Having arrived in the UK just in time for a cold snap. Saturday morning I headed down to Devon, having not been there for many years I expected a quiet empty Croyde with a few die hard locals braving the cold water in search of a little winter stoke! I couldn't have been more wrong the B&B's were full and there was as much surf buzz in the air as I have ever met in the other Torquay in Victoria, wow! Swells coming tomorrow and people are coming with it.
I found a room in the Thatch, a beautiful old English thatch roofed pub that serves an awesome breaky with a good latte and has great food and ale for that post winter surf warmth.
Having arranged to meet Tom on Sunday from a board some wax and a leash I hired a wettie and headed off to the beach, to my surprise the water wasn't that cold but the wind most definitly was and after some fun little lefts I decided that was enough and headed back to the pub.
Back at the pub with a Cornish Ale and Burger with the lot I soon thawed. Chatting with Alex, a local surfer girl and business entrepeneur I discovered there was avaliable a very useful surfing aid in the form of a Tide calender that her and a freind put together, full of very cool pics and useful info as well as a cool peice of graphic design. So if you are heading down to Devon or live there make sure you buy one and in the mean time look up Kooksurfer on facebook.
Sunday after an awesome breakfast I headed into Braunton to look at Gulfstream surfboards, very beautiful boards, all custom made locally. Later that day as the tide dropped and the swell picked up I headed over to meet Tom at Coombesgate. We were greeted with head high clean waves and being sheltered the wind was fairly light, Tom kindly offered to let me try one his boards and so I decided to start with the simster, It was so busy all these crazy people wanting to get into the ocean in January! and me being one of them. Anyway we paddled out to fairly quiet bank and even though there were a few out the peaks were shifting so the crowd was reasonably spread out and I got a few nice lefts on the simster and a couple of rights on his Bing Dharma which was a really sweet board, lively and fun.
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