by Tom Anderson
'OK. Sounds good to me. Let's forget surfing for the day and hit it with a vengeance tomorrow.'
'That's the spirit,' he congratulated me.
'Good way of doin' things,' Pat added. 'Maybe sometimes you push a bit hard, you know, then it's not gonna work for you. Give it a bit of patience. Trust the waves, like, then who knows what could happen?'
Wise words for someone who has never surfed – so much so that it made me wonder for a moment if he was talking about the cows again.
Pat wanted to thank us for helping him herd the cattle that morning, so at teatime he offered to take us to 'see the dogs' in Limerick.
'My friend's got a dog in the seventh race,' he explained. 'Lucky number. He's hopin' it'll place something tonight. Are you a lucky man, Tom?'
'Not so far,' I frowned. 'But that's always liable to change, eh?'
'Of course. Remember what I said earlier. Maybe this is the change of fortunes you need.'
We hopped into his Land Rover, and after adjusting the cushion on his seat and rubbing his back, Pat fired the engine up and we were off. Limerick was a short run in the opposite direction to Bunratty, which took us past Cratloe and then through a series of busier roads until we were going right through the city centre. We crossed a well-lit bridge, which took us over the River Shannon – now a little wider but more under control than she had been when marauding through Pat's land back in Moyhill and annoying the cows. As in Wales, every road sign was repeated in Gaelic, and before long one in bolder lettering announced our arrival in one of Ireland's biggest cities:
Limerick – Luimneach
Limerick Greyhound Stadium was hardly noticeable. If Pat hadn't known where to go, we'd never have found it ourselves. He pulled in to a small, warehouse-like building with no obvious name. A man with old clothes and a weathered face surrounded by wild and wiry black hair walked up to us.
'Hello Pat,' he said. 'What race'll you be stayin' till? I need to know where to park you.'
'Oh, the seventh,' Pat replied.
'Oh yes, John's dog's runnin', eh? Right, pull in over there.' The man pointed to a space and we pulled up. At the end of the building was an outdoor yard and then a turnstile that released us onto a walkway that went right the way around the track, which seemed to have been inconspicuously smuggled in to the middle of a block of other city buildings, like a dirty secret. At the other side of the track to us was a stand and a few booths, most of them home to bookmakers.
Fiona and Rhyd went to get cups of tea, while Pat explained to me the difference between betting the 'Tote' and going to a private bookie. The sole traders looked intimidating, each of them lined up in a row along the bottom of the stand shouting odds with the manner of auctioneers. The 'Tote', meanwhile, was the safer, computer-run system, which involved walking up to an indoors counter where a bored girl was writing text messages and chewing a piece of gum as if it was the only thing worthy of her full attention.
'Are you good at bettin'?' Pat asked. 'Have you got a system?' Fiona had told me that he liked taking new people to the dogs because he thought they often had fresher instincts than hardened gamblers. She'd warned
me he'd probably watch my every move to see if he could 'learn something'.
'I'll probably read up on the dogs and try and work out their times and history,' I offered, meekly. 'Is there a programme?'
Pat stared bemusedly at me. 'Oh. That method, eh? Better watch the dogs come out then, too. See how many times they wee, if they look excited, focused.' Then he walked outside.
Fiona came over with some teas, holding a ticket stub in her mouth. She'd bet already. No system, just the first dog name to appeal to her. Tonetta Breeze. 'You can't work out anything,' she explained, shaking her head. 'Otherwise we'd be here every night making a fortune. All the bettin' does is help you enjoy the race.'
All the same, I decided to take it as seriously as I could. I watched the first race, which made me gasp at how fast the creatures could run, and then settled on an idea. Number five had seemed destined to win the race from the off simply because of the angle she (I checked the dog's gender in the programme) had been able to take in to the first bend.
Without saying any more I made for the Tote. Rhyd passed me, cursing having lost three euros. He suggested a side bet on which one of us had done the best by the end of the night which, given his handicap after having lost a few euros already, seemed a fair offer.
'You're on,' I nodded and turned to the clerk to make my first call: 'Number five; three euros.'
'Each way?' she queried, without even looking up.
'Er… yeah?'
'Six euros please.'
'What? How'd that work?'
'Each way – three to win, three to place.'
I remembered my one and only flutter on the Grand National back home – the same thing had happened to me then. Thinking it a blessing I knew so little about gambling, I reached for my cash, then walked back to the edge of the track.
It was about five minutes to the next race, which I spent outside talking to Rhyd about our surf prospects for tomorrow. If we didn't strike lucky, there'd be one day left before Ryanair packed me into one of their metal boxes and posted me back to Bristol.
'We shouldn't stress about it,' he reminded me. 'Once the swell arrives there'll be somewhere to surf whatever the wind. Trust me. This place absolutely pumps. I've driven past so many possible surf breaks. It'll be insane.'
'Have you bet this time?' I asked, wanting to change the subject for fear of getting up false hopes yet again.
