wont talk about the drive home because who wants to hear about traffic jams and manic service stations?

In conclusion

Even though we only had two surfs, we had an epic weekend. Lots of fun and memories. Before I left for this trip I was feeling really blue and in a bad way, but I feel rejuvenated to some extent and fired up for more trips. There are loads of good surfing beaches in the UK, not only in the West country, but Wales, Scotland, Ireland as well.  Have a look at this DVD for inspiration! The endless winter and have a read of this book Grey Skies, Green waves for some great writing on the subject. If you have the means , I strongly urge you to get out there and spend a time at some of the UK’s iconic surf spots. You might not score perfect waves all day everyday, but you will meet some interesting people and have memories that will stay with you forever.

Go on, you know you want to.