by Tom Anderson
We'd reached the water's edge, and I looked out to sea at ominous, towering walls of water. It was time to focus.
Elliot was super-keen. I could see determination in his eyes as he shook any remaining stiffness out of his shoulders, readying himself to do what he did best. Similarly, the other two were both thinking only about getting on with surfing. This, I realised, was the point where usually I would start to grumble – if only to myself – about the cold, the wind, the constant irritations of surfing in Britain. But that was something I'd come here to confront. There existed more than one way of seeing things. Sure, in front of me was a cold, uninviting sea of choppy, inconvenient surf – if I chose to see it that way. But there was also an exhilarating tussle with the powers of the North Atlantic on offer, the reward potentially being the chance to rev across some big waves at high speeds. All I had to do was drag myself a half-mile or so out to sea to be in place to catch one of them.
Ignore trepidations and get on with it, I ordered myself. Enjoy being out of your comfort zone. You would if you were anywhere else.
The water felt a little warmer than Porthcawl – part of the Gulf Stream making its way almost directly up this way. It was mid-spring, so you still felt the sharp change in temperature on your feet and hands as land turned to ocean. And then came the first duck-dive. I sunk my board and plunged downwards after it to slip under the oncoming wave, a little shiver went through my head as it too adjusted to the new surroundings. I resurfaced awake and fresh, taking a gulp of air and digging in for the paddle out.
Ten, twenty and then thirty duck-dives later, red-faced and shoulders filling with lactic acid, I sat up on my board. I was about halfway out – with no sign of the other three anywhere. There must have been a trough in the sandbanks below as I'd found a little patch of water that seemed not to have any breaking waves. Back on the beach I could now see several figures running around, chasing sheep and dogs in all directions. Another three people were standing on a dune, either watching passively or waiting to get involved themselves. I wondered if one was Dom, the mysterious director of the shoot. The one whose imagination had turned what was going on all around me into 'woolly whites'.
I needed to keep paddling for their sake as much as mine. Momentarily rested, I took aim and prepared for the final push towards the almost mythical zone of calm water that I knew existed somewhere beyond the immediate foreground of angry white water – or wool as the Welsh Tourist Board planned to soon dub it.
When you're in the middle of a big swell, the horizon can often be hidden by rising and breaking water – and on a particularly tough paddle-out it can be hard to gain perspective of how far you are from where you need to be. Using the beach as a marker though, I knew the end of this watery treadmill had to arrive soon.
Eventually a gap between sets appeared, and I dashed for it, throwing every drop of power in my shoulders towards the goal of making it to the line-up.
When I got there, I saw Elliot waiting, relaxed, for the right wave.
'Where are the others?' I asked.
'Dunno,' he said, dismissively. 'I think Harris just caught one. Not sure.'
As he said this, we both started paddling again when we saw a solid set approaching just to our south. Ahead of me, and a few seconds quicker with his paddling, I saw Elliot lock in to the first wave. He looked quickly up and down the beach both ways, working out whether to take off to the right or left. The wave lifted just as it got to him, rising up into a thick peak, and Elliot jumped to his feet and dropped in.
He was gone. I couldn't see what happened to him from there, other than knowing that he made the take-off. Neither could I see whether Ivan had been able to take any shots of him from the shoreline. All these things were peripheral to the fact that a second wave was also heading into the line-up within my range, if I paddled quickly enough.
As it neared and I kicked my feet at the water behind, I could already feel I was going to be able to catch it. There was power in this swell – that feeling of being able to surf with speed at your disposal. I jumped up and turned towards the right and onto a wide, rolling wave face. Moving this fast you could feel an instant response to any change in weight or balance. I tried to put my board on its edge – or 'rail' – as deftly as possible, using my speed to redirect back towards the steeper pocket of the wave, reaching the bottom again just as a long wall rose in front of me. At the end of it was a huge bump of white water (or wool), pouring across the unbroken part. Glancing off it, I angled back towards the left again – to see the entire wave reform and stack up all over again. I was still at least fifty yards away from the beach, and this was already a screamer of a ride.
When I eventually bashed my way off the last section, now only a stone's throw from the shoreline, I could see Ivan running towards me, camera in hand. He was waving frantically. Before I could respond with any kind of gesture, he suddenly turned, dropped onto his knee and aimed his camera at an oncoming trio of sheep. He fired off a load of shots as they ran past him. At the end of my ride, I sunk into the shallows and got back on to my board. Whether I'd still been riding anything as the sheep passed would be down to luck rather than any surfer photographer teamwork.
The second paddle out was infinitely easier, having just ridden one of my best British waves of the year so far. Where was this kind of form when I'd needed it during the Welsh a few weeks ago?
When I reached the line-up this time I was granted a little longer to puff and pant before a set came. I used the time to look back at the beach, where it looked as though the sheep were running riot. The dogs were nowhere to be seen and poor Ivan had dug himself into a dune, lying on his stomach with his lens trained like a sniper on the farce unfolding in front of him. The only thing missing was The Benny Hill Show theme tune for comedic effect.