'No,' he replied, firmly. 'I'm taking one off. Gonna wait for the luck to return. I've been here enough times to know how this shit works. It'll be the same with the surf. Don't worry though, I'll have you. I know how competitive you are. That's why you get so tense about surfing.'
'Shut up, I'm not competitive.'
'Whatever.'
I'm not sure why I was trying to argue this one – if I wasn't competitive then why did I get so forlorn losing? But then I had just spent half a year trying to reassess my competitive streak, perhaps hoping it might drop off like an unwanted tail.
But then my dog won and I felt that surge of adrenaline.
'Now we'll see if you're lucky,' said Pat as I grinned my way past him to go and place another bet. 'Try and do it twice. I'd stick with number five now. It likes you.'
If I couldn't win at surfing, then maybe I should take up something else.
Staring at the list of dogs for the next race, something in the back of my mind was distracting me. Rhyd's jibe was echoing through my head. He had a point. My lowest moments in surfing had always involved contests – while travel, it seemed, especially foreign travel, had been behind all of my best memories. This year I was addressing that dependence on foreign travel at least, but was I really any way towards shaking off my contest demons?
Without betting again, I wandered back out of the cafe-cum-bookmakers into the crisp night-time air. The dogs for the next race were being walked across to the starting cages by their owners. Pacing along the edge of the track, I watched the steam from my breath and sunk my hands deeper into my pockets for warmth. A smile caught the corner of my mouth as I thought this over.
In a way, I thought, I'd actually loved hating going to contests in Britain. Ever since the year I first caught the travel bug, when a month in France and Portugal had ended with a trip straight to Newquay.
Now it seemed funny. When I was sixteen I'd qualified for two junior surf contests, one near Lisbon and the other in the French town of Lacanau. I'd packed my bags and put together an itinerary that would keep me away from home for the entire school holidays, ending with the British Nationals in Newquay – round one of which took place on the Thursday I was due to get me GCSE results. (This should have meant a lot to me, as I'd learn whether my dad's incentive scheme had worked).
However, giddy with the joys of living out of a suitcase for weeks, of being away from my family and surfing every hour I could
find – as well as discovering the thrill of wanderlust – I hadn't given the British Nationals, competing or my exams a moment's thought. Until at ten in the morning, when in knee-high surf and with rain falling so hard you couldn't see more than twenty yards, I drew Rich Grove in the first heat of the event.
I lost to him and a young blonde kid from Newquay who I'd never seen before, and suddenly had four more days in Surf City UK to think about it. Quick as any poison, homesickness welled within me from deep down, paralysing time.
From a payphone on Headland Road, I learned that a train ticket back early would cost £137. One hundred and thirty-seven pounds to get from Cornwall to Wales! It was preposterous.
But I almost considered trying to find the money for it when I made my second phone call. I dialled home to learn of my exam results. I'd got the grades my parents had hoped for, as had most of my school friends. My mother had seen a good crew of them, including Rhyd, and they'd asked after me. Apparently they were all throwing a beach party: a summer blast to live long in their teenage memories.
And I was stuck in Newquay after a month on the road, reeling. This exorbitant fee, this ransom, would only be good enough for a thirteen-hour journey with six changes anyway. I was completely defeated and didn't even have the emotional energy required to cry.
At least my dad had managed to come up with a wonderfully inappropriate consoling message.
'Hey, there's one piece of good news,' he reminded me (besides the exam results, which I'd already forgotten).
'What?'
'Remember I said you could keep that surfboard if you got the right grades?'
'Yeah. The one I broke into four pieces,' I mumbled back down the heavy plastic handset.
'Yeah, that one,' he replied, coolly. 'Well, look on the bright side. At least you don't have to pay me for it now!'
I can't remember if I hung up. The horror of being stuck miles away from home – my first taste of the flip-side to travel, and millionth taste of the flip-side to competing – is by far the dominant memory.
But I'd absolved myself of this loathing of Cornwall now. The depression of that afternoon had been part of the experience. If you wanted to live your life from getaway to getaway you had to love it all. Love the losing, the things that didn't work out, love the loneliness.
I jumped as the bell sounded to signal that the next race was due to start. With a whoosh the hare was released, the echo of it tore around the track and conducted itself, like an approaching train, through the rail in front of me. Inside the cages the greyhounds started whimpering with excitement, scratching at doors they knew would open any second.
Love the rain, I thought. Love the cold. Love each and every mishap that will occur as a surfer in these hostile waters. It's all worth it – the hardship is what defines us.
The gates rose and six dogs smashed their way past, the pounding of their paws on the wet-sand shaking through the floor below me. I saw the delight and determination in their eyes – the tunnel vision that pulled them forward so fast their tongues almost got left behind.
I'd always loved it, I realised. Why else was I here? I'd been driving around for days looking at wind-ravaged, rain-soaked beaches and points – but every bit of it was what I lived for.
