Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
I’ve spent a fair chunk of my adult life now at sea on wooden vessels – be they surfboards or sail boats. Holding the line of a 5'5, 8kg Seader in fast, beautifully round, waves in the Maldives for the first time required a shift in my approach. I had to slow down, to feel more, and become more sensitive. It didn't happen on my first attempt, or even my second, but with some patience and practice I realised that James’ board demanded my...
It was our Chris' birthday last week but despite him having the day off, he came in to the workshop anyway. Why? Because the surf in the little bay...
Take a scroll through social media, and if you didn't know any better then you could perhaps be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that women's...
Snow rarely settles on this stretch of coast; in fact it very seldom falls. When it does, and there's surf, it's definitely a novelty that gives a...
Sometimes, one wave is all a person needs. It could be one of many, or the only wave of a session, but if it’s enough to make a memory then we’ll...
"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...
