Annual Gathering Of Makers 2016

25 . 09 . 16

Last weekend saw our fourth Annual Gathering of Makers, where we invited all the people who have shared a week with us in the workshop crafting their own surfboard back down to Cornwall to reconnect with our local section of the coastline, relive their experiences with us and fill their tummies with some wonderful food.

We love to start the weekend by gathering people together during the day on Saturday to get in the sea and despite the average swell running and strong northerly winds, we had a great turn out. A whole group of us; workshoppers, friends and families, headed down the coast to Gwithian to share a few waves in the intermittent sunshine, doing our best to catch some of the fun lumps that came through. It was a great few hours spent in the ocean and it is always such a pleasure to see a good selection of wooden surfcraft in the water together, with everybody cheering each other on. We were then all treated to a cup of tea and a delicious slice of flapjack, lovingly made by Tim’s wife Liz back in the car park, which meant for smiles all round.

Refuelled and warmed up, we then all made our way to Dunkirk Farm for the evening, where James first began making his wooden surfboards over 7 years ago and where his parents had been restlessly preparing all of the food for us – pulled pork, marinated lamb chops (all hand-reared on the farm), jacket potatoes, vegetarian chilli and a selection of salads. We’re all now salivating just thinking about it again. The beer was tapped, lights were strung up and a table and hay bales were laid out for us to eat around and share stories over as we welcomed more of our previous workshoppers, friends and family back together again. Being well fed and watered, we all slept fairly well and woke up to take part in a beach clean at Porthtowan, hosted by the Marine Conservation Society, where we focused on a particular area of the beach and noted all of the man-made waste we found to help them in a global research project. We were all treated to some fun waves on Sunday morning too.

We’d love to thank all of you who came along for making the trip west to join us, it is always one of our most memorable weekends of the year as we get a chance to catch up with many of you again, who become close friends in the short time you are with us in the workshop. Fingers crossed we’ll see you next year and those who couldn’t make it alongside some new faces from the upcoming workshop courses.

A huge thanks must go to Trudy and Andrew Otter for their help behind the scenes, without whom, we may well have all gone hungry on Saturday and for those of you that joined us, you may have noticed that Mat was not with us. You’ll all be pleased to hear that it is because his partner gave birth to their son on Thursday and he was understandably too busy being a father to his newborn to join us. All are healthy and happy…there’s one new face we may see with us next year!