ONBOARD Magazine winter 2019

up and down the coast looking for waves,
as we would in the evening when we retired
to the Café de Paris in Hossegor for one
of many cold beers.
Wales’ based surf forecaster/photographer
Paul ‘The Gill’ Gill has been making the journey
to South-West France annually since the
70s and is in no doubt that it was better
in the old days. “During the 70s and 80s
we were pretty much surfing hippies and
there were not that many of us living a
travelling, surf-orientated lifestyle. Today’s
city slicker-wannabe-weekend-warriorhipster-dudes
tend to bring attitudes and
numbers into the waves, and often can’t
even surf properly.”
I’ve even heard younger surfers claim that
surfing must have been better in the old
days because it was far less crowded and
commercialised. But there were downsides
to that too.
We were all self-taught, learning on highperformance,
twitchy surfboards rather
than stable, purpose-made beginner boards,
and it could take a week of practice before
you were at the level most people will reach
in a weekend these days.
We were guided then
by conversations with
locals and optimistic
interpretations of
synoptic weather charts
©Col FL
And catching the waves at their best
was largely guess work; there were no
surf guides or surf forecasts, Internet or
otherwise, which could be dangerous as
well as frustrating – myself and a friend
almost drowned in a rip at a beach just
north of Biarritz due to ignorance of the
surf conditions.
Today your surf guide, whether printed or
on your smartphone, will ensure you don’t
even paddle out at such spots - but it will
also ensure hundreds descend on the best
breaks when they’re firing since there’s no
longer any requirement for surfers to learn
about weather patterns, oceanography,
coastal geography and tides to score the
best waves.
As Andy Middleton, one of my fellow
travellers on that first surf trip (and
now CEO of a successful outdoor guiding
company) says, “We were guided then by
conversations with locals and optimistic
interpretations of synoptic weather charts
to guess where the waves would be best,
with no guidebooks, Internet sites or surf
cams to steer us.”
Most would agree that’s a loss in terms
of both knowledge and appreciation of the
surfing environment, for there are few
things more satisfying than predicting
where the best waves will be and walking
over the dunes with your board under
your arm to discover that not only are you
correct, but only a handful of others have
got it right too.
And do we really need surfer-specific
accommodation, surf cafés, surf bars
and more surf shops than you can shake a
stick at to enrich our surfing experience?
It seemed ok to me when you just hung
out with fellow wave riders at any old bar
and camped on any old campsite.
Clockwise from top: 1963 Cote de Basques, SW
France 1978 Jo Moraiz with surf trophy, Welsh
surfers in Hossegor, France late 70s
©Col FL
But we’re stuck with all these surferfriendly
facilities whether you like it or not,
and that ain’t gonna change.
Fortunately, something else that won’t
change any time soon is the quality of
the surf in this corner of France, and as
I walk down the beach at Mimizan Plage
again almost forty years on from that first
surf trip to Hossegor, freshly waxed board
tucked under my arm and the warm sun
on my back, I still experience the same
frisson of excitement that I had all those
years ago – and you certainly can’t put a
price on that.
50 | WINTER 2019 | ONBOARD