Not my problem, I decided. My selfish surfer persona had taken hold.
Four waves later I was again sitting out back – by now feeling pretty pleased with myself and buzzing from the vigour of it all. Here and there I'd glimpsed the others, either paddling or riding, before eventually spotting Elliot walking up the beach.
I took a quick ride on a smaller wave, which only took me a little of the way in, and paddled back out to find Dan sitting where I'd just taken off.
'Getting a couple?' I asked.
'Fuckin' right. There are some steaming waves in here, man. I just had one that was like Sunset Beach, like!'
'What's Smelly doing?'
'Dunno. Might go in and see, like. They won't be taking any more pics if he's not in here. We're not good looking enough.'
I laughed.
I love the vanity of surfers. We were both right in the middle of a classic session and yet all it took to get us back on the sand was the thought that Ivan might have stopped taking our picture. As soon as Dan had said that we both took waves to the beach where Nia had also made her way up the sand and was sitting next to Ivan, who, sure enough, did appear to have packed up.
On seeing us making our way to the shore, he stood up slowly and began walking towards us. Convinced this apparent nonchalance was down to his having taken a million great photos of us charging across the woolly whites behind, I smiled and gave him a thumbs up and raised my eyebrows to gesture a question.
He didn't respond.
'How'd we do?' Dan asked.
'You get much?' I added.
'Uh, no. I haven't taken one picture yet.'
'You what?'
'I haven't been able to take one. You're all surfing too far out.'
'Really?'
'Yeah. Can you stay a bit closer to the shore, please?'
This made sense. The biggest of the waves were breaking a long, long way from the shoreline – enough to make you feel as if you were halfway to Ireland when sitting out there.
'OK,' I replied. 'How close? What's good for you?'
'Much, much closer,' he said sternly. Behind him I could see Elliot looking forlorn.
'OK. That we can do. How
far then – you point out.'
'About five metres from the sand?'
The two of us stared at him, dumbstruck, before looking in unison back at the creeping shoreline.
'Five metres?'
'Or closer.'
Dan tried to explain that it would be physically impossible to ride a wave that close to the sand. Not only would our fins drag along the bottom but there would be no power to keep you afloat.
Little did we know that Elliot had already tried telling Ivan this and that the whole shoot had been thrown into jeopardy by these Londoners not knowing enough about surfing.
Elliot was talking to Dom, the director, a gaunt man with jet-black hair in a long ponytail and purple denim trousers. I walked over to them, discovering that he spoke so softly you couldn't hear his voice unless you got to about a foot away.
'I'm going to talk it over with Ivan,' he was saying.
Right now, this appeared to be one of the silliest situations I'd ever gotten myself into during all my time as a surfer. We were being told to stay within five metres of the beach in order to allow a photographer to keep his camera focused on a sheep.
'They should have booked a surf school to do this for them,' Elliot quipped. 'They stay only a few metres from the sand.'
'Must be pretty hard, though,' Nia said, defending the now absent Ivan, who had walked off for a tête-à-tête with Dom. 'Keeping those things in focus,' she pointed at a stray sheep that had come to take a look at us, 'while trying to get a shot of one of us riding a wave.'
I sat in the sand and stared at the sheep. Mesmerised, like a newborn baby, it just gazed back at me, its entire psyche clearly focussed solely on trying to work out what the hell I was. A line of thin water swept its way gradually up the beach, catching the sheep's hooves, which caused it to jump on the spot and trot away – all memories of the strange wetsuited creature probably already wiped from its sieve-like mind.
Ivan was returning. And he didn't look happy.
'OK. I'm going to have to change focus. It's not cool at all, because the picture's going to look nothing like the sketch now.'
I was struggling to see why this really mattered, but apparently it did. Clearly not being able to reproduce a photographic likeness of a drawing was a first for Ivan, and one that made me feel a growing sense of pride at the awkwardness of surfing and surfers.
'You'll be able to go to twenty-five yards out now,' he frowned 'That any better?'
It wasn't much better, truth be told, but by now we were all starting to want out of this increasingly odd situation. The only way to do that would be to try and ride a few waves within the generously increased range he'd just outlined.
Of course, what followed was indeed a farce of the highest order. With a six-foot-two shortboard, designed to ride across fast, unbroken waves, I promptly set about trying to catch small lumps of shoreline dribble – waves that a surf school on big buoyant beginners' crafts would indeed make much better use of. Next to me was the European longboard champion, also standing, a picture of humiliation, on waves a few inches high and routinely riding them directly towards the beach. The great Elliot was getting back to basics.
At least he had a longboard – a board that made this kind of surfing possible. For me, it was never going to happen. I'd catch a small wave, jump up and then get the chance to pump my board a few times before it would sink beneath me.
