The Cribbar breaks rarely…perhaps a few times a year… if you’re lucky.

Unless you live close to Newquay and keep a keen eye on the surf reports the chances are, you could miss it. The reason it breaks so rarely isn’t (as far as I’m aware) about voodoo or spells, it is just that alot of factors have to come into play simultaneously in order to create the right conditions.

Good surfable waves at the Cribbar are not just about a big swell, but also about the swell direction, the wind speed, and direction of that wind…all of these things come into play. Once you have all of these things happening, the next ingredient you need are surfers skilled and crazy enough to surf it!

On the 30th of October it was one of those lucky days.

When I got up I noticed that even the weather was exceptionally warm for the time year. As I looked out of my window I could see large crowds gathering up on the headland. I left the flat and was glad I bothered to lug a heavy camcorder and tripod up the headland, because when I looked down over Cribbar rocks mother nature had decided to conjure up near perfect big wave surf conditions.

30ft faces smashed down a 100m away, there were bright blue skies and the atmosphere was electric. People hooted and cheered, it was like a Cornish version of Half Moon Bay, this was our Mavericks.

And to top it all there were guys like Ben Skinner and Richie Sills, amped up to tow in to monster waves.

Report ctd..

Around 100 excited onlookers watched as surfers used jet skis to tow into the huge waves that rolled in from the mid Atlantic.

Richie Sills and Ben Skinner charged. Each time a surfer made a wave and huge cheer went up. I’ve never seen so many people taking photos.

The standard of big wave surfing in the UK has gone form strength to strength in recent years and more and more of the local crew in Newquay have got involved with tow in and surfing big waves here as well as in Scotland and Ireland.

When the Cribbar is on it’s our Mavericks and the atmosphere on the headland was electric. People witnessed high-performance, world class big wave surfing right on their door step in Newquay.

The guys put it all on the line with some critical surfing, even getting barrelled on huge sets.

Ben Skinner (perhaps the greatest all round surfer in the UK ) even threw in some little chop-hop tricks.

Your average surfer would probably drown if they tried to surf out there and these guys are did tricks!

There was even someone paddling in on an SUP, but he seemed to get caught inside and took a few on the head ( see pic below). It looked like he lost his paddle and had to come in.

Here’s what the conditions looked like on paper:

• 14-15ft swell16 sec wave period
• 15-20mph cross/ offshore wind
• Breaking wave face estimate 18-30ft

Well, if it looks like that again, you can be sure the boys will be out – but we may have to wait a while!

The Nike 6.0 night surf attracted a huge crowd tonight on Fistral beach for the finals. The big news was Russell Winter’s victory and Ben Skinner – who managed to land a fantastic air on a longboard during the finals!

The organisation and planning of the event by Nike was pretty impressive. A large stage was built for bands at North Fistral, and a big screen was put up so folks could watch the surfing.

There was some pretty entertaining commentary from Sam Lamiroy and Lee Bartlett. Also, I don’t think I have seen so many video cameras put to use for a surf event at Fistral…any post event footage should be pretty slick.

Whatever Nike did as their marketing for this event, it worked. It’d be fair to say that it was probably the largest crowd watching a surfing final most people had seen in the UK. From the womens final, through to the longboard event, cash for tricks and mens open final the crowds kept coming. The prize purse for surfers was also quite impressive too…You have to hand it to them, Nike certainly know how to do a surf comp in style…maybe they should sponsor Boardmasters next year.

The winners of the surf competition were as follows:

Mens Open: Russell Winter

Womens Open: Amy Stewart

Cash for Tricks: Reubyn Ash

Mens Longboard: Ben Skinner

Check out the gallery of photos below ( click on images for larger version).

This year’s night surf event was sponsored by Nike 6.0 and held at Fistral beach, Newqauay on the 8-9th of July. As part of the event a ‘Cash for tricks’ competition was run – this format encourages surfers to try out radical manoeuvres, with their best 3 moves counted as the surfers overall score.

Local surfers Alan Stokes, Oli Adams, Johnny Fryer and Bude’s Reubyn Ash were there to rip and entertain in small Fistral surf. Simply click on the thumbnail images below for the larger version.

Reubyn Ash photographed on the way into his heat

With some nice clean waves, offshore wind and sunshine…there’s some pretty nice light at the end of the days too.

