by Tom Anderson
Someone had just paddled out – maybe the guy we'd just talked to. Already the presence of a surfer had given us perspective. The waves were a lot bigger than they'd looked without anyone in the water and were bending in to form a little wedging wall. The wind still seemed not to be affecting it at all.
'That's odd,' I pointed out. 'The wind should be side shore, and it's still really gusty – how's this spot so clean?'
'Who cares? Let's get in there!'
We started suiting up. I was buzzing. Surf in Ireland, at last. Rhyd hid his key in the wheel-rim of the car – which you'd never do in Porthcawl because of thieves – and we slid our way off the break in the road, to the slimy rocks below.
Halfway out to the peak, I could see already why the surf was so clean. There were kelp plants a couple of feet long stuck to the bottom throughout the line-up. Kelp, besides giving an eerie feel to a place when it comes into view or swirls just below you, smoothes the water's surface and gives it an oily look. It helps keep waves clean when wind is trying to mess things up. It prevents the energy created by wind-chop from being able to resonate through the water and stops it from forming the mini-waves that break a longer-range swell up. Northern California is famous for its glassy, kelp-soothed waves, and right now it was a welcome discovery.
The swaying plants on the seabed were also making the waves 'boil'. This is when something unusually shallow beneath the wave causes water to upwell in front of it. It causes bumps and smaller lips to form in the middle of the face, kind of like steps that you need to negotiate as you ride. On take-off, a boil can have catastrophic effects, especially if it's a 'rock boil'.
As we arrived in the line-up Rhyd paddled for a wave, only to pull back when a whole series of boils appeared all the way down the line. This surf, I realised, was going to be a lot more intense than we'd been expecting. At this stage I was hoping that these were merely being caused by kelp. A rock boil would be a different proposition altogether.
There was a lot of water moving sideways through the line-up as well, and this meant that Rhyd was now well out of position. If another set swung through, it would catch him out and give him a good hiding.
That was exactly what happened. In fact, the set that came through next was so big that I had trouble getting out of its way even from the main take-off spot. I had to turn my back on Rhyd and paddle for the horizon.
The guy who'd paddled out ahead of us, meanwhile (who was not the same person we'd talked to on the beach), avoided all of the fuss with expertise – calmly paddling towards the channel the moment he'd spotted the waves feathering on the horizon. He then turned and headed back towards the impact zone just in time to catch the last one. From there his local experience only took him so far. A set of boils appeared, throwing him forward towards the trough and the kelp below. I had begun to feel like a wimp for not catching one myself, but now my decision seemed justified.
It took Rhyd so long to get out of the churning shallows that I had time to assess several waves before he made it outside again. On about the third or fourth attempt, I felt confident I'd found one I could successfully scratch my way over the ledge of.
The wave chucked me into a partially airborne drop, which caused my stomach to flop. I just made it intact and tried a tame, mid-face turn, only for the bottom to fall out of the wave. I felt my fins lose their grip and had to throw all of my weight to the back foot just to make it out on to the face again. Then the wave fizzled into deep water and I rode, heart racing, to the channel. The juice in these waves was no joke.
Two more surfers made their way into the line-up as we tried to get to grips with what was, for the moment, a ferocious reef break. I asked one of the other guys in the water how these conditions measured up to the usual Spanish Point experience.
'This is pretty good,' he said, looking upwards as if trying to invoke a memory from somewhere. 'Maybe a bit wonky, though. Too much tide already. But all the rain's filled the water with the soil run-off. It's made it all thick and syrupy and hard for the wind to blow out – look.' He lifted his hand and let the water run through his fingers.
You never know with a comment like this if it's based on something concrete – surfers are the world's best lay scientists. But it made sense. The water did have a layered, Bovril-type colour – although when running through his fingers it looked more like weak tea. I watched a wave break. In the small spells of sunlight the roof of the lip looked almost yellowish. Combined with a landscape so drenched in green it meant the session was taking place with surroundings that were almost throbbing with colour.
I was getting slowly more confident with the take-off. The key was to lock in to the wave with as much paddle speed as you could build up, and to make sure you were well clear of the lip before jumping to your feet. Like Thurso East, or Up the Duff in the Hebrides, this was a wave that demanded total focus.
I was paddling back out from one of my more successful rides so far when Rhyd appeared at the crest of a set wave, poised to get into it. I yelled encouragement to him, seeing the suppressed excitement in his eyes as he focussed on the task at hand. Spreading his arms, crane-like, he kept the nose of his board high and then released himself for a freefall down to the bottom. I yelled again as he pulled the drop off and dug his inside rail in for a bottom turn. The tempo of this session was increasing with each wave.
Most of the time the peaks shifting through were warping and warbling too much to even think about the tube. I kept mind-surfing them on my way back out. Slowing enough to hook yourself in there, while still making it down the face, would be a risky business. But I couldn't help wondering what Jason Duffy, or Rhino and Jem, would have done here.
