#23

Sunday's surfing trip went well. I only got a sprained foot this time -- much better than manking my knee joints as I have done for the previous two years. I put my comparative good fortune down to steering clear of Widemouth Bay (Bude, North Cornwall) and heading further down the coast. Widemouth is a bit bad-ass. What surprised me is that I have seen it listed in a few places on the web as a good place for novice surfers. Good in what way I wonder... good at crippling novices perhaps because in my experience it has some very nasty tricks: its worst is that every so often about 5 waves combine together (as each wave gradually catches-up with the wave in-front) to produce vertical walls of water. Not a nice clean wall, but a raging wall of foam about 8 feet high. Also the out-wash of the spent waves flowing back down the beach is some of the most rapid and force-full I have come across. Just a few inches in depth of it has, on a number of occasions, dragged me flailing around uncontrollably from the shallows back into the sea. The shallows rapidly clear meaning that the advancing 8 foot wall of water is often racing across bare sand and rocks and if you are unlucky enough to find yourself perched on top of that wall, on your surfboard, as I was once, if you fall off in-front of the wall you have no water below to break your fall. It's a bad bastard time. Fortunately I did not fall forward off my board -- I decided not to stand for starters (on account of being scared shitless) and kept my weight well back on the board to stop myself going over the edge, but I so nearly did, especially when an additional wave came in from the rear and suddenly tipped me forward onto the brink. It was a similar wall of water that caused my worst surfing injury so far. This time I was in the shallows in-front of the developing wall of water. I was at the time unaware of this 'Widemouth wall-of-water' phenomenon so I was not really looking-out for the danger. At the time Barkfoot and I we were trying to launch his kayak into the sea. By the time we saw the impending danger it was too late for me. Barkfoot managed to run out of the way but the powerful out-wash had buried my feet in the sand and I was stuck fast. Total wipe-out: the wall of water delivered a powerful thump on it's own but, as if that was not enough, it was carrying the gift of Barkfoot's kayak directly at my captive legs. Ow. That particular injury kept me walking about with the aid of a stick for a month. I guess we should have heeded the warning signs... amongst which were the fist-sized boulders floating-around in shallows about an inch or so off the sand, held up by some bizarre hydrodynamic effect. These were ordinary stones as heavy as you like, clattering around your ankles. We should have been more worried than bemused, and got-out while we could. The currents are just crazy on that beach. Once I was in the water upto my chest and the sheer sudden difference between the under current and the surface current pulled my knee out of joint. Fortunately it went back into its socket straight away because it did not get twisted -- it was exactly like someone had grabbed my ankle and suddenly pulled directly down -- well crazy.

Well, anyway, only a sprained foot this time as I say. The waves weren't that good but it was well worth the trip to get dunked in the drink, churned-up, and get slabs of water blasted in y'face -- it helps you feel connected to the world: if you're ever susceptible to deflating philosophical thoughts such as: 'Do I really exist?' and: 'Could all this just be a dream from a sleep in another reality?', then after having cold refreshing reality beaten into you by the power of the sea, I'd venture that you'd feel inclined to scrap that line of thinking pretty smartish

During the journey it is customary for me to mainly exist on oat based snaks: flapjacks mainly. Of the big brands the Marathon flapjack is probably the best, but generally the thinker, solid-er, and heavier the flapjack usually the better --- a more reliable indicator of flapjack yummyness than price or boastful slogans on the packaging I find. The fish'n'chips I got on the way home from the Launceston Fryers were pretty good (not the best-est ever fish and chips but way above average). Being as it is early in the surfing season the part of the trip home along the unlit A30 was not cloaked in pitch black night -- it was only dusk, which is less beautiful and twinkly, but it does mean that the menace of the slowly driven Ford Focus is greatly diminished. For when it is totally totally pitch black and you only have the rear lights of cars to judge the distances by, that is when the danger emerges... because some Ford Focuses have lights much higher than most cars and they are not so far apart, so in the blackness they appear 20 or 30 feet further away then they actually are, making the approach upto a Focus ahead of you, which is being tootled along at say 45 when you are doing 70, quite alarmingly abrupt. If you often have to journey along straight fast unlit roads at night and and you like to take your time about it, then I would not make the Focus top of your list of potential buys for your next vehicular purchase -- personally I would feel vulnerable to rear end collisions. It has to be said that some other cars have similar rear lighting configurations, like the Vauxhall Corsa, but I've not noticed the problem with them... perhaps they don't frequent the A30. Talking about vehicular purchases, some might wonder why a cool surf dude like me... eh-hum... goes around in a 1992 Volvo 940 estate: it was basically the longest estate car I could think of -- all the better to fit a long surf board in. In fact the basic sequence of events was: buy the car, drive to the beach with a tape measure, fold the passenger seat etc forward, and see what would be the longest surf board I could possibly fit in there and go and buy it from the beach-side surf shop... then of course go surfing. An eight foot surfie stick easily fitted in there as you can see below.

Oh and before I forget -- back on to the subject of driving at night down the A30: expect the unexpected, because I have come across all-sorts in the middle of the road: like breeze blocks and cut lengths of log. Since it's as good a road as any motorway, it's easy to forget it's a local road as well, and owing to it running through mostly rural areas I suspect that it is host to more than the average number of open trailers and pick-up trucks from which these things fall.