And all the while the session was taking place to a soundtrack of barking sheepdogs and their baying owner, the farmer from mid-Wales – who had come dressed for the beach in his wellies, dai cap and tweed jacket. Lying behind them was Ivan, once again belly-down in the wet sand like a frontline soldier. He kept disappearing from view as a cloud of alarmed sheep passed him again and again – being driven in circles by the two dogs.
Woolly whites all around me, I thought. If the tourist board couldn't convince the general public to fall back in love with the Wales through this display, then there would be no hope.
They were winning me over, at least.
Once our humiliation on the sands of Hell's Mouth was finally over and Ivan had triumphantly declared that he'd scored the shot we needed, the ad agency offered to feed us again. As is common sense when offered a free lunch, we accepted. This meant a trip to a pub in the nearby town of Abersoch – a humble beachside settlement with a harbour tucked warmly behind the eastern flank of the Llyn's exposed tip. It had a surf shop and winding streets with neat houses and salt air. Although no doubt heavily reliant on tourists in the height of summer, Abersoch's lack of chain logos and obvious sales pitches made it seem sure of its identity as a beach town on the end of a peninsula in the furthest corner of the least-populated home nation. But then most places with surf often do have that sort of self-confidence – that knowledge that, whatever else, they hold paramount, year-round significance to a dedicated tribe of followers.
Since someone else was paying, we all ordered the most expensive thing on the menu – a large steak – along with a pint of the Purple Moose Brewery's Cwrw Madog, the local ale. We followed it with dessert, and promptly all began falling asleep right there in the dimly lit pub lounge. The contrast between this warm shelter and the windswept beach that had preceded it was hitting us, along with fatigue from the demanding surf and the drive up yesterday.
Half an hour or so lapsed, during which time Ivan and Dom said thanks, paid us and got us to sign all sorts of forms before heading off – presumably to London to go and analyse their images of woolly whites.
Drowsy and in danger of warming up too much to ever want to go back in the water, it was Dan who ruthlessly called us back into action. The good swell yet lack of other surfers at the beach had been a sign there were probably great waves breaking somewhere else in this vicinity. It was now our mission to find them. We had to get up and out, and soon.
This was the pay-off. Now free from our modelling obligations, it was time to turn the rest of the afternoon into pure surf trip.
The only one of us who had been here before, Dan, claimed to know already where we had to go.
'Porth Ceriad!' he stated unequivocally. 'Big, barrelling lefts. There's tons of swell today, so I reckon it'll be breaking.' He was referring to a series of heavy and hollow lefts that broke off a cliff headland. I'd seen shots of it in surf mags before, usually with a surfer hanging out of the lip, poised perilously halfway between doom and glory. Porth Ceriad had a reputation for steep drops and explosive, bouncing peaks.
Sharp of mind when he needed to be, Dan could remember the way there too.
We headed back out of Abersoch in the direction we'd come, but this time turned left along a quick succession of lanes, until an approaching cliff indicated we'd found the west coast again.
When we pulled up it was obvious Dan's call had been spot-on. Several cars were parked up, their boots open with surfers either changing into or out of wetsuits in the space behind. You could see from their faces that the surf was good. Those with wet hair looked satisfied, stoked, while the ones that were getting ready to go in carried looks of anticipation and eagerness.
A light mist, barely perceptible, was drifting up from the beach, which was some way below us. When I walked to the edge of the sloping path down, a row of cleanly defined peaks each stacked up and broke mechanically. The wind that had carried an awkward direction for Hell's Mouth was now lightly grooming the waves. There was a headland over to our left from which the lines were refracting. You could see each row of energy moving through the ocean's surface, before criss-crossing off of the headland and rising up to pitch forward at the point of overlap. From this elevated position it brought a new clarity to the term 'A-frame' (where the water is decorated with rows of symmetrical, wedging wave patterns, each mimicking the shape of the letter 'A' itself).
The way the peaks rolled away from the headland meant the waves were mostly what we'd call 'lefts' or 'left handers'. With us being 'natural foots' (or 'regular foots') – we stood on a wave with our left feet forward �
�� this meant we'd be surfing with our backs to the unbroken faces, known as 'backhand' or 'backside'.
'I'm getting my shortboard this time,' Dan announced. 'Steep lefts – got to be done.'
You couldn't really judge the height of the waves from what was almost a bird's eye view of the beach – but I knew these would be challenging waves to ride well on a longboard. Elliot would manage to make it look easy though, no doubt.
Sure enough, this was an accurate prediction. As we descended from car park to beach, the front-on perspective began to emerge. The swell was running at just over head-height, with some bigger sets. And most of the waves were breaking fast, steep and powerful, pitching from top to bottom in one smooth motion. I watched lip after lip lurch forward, a crisp cracking sound echoing each time around the surrounding cove on impact. With a cumbersome nine-footer like Elliot's, merely fitting the curve of the board into that rapidly changing wave face or pocket would require balance, precision and strength.