So, the summer’s finally here, bringing with it the promise of longer days and warmer temperatures (well, if we’re lucky). For a few clinically obsessed, this means only one thing – surf! At least, slightly more tolerable surf.

The weekly commute to the coast becomes a possibility, or just less traumatic if you’re one of the dedicated who brave the elements during the dark winter months. Goodbye to freezing skulls and long drives home with feet that can’t feel anything other then the searing pain of denied blood circulation attempting to reinstate itself. Farewell to embarrassing genitally reduced (for us boys anyway) naked wetsuit dances in front of sparse car park audiences of dog walkers and elderly ramblers. Good riddance to your carefully calculated ‘optimum spot’ being a huge windy mess, akin to the inside of a washing-machine on the setting marked ‘vigorous orgasm’.

Leaving at the crack of dawn, bleary eyed and shivering, to spend your day off battling through the winter weather to arrive at a cold windy car park in North Devon, wrestling into a cold clammy wetsuit (I know you’re supposed to hang them to dry but somehow they always end up left damp in a bag) and facing the blown out massive swell is character building. Especially when after the first duck dive you realise that your suit has yet another new hole as the icy water rushes in over your back, almost paralysing you with cold, and what looked like 4’ chop from the beach is in fact 6-8’ storm swell. Sometimes though, you can score perfect winter waves, after all, it’s the time when the biggest swells hump themselves against our shores, it’s still pretty hard work most of the time.

Ah yes, summer. The long warm days allow a sneaky session after work or even before if you’re one of the more clinically insane (driving for an hour and a half each way for a half hour session, back at the office by 9:30? Not recommended). The joy of the summer wetsuit, allowing enough movement of body and limbs to enable bending over to hide your keys in the wheel arch of the car without incurring a hernia or cracked rib. Your bare feet gripping the wax on your deck, the golden glow as the setting sun refracts through the roof of your fifteenth barrel of the day, bathing you with incandescent rays of every colour imaginable while your two bros - the only other people in the line-up - whoop wildly in the distance……

“OI, F**KING WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING GROCKLE!” shouts a tanned teenager on a 5’4” fishtail!

Now I remember. The reality of summer surfing; overcrowded waves, angry people, traffic jams and extortionate car park fees (if you can find a space!). Even the once little known secret spots all seem to be a battleground these days. Despite this though, one classic summer session can stay with you for the rest of your life. Even one wave that peels perfectly from exactly the right spot, as if mother nature herself singled you out for it, a gift from the ancient sea God for you to charge down with that magical acceleration that comes from nowhere. Weightless on the take-off, a carving bottom-turn with your rail buried, transferring all that speed into a new direction, upwards towards the lip, smack, spray flies as you hit it, then a little cutback to the pocket, a stall, a slight hand drag on the face as the lip curls over your ducked head and you hang for a second in the tube. Then a slight weight transference from the back foot to the front, you hit the accelerator and boom, you fly out onto the shoulder to see an opening wall of blue, an empty canvas for you to paint your liquid expression on. There’s one out there waiting for you, and if you find it, all your dedication, the long drives, the angry girlfriend, the hours spent studying weather systems, will be paid back in full, with just enough extra to keep you looking for the next one. And remember, if a ‘local’ gives you jip in the line-up, just remember they probably lived in Yeovil for their entire life until last year.

Gustave Savy
Photos by Daniel Lilley