The one thing this wave was perfect for was swinging in to great, drawn-out cutbacks. A thick slope of heavy, cold, dark water is the surfing equivalent to several feet of powder on a snowboard, or a big, smooth tarmac slope to a skater. In fact, those other board sports have sprung up to recreate the sensation of surfing a wave like this. But nothing feels as pure as the real thing. To bury your board onto its edge and then throw all your weight through an arcing turn, knowing the water below will bear everything you throw at it, is a feeling of at-oneness with the ocean that rivals any tube ride.
If you timed it right, you could race away from the churning curl and then swing a full roundhouse turn all the way back to tag the foam ball just as it was ready to bounce you back on to the bowling wave face. Pulling that off from start to finish is something that embeds itself in your mind – so much so that recalling the memory of it can make you start twitching instinctively in all sorts of inappropriate landlocked situations: post office queues, restaurants, important meetings – even in the cinema with your feet resting on the chair in front.
Along with the aroma of sea, the ritual of creeping your way down across the slippery kelp and the first moment of contact with the sharp ocean, this was the intimate meeting with Ireland that I had wanted. When the tide rose, I made my way across the pebbles in front of the point with the trademark spring in my step of someone liberated by the power of surf stoke. I tiptoed across the lime-tinted moss and flat stones greased by liquid peat seeping out of the ground.
It was raining again, and I welcomed the fresh water pouring off the ocean from the now horizonless sky. The elements were making their way into my soul.
Rhyd caught a wave in too, and punched the air with both hands as he straightened out and made for the shore. Behind him two more locals continued to surf as the wind cranked itself up yet again. Did they realise how unique and how enviably blissful their experience of surfing was?
And did we?
Driving away, watching the car windows mist up from our wet hair, my mind wandered. The way the tube sections at Spanish Point had writhed and warped so unpredictably had reminded me a little of a couple of the reef breaks around West Wales – a place I should be starting to think more fondly of if I did feel the need to compete again.
I wondered how far I had to go b
efore I was ready to make that call. Would next year's Welsh be a good chance to evaluate how far I'd come? And if so how would I judge that? Did it still matter? I wasn't sure any more if doing well there was still that important.
I began recalling the various times I'd exited early at the Welsh, thinking of the reasons behind it. Was it always my attitude? Did I deserve such rotten luck?
The narrowest loss of all had involved one of those rock boils, as it happened. Freshwater West, where the Welsh was usually held, had two contest sites. One was the main beach, on your right as you looked out to sea, while the other slightly more treacherous spot was known as Middle Bay. Middle Bay was surrounded by rising slopes of soft marram grass and topped with a high-vantage-point road lined with parking spaces, from where competitors could see across the coast for miles. The way the wave was situated at the foot of a staggered sitting area gave it this amphitheatre feel – you were often surrounded by spectators who were very close to the action. And yet while out there in a heat you were a world apart from them, struggling to find waves in conditions that were usually very taxing.
One of the main reasons for Middle Bay being considered so treacherous was a single, two-prong outcrop of rock that lurked close below the surface – known to the locals as 'Black Betty'. You never knew when Black Betty was going to show, which made catching the right wave a lottery. If you got lucky there'd be no sign at all, but on occasion a great cauldron of upwelling water would appear in front of the wave; as nasty a rock boil as any I knew. If Betty didn't actually protrude, her rock boil alone would be enough to bump you off, as the water below your board suddenly refused to do anything but swirl and bubble. It was an aquatic version of quicksand, pulling you down for a closer inspection of the unforgiving reef.
One year I was picked on by Betty during my round two heat. By accident, she helped me get one of the waves of the event – although even that wasn't enough to assist in my ill-fated plight. I had dropped in unaware of her presence, only to see her pop up right in front of me. Steering down the face to avoid having to drink my food through a straw for the next month, I found a part of the wave that was unaffected – whereupon with no warning the remnants of Betty's boil caused a tube to throw forward. Without really doing anything to deserve it, I was suddenly lodged behind a curtain of water, still holding enough rail in the wave to keep my line. As often happens in the tube, instinct took over, and a moment later I was out, racing back towards safety. The score I got was unusually high for the conditions. The judges hadn't been expecting anything of the sort that morning, and it left me needing to do little more than get to my feet on a second wave to make it to the next round with a solid performance under my belt.
There are probably few surfers in Wales capable of spending ten minutes failing to catch a half-decent wave in clean Middle Bay with only three others out – but I was one of them. Even Black Betty coming to my aid hadn't been enough to break my Welsh Nationals hoodoo.
Black Betty was, of course, infamous in Welsh surfing lore. Several plots had been mooted over the years to dynamite the offending lump of limestone by night – but aside from the time she helped add another failed nationals campaign to my collection, I also had a very fond memory of Pembroke's renegade rock boil.
