Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
"The summers passed with each year. I don't seem to remember them anymore. I remember the fall and the coming of winter. The water got cold. It was a time of the West swell." Jack Barlow, Big Wednesday (1978)
Traffic jams, full car parks and a seemingly never-ending succession of nor'westerly fronts. Welcome, to summer by the sea. Residents can't...
Jonny, Andy and Jon arrived on the Monday morning of this year's April workshop as total strangers to one another. Over the course of their week...
At this time of year, when the sun rises so early, we sometimes (as often as humanly possible) manage to squeeze in a dip in the sea before heading...
Last summer we received an e-mail from one of our friends at Surf Simply; Kerianne, their logistics manager, was spending a summer on Long Island,...
Peering through the half-light of dawn, filtered through the mist and spray hanging in the air, you see a speck fall in to a wave and suddenly betray the true size of the swell. With this perspective the wave now seems to be moving in slow motion, as though pushing through treacle, and the surfer drops, reaches the bottom, and sits back into a do-or-die backhand bottom turn. He holds his body position, frozen as everything else moves around him...
The 7’10” single fin pintail had been back from the laminators for a few weeks, taking up residence on the workshop wall whilst we waited for a...
Back in August three of our friends, David Smith and Jack Middleton from Surfers Against Sewage and Jack’s girlfriend Brogen Latham, travelled...
If you take a left out of the end of our road, follow it a mile or so to the end and turn right down the valley, you'll meet the Atlantic Ocean at...
Long-range groundswells born of far off hurricanes and the first rumblings of winter mix with the last gasp sunshine of summer in autumn, and the...
Last September Mat headed down to the southwest corner of France for a few weeks with his friends from Surf Simply. Because September and October are the height of the rainy season in Costa Rica, where Surf Simply have their luxury surf coaching resort, they shut up shop for a month and several of their coaches run a satellite coaching project on the French coast. Mat joined them as the project’s photographer, swimming in the beachbreaks...
We like to keep in touch with everybody who has ever joined us to make their own surfboard, and it’s incredible when we receive an e-mail with a...
Our friend Tony had quite the complete workshop experience with us over the first six months of this year; he fitted in sessions and days at the...
You don't have to go very far, or for very long, to feel as though you've broken out of your routine and had a bit of an adventure. A couple of weeks...
In the middle of March, James and our good friend Tony took a few weeks off the making of Tony’s wooden surfboard with us to head over the Irish...
Over Christmas and the New Year James and Liz finally headed off on their slightly belated honeymoon, trading the wind and rain of the northern hemisphere’s winter for the warmth and sunshine of New Zealand, the “land of the long white cloud”, for a few weeks. Despite it being their honeymoon and not a surf trip, James packed a surfboard and wetsuit anyway claiming it too good an opportunity to miss even if he only managed to get in the...
We’ve had a rather unusual surfboard stored in the workshop for the past year or so; it’s a twelve feet long replica of a Tom Blake style...
Abandon all hope of glory Let it fall from your hand, Float through grit And settle to the sand. Swim on comrades The Closeout is...
Commit your all to everything that you do. Commit to doing the best work that you can, so that you can stand by it. Commit to doing right by...
