European Dreaming: Rachel and Jerome’s Wooden Surfboard Workshop Experience

Once Ally had given a demonstration for the rail building, Jerome and Rachel got stuck into gluing and clamping theirs down.

As always, once we got absorbed in the making, we soon learned a little more about them both and it seemed they often suffered from itchy feet and a sense of wanderlust permeated their lives.

With Rachel having recently sailed (mostly solo) from John O’ Groats to Lands End and Jerome having been on a long surf trip to Brazil, they were both full of stories of distant shores and lives spent enjoying the oceans around the world.

Of course, with the year we’ve all had, travel has been very limited and so at a time when Rachel would have otherwise been surfing on the west coast of Portugal and Jerome would have been with his family in their favoured holiday destination of Ile De Re, both of them felt that staying closer to home and making a surfboard to inspire future trips would be a rewarding and fulfilling thing to do with some well-earned time off.

We’re excited to hear of the tales of surf trips that these two boards go on, though for now, I think the first few waves might be a little closer to home.

When the week began to wind down, it was amazing to hear them both reflect on how much they’d enjoyed using their hands to make something worthwhile and benefited from the way it forced them to slow down. We know it’s impossible not to when you completely absorb yourself in such a process for five days, but it was great to hear it straight from our workshoppers themselves.

If you’re keen to make yourself a surfboard to glide along waves with, check out our workshop page and get yourself booked in. We’ve got all the dates published for next year and as always, if none of them suit you, drop us an email, or phone call and we’ll do what we can to help.

Jerome made a 7’4″ Island Hopper.

Rachel made a 9’1″ Wicket.