Photo gallery number 2 of surfers at South Fistral beach, Newquay when a fairly chunky swell came one Wednesday afternoon in July.  It seemed like the the weather changed every half an hour with plenty of rain and grey skies on the one hand, then sunshine and a rainbow on another…Simpy click on the images for a larger version.

Couple of surfers up and riding on a wave

A Rainbow after the rain. Almost resembles an old painting?

A surfer notices another, already up on this wave

Water hit the rocks just as I took this pic of the line up

One surfer on a wave

A view of Fistral beach from the dunes

On a Wednesday in July some decent sized surf rolled into Fistral beach out of the blue. When the wind started blowing a moderate cross/offshore the waves really started holding up and taking a nice shape – especially at the South end of Fistral.  In spite of a lot of rain and getting soaked 2-3 times over it was possible to grab a few half decent snaps of the surfers from the rocks. I think my fave is the one of Jed Stone taken looking down/ over the breaking wave.

View of breaking wave from South Fistral

Jed Stone on a wave at South Fistral

Surfers dropping onto a wave

Two guys on a wave at South Fistral

Surfer girls jump off the rocks at South Fistral

Surfer boosts an air - view from back

Spring is sort of here – but there are still a few nippy days to contend with. The upside is usually some decent sized surf. On a cold April afternoon I took a handful of photos of a couple of the guys from the Quicksilver surf school in Newquay at Fistral beach heading out for a post-work wave.

Two surfers walk towards water

Surfer does bottom turn

Surfer does top turn

Surfers walk up stairs

Surfers joke on beach

Ok, technically this is a surf blog, but as body boarders would no doubt argue the art of body boarding is techinally surfing too!  So thought it’d only be right to include some pics of their noble art. These were taken at both Fistral beach and Towan bay in Newquay, Cornwall.  Simply click photos for the larger version.

Bernie body boarding at Towan Bay Newquay, 2009

Unknown body boarder in the pocket on a wave at Fistral beach

Bernie body boarding on a wave at Towan Bay, Newquay 2009

Unknown guy body boarding at Fistral Beach, Newquay 2009

]]> http://www.newquaysurfer.org/2009/12/18/bodyboarding-in-newquay/feed/ 0 http://www.newquaysurfer.org/2009/11/03/high-tide-big-waves-at-towan-bay-newquay-part-1/ http://www.newquaysurfer.org/2009/11/03/high-tide-big-waves-at-towan-bay-newquay-part-1/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:19:46 +0000 gareth http://www.newquaysurfer.org/?p=110

These photos were taken at Towan Bay, Newquay just before a storm was due to hit.  Surfing was impossible at all the major beaches with high winds resulting in big messy waves in excess of 10ft already hitting most of the spots along the coast.

However in Towan bay at high tide a few of the groms tried to surf waves that rolled in straight towards the harbour wall – but either you had to jump off before your board hit the wall or you were thrown up into the air as the wave hit the backwash. When this was tricky the local kids resorted to bodyboarding and when that was too dangerous or impractical it was a case of playing dare as big waves smashed into the bay. Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure no kids were injured or swept out to sea.

Wave hits wall at Towan Bay

Kids watching waves roll in at Towan Bay

Kids watch bodyboarders surfing backwash at Towan

Kids play dare with waves at Towan bay

Wave hits the wall at Towan as kids duck for cover

Big wave smashes against wall

Kids get washed over by a wave

Wedge forms and is about to hit the wall

Last week a large swell hit Newquay and everyone was getting excited because the waves in September had been…errrr…pretty lame. The evening before the bigger swell was due to hit a couple of us went out and surfed Fistral beach. By sunset waves had increased from shoulder high to well overhead. As we left the water a tow in jet ski was in the water and The Cribbar (Britain’s biggest wave) had already started to break.

The next day the waves picked up more, and by late morning the jet skis were out. There were around 20-30 people armed with cameras to capture the moment and in spite of really strong winds (which made using a video camera pretty tricky) a couple of teams managed to surf the wave and a picture ended up in The Sun – see photo

The Cribbar gets a fair bit of attention due to its mystique of being a big wave in Cornwall and not breaking often but at the same time many other surfers were catching some pretty chunky waves a few hundred metres away – some were getting some great rides across from the edges of Little Fistral bay, all the way across to North Fistral beach.

Here is a montage of some photos I took  and video shot that day.  The music used in the video if by Icelandic band Sigur Ros (for some reason their music just totally works over shots of mother nature being dramatic).

About The Cribbar

The Cribbar breaks on rare occasions, as it takes a big swell to get it working. When it does break, it breaks over reef and the wave size can be anything up to double (or more) of the size of the beach breaks nearby. The Cribbar was first surfed in 1966 and the surfers who took it on paddled into the wave (which at the time was breaking at around 20 feet!) The full story of that famous day when those 4 pioneering surfers took on the Cribbar can be found on Roger Mansfield’s website here.

The Cribbar wave breaks off the end of the headland that runs off Little Fistral.  I’ve seen it marked in totally the wrong place on a few drawings so I’ve done my best to point it out as clearly as I can on the map below.

Map of Newquay and where Cribbar wave breaks

Other places you can read about The Cribbar:
Surf Nation by Alex Wade