Tomorrow, I knew we'd score. Because we deserved to. We'd put in the hours, the days. We'd shown the patience required.
My thoughts were broken by Rhyd yelling, running down the steps towards the finish line: 'Come on Number Five. Come on! You BEAUTY! Yes!'
He'd just won his three euros back.
A let-up in the rain ushered us on our way the next morning, back for the coasts of County Claire. A virtually empty N18 motorway took us up to Ennis, from where we dropped on to the country roads.
Here another squall washed over us from the west, blown in from the Atlantic, before another patch of weak sunlight brightened the swathes of green. At Ennistymon we turned to make a line straight for the coast, which appeared on the horizon almost immediately.
Clean, new-build houses lined the road – beach homes people had knocked up to enable themselves to retreat to the now not-so-wilds of western Claire for their holidays. Rhyd explained to me that the area was getting more and more built-up each year. The neatness and precision of a lot of the houses gave the place a quaint homeliness for now, most of the buildings wearing freshly rendered, coloured walls; yellows complimenting the youthful slate that had been deftly lined up along the roofs. More rain started to fall, this time at an angle suggesting the ocean winds were its driving force, and I wondered how much longer these homes would look so new.
For the tenth or more time this week we pulled up at Lahinch's beachfront promenade, and immediately I knew something had changed.
Waves were breaking hundreds of yards out to sea. A violent, unrelenting swell had finally built and burst after a week of storms out west. On the shoreline the white water was getting whipped by the wind so hard it was forming a thick foam, a couple of feet deep in places. The odd clump would then get picked up and roll, like tumbleweed in a Western, across the car park towards a boarded-up complex of beachfront amusement arcades and shops. Rhyd needed only one look at the ocean here to hatch a plan.
'We're going towards Spanish Point – somewhere round that neck of the woods'll be pumping in these conditions!'
We got back into his car and he drove out of Lahinch, but this time towards the south. The road steadily ascended from sea level, allowing us to check out the deeply embedded lines of swell powering their way into the bay below. About half a mile later, and with the ocean now well below us, the road suddenly swung inland and we were in farm country.
From here there were no signposts giving us a clue where to head and I was again grateful to have someone who knew this coastline driving me around. Rhyd started pointing out little side tracks and rocky outcrops, telling me what he thought of each one.
'I reckon there's a steaming left down there. Needs a really clean swell, though. No use today… Now see that big peninsula there – that's got the sickest slab you'll ever see breaking on the end of it some days. Too much for me, mind. Reckon it's one for the tow-in boys…'
The road had come back to being more level with the sea, as I spotted another promontory of rock up ahead. I could see waves all around the tip of it; two different peaks breaking at such differing angles that one was getting completely hammered by the wind, while the other was holding its shape invitingly. The only trouble with going out there was the size, as well as the fact that even at a couple of times overhead it still wasn't fully clearing the reef in front of it – certain death for the likes of us.
Eventually we rolled into the village of Spanish Point – so named because the place could lay claim to being the final resting place of some of the Spanish Armada vessels. A load of King Phillip's mariners had met grizzly ends here in a monumental storm, as a plaque outside the Armada Hotel informed us. Rhyd knew the rest of the story, which wasn't good news for the survivors either, apparently. They had waded ashore only to get executed anyway.
No sign of the wreckage could be seen today – although it was obvious from the moment we arrived that there were at least three quality surf spots if the conditions were right. A big, open-water reef break was raging away at the top of the point, while there was also a peak in front of the hotel that looked like it didn't quite have enough tide on it but was strangely immune to the wind. At the end of the road was a beach break, which several surfers were floundering around in. It looked ugly – big close-outs and little room to paddle or watch what was going on around you. A river was pouring thick brown water in from the south side of the beach, and I could see driftwood and farm effluent floating through the line-up. Looks were deceiving because, apart from the pigment given to it by local peat, this run-off was pollution-free and cleaner than anything you'd find at home.
We pulled up for a closer look. A lone surfer had stopped at the same time as us and was about to get back in his car when I call
ed out to him for advice. This is often a risky move as local surfers can be very possessive, but he was nothing of the sort.
'That peak in front of the hotel is gonna work – round about now,' he explained. 'Pretty good too, I wouldn't mind betting. This beach break is a load of crap.'
We let him drive off and made our own way back towards the point to see if we could find a place to park.
It crossed our minds to leave the car at the hotel, but at home you'd get clamped for such a thing so just to be safe we made for a partially paved road that ran past a couple of secluded houses.
The exterior of the biggest house had been painted a ruby red that held my eye as we drove by. I craned my neck back to see if there were any signs of someone living there, before we went around a corner and the road plunged into the sea – literally. Part of the track had been washed away, but the bit where the landslide had occurred was now ideal for gaining access to the water's edge. Rhyd planted the car in a little verge of grass on the opposite side of the road and we stepped out to survey the surf.