One of my and Rhyd's best friends in school, Tristan, used to invite us on surf trips to Fresh West with his dad, Geoff. Geoff Davies was, along with my father, one of the early legends of Porthcawl surfing, and hailed from a day when travelling over Wales and England usually made up the largest part of any surfer's lifetime itinerary. Theirs was a generation that certainly had the stoke needed to keep surfing enthusiastically in British waters, and on these trips we'd often meet other members of the old guard.
Geoff used to 'rescue' us from school. On one of the hottest days I can recall, he and my dad had left messages for the receptionist to come and get us, citing family emergencies. Smugly, we walked free from our geography class, knowing exactly what the emergency was.
A lined-up, three-foot summer swell was hitting Middle Bay, almost every wave hitting Black Betty at exactly the right angle to tube over her without too much disruption. Two of my dad and Geoff's mates, both of whom have since sadly, passed away, were out enjoying the session, revelling in the sweet conditions on offer below skies utterly clear of cloud. One was Paul Ryder, one of the founding fathers of Welsh surfing, whose thin face with its short beard and wise eyes was then one of the most regular in the Fresh West line-up. Another was Jeff Price, the wetsuit maker, who wore a permanent smile whenever I saw him.
We'd enjoyed a whole day of surfing, and now the tide was dropping below the reef at Middle Bay as the sun fell low in the sky. My dad, Tristan and I, and the two local legends were sitting on that elevated grass verge – the selfsame amphitheatre in which I'd have a very different experience years later – and watching the lines roll through. Geoff Davies was looking for a wave in, and found one. There was something odd about it though, and after a few turns we all gasped as we realised it would run past Black Betty. At this lower stage of tide the rock was so defined you could see its two slightly separate peaks – and it was the gap between these that Geoff chose as the route to safety. Others on the hill also started whooping as he lined up to shoot through the rocks – a passage so narrow a surfboard would only make it if its trajectory was inch-perfect.
Crouching into 'hero stance' Geoff took aim and flew through the two rocks, while the watching crowd erupted. For all the noise they could just as easily have been watching the winning goal in a football match.
As the oldies crowded him and offered their praise, Geoff stated matter-of-factly: 'I've wondered if that was possible for years, and when I got that wave just then I thought it had the right amount of water in front of it and thought, fuck it, let's give it a go!'
Tristan's face dropped. Not only had his dad just pulled off one of the most heroic surfing stunts he'd ever seen – but he'd sworn too! We were slowly being inducted into their world, and we loved it.
These were the memories I should be holding onto of Middle Bay, of Fresh West, I thought. What did losing in a drizzly contest matter anyway?
Mind you, in Ireland you could even learn to love drizzle – with a bit of meditative mind control.
I wondered if thinking about the Welsh Nationals as any kind of objective for me wasn't just a bit crass – sure it had been where this idea to get out and about within the UK, and now Ireland too, had begun germinating, but did that really matter now? Jeff Davies's approach to Black Betty was infinitely more memorable than mine. It was legendary, and he hadn't needed a contest vest, an affiliation fee, a disclaimer, a stopwatch. He hadn't been surfing to the hoot of a horn. Surfing was about the pursuit of freedom anyway, wasn't it?
As well as the waiting.
For this visit to Ireland, short and sweet though its eventual payload had been, the wait had been worthwhile.
The rain, the cabin fever – it had been rewarded.
'I suppose in the end it was better that we had to wait almost a week for that,' I noted to Rhyd, as he turned the wipers up again to fend off another encroaching belt of rain. 'You kind of feel as if you deserve it when you've put something in.'
He didn't say anything for a moment, as if he had to think about it. But then he asked, 'What's that play with those two blokes who wait for nothing to happen? They're Irish aren't they? Come on, you ought to know.'
'D'you mean Waiting for Godot?'
'Yeah. I think so. Don't they just wait and wait, and then it turns out they're waiting for something that doesn't exist?'
'Kind of.'
'That's cool,' he said, moving his attention from the wiper dials to the windscreen heaters. 'Don't you reckon? I think it's awesome. That's us, isn't it. Two guys driving around a desolate landscape searching for I-don't know-what, and then kind of thinking we might be there, but only for an afternoon. Isn't the wait the thing that gives a surfer's life meaning, anyway?'
'Yeah, it is,
I suppose. Or if not the wait, it's the search at least.'
'So what about surfers then?' Rhyd asked. 'Aren't they waiting for something that doesn't exist?'
'I dunno. Maybe. Do you think it exists?'
Rhyd paused, turning the dial on the radio back down. He thought for a moment and then answered firmly:
'Yes. I think it does. Yes. It does exist.'
CHAPTER 13
CEREDIGION ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, AND RAINBOW'S END
It does exist.
I should have known all along. Or rather remembered, because commitment and belief are two of the fundamental pillars of the surfing religion. To really score you need faith that what you're after is out there somewhere, and above all you must make some kind of sacrifice.
OK, so I'd sacrificed plenty of time and money in the last year, sanity in Ireland, honesty in my industrial backyard, sleep in Scotland and my body's core temperature all over the place. But I'd never imagined this one coming. And neither had my drinking buddies…