Here are some pictures from this evening taken at Fistral beach. The first one was one of those ‘happy accidents’ when sunset, low angle shot and the surfer sort of aligned – haha.

In the end a little gallery’s worth of photos of Fistral beach, Newquay with sunset and surfers.

BTW – if people want to use/ embed  any pics from this website that I have taken, then that’s cool. All I ask is that if you use the photos then please just create a credit hyperlink back to Newquay Surfer Blog  – cheers! Gareth

Below are some images of the Newquay Headland at exactly this time last year in 2010…We had a couple of pretty awesome sunsets this time last year and from memory the sea water was a fair bit warmer than it is this year…But hey, with a bit of luck it’ll soon warm up quickly with all this sunshine we’re being blessed with!

Here are some still images of Newquay headland, the Headland hotel and the edge of Fistral beach on 12th April 2010 (one year ago).

After over a month of pretty flat and very cold conditions Boxing day and the 27th of Dec 2010 saw a decent swell finally hit the North Cornwall coast combined with offshore winds.

Inspite of the icy cold water and solid head high + conditions plenty of surfers were out braving the cold waves.

Below are a couple of photos of  the action, including the one above where a surfer gets a little bit too close to the rocks, just as the wave behind is about to close out!

Snow on Fistral beach 27/11/2010

The temperatures have dropped a fair bit in Newquay, Cornwall this week. On Saturday morning even those of us living on the coast woke up to a blanket of snow.
By mid morning a fair few surfers were in the water as some fairly clean waist – chest high waves rolled in at Fistral. The air temp a fresh 1c and the water still remaining around 12c. Photo taken on iPhone 27/11/2010.

Below are a couple of other photos taken the following day from Pentire.

One of Esplanade Road, and a view of Fistral beach from the South end/ Esplanade Road.

Esplanade Road, South Fistral, Newquay 28/11/2010

Fistral Beach Winter - View from South 28/11/2010

In spring and late early winter time the light can get very dramatic here in North Cornwall and tonight was no exception.  It’s a pity the surf has been flat… because having some bigger waves and surfers to photograph in this light could have been pretty sick – but nevertheless this Winter sunset still created its own sense of drama, as the sun set over Pentire headland – throwing lots of golden/ red light over the ocean and Fistral beach.

Images from the 2010 animal open surf competition at Fistral beach, Newquay. Includes pics of Mark ‘Egor’ Harris, Gwen Spurlock, Laura Crane, Nicole Morgan, Jo Dennison, Beth Mason, Micah Lester, Jayce Robinson, Reubin Ash, Toby Donachie and 2010 womens winner Tassy Swallow & mens open winner – Reubin Pearce…

We’ve been quite lucky this past few weeks with waves…nature decided, again…to bless Newquay with another day of offshore wind and decent swell , making for some nice waves on the whole – albeit a little strong on the wind front (blind take offs are fun to a point – but hey, you can’t have everything).

So today the surf at Fistral beach went from offshore knee high surf in the morning (perfect for the longboarders) to pumping hollow head high+ screaming fast left handers all afternoon – onto a head high plus extravaganza of hollow high tide waves and heavy shore dumping surf at sunset.

Check out the gallery !

We shan’t complain, and ok I admit it… I missed the morning surf… I figured I was a bit tired and it was a bit small, but I scored 2 hours of sick hollow left handers in the afternoon and felt a bit guilty I didn’t get to capture such fun conditions.

So I hoped to balance the artistic and visual karma out and I headed down to North Fistral for the last hour of what turned out to be a great Cornish sunset. A soft red-yellow light combined with some pumping heavy high tide hollow waves created just about the best conditions your gonna get for a while surfing at high tide here.

So all in all a good opportunity to arm yourself with a digital camera and shoot photos until your finger hurts…which is what I did. My finger literally got cramp…500+ photos later I realised in an hour or so I might have got a bit trigger happy – so the next 4 hours were then spent trying to narrow down what I photographed to the better 15 or so interesting shots for this blog.

This lot are the result – sunset, waves and high tide at Fistral beach, Newquay  – with some brave old surfers (and bodyboarders) going for it. I don’t know if in one hour you can create enough good photos to say ‘here guvnor look at my surfer portfolio’ – but maybe this might be as close as you can get?