STOKED in North of Scotland

December 27, 2007 on 1:06 pm | In Surfing |

I’ve recently been chatting to two surfers from very different backgrounds who, coincidentally, I met a few years ago in Ireland at the World Masters Surfing Championships.

One is UK surf leg end – sorry, legend - Gabe Davies, a friend of many years and as nice a bloke as you could find. The other is Dutch surfer and photographer Ray Max (cool name or what?) whose work you can see at his fascinating website www.ongetemd.com.

What they have in common is, at first glance, hard to see. Gabe had just surfed some truly titanic waves off Mullaghmore Head (see more at surf photographer Mickey Smith’s superb website www.mickeysmith.co.uk), whilst I’d bumped into Ray whilst he was travelling through Wales with some friends to write a piece for the Dutch surf press on the wonder that is Welsh surfing.

In their own way these two guys are living the life. Gabe is a sponsored pro, gets to surf the world’s best (and scariest) waves and is paid for it; Ray also gets to travel to some of the world’s best surf spots (what, Wales?) and is paid for doing so. Not bad hey…?

They also share in common the fact that they’re thoroughly nice guys with a great sense of humour and with whom it’s a pleasure to enjoy a beer or a wave. And yet it would be so easy to be totally up yourself when the world is, from a surfing point of view, at your feet.

I have come across the occasional unfortunate specimen like this (a Californian pro and an Australian ego maniac, wouldn’t you know…), but it seems to me that the majority of people making a living from surfing in one way or another are top characters who have an enthusiasm that, I’m sure, is a manifestation of the stoke that surfing puts into life.

I was out of the water with an injury when I was chatting to both Gabe and Ray, and in such circumstances am usually like a bear with a burnt arse, but once you get into some banter with fellow surfers it invariably puts you in a good mood and fires up the enthusiasm to get fit and get back out there again.

And (finally getting to the point…) there are few places in the world where the stoke is as high as Scotland. As I write air temperatures are well below zero, water temperatures are approaching single digit and the north coast is enjoying/enduring less than seven hours of daylight in every 24, which, let’s face it, is not what most people would call surf paradise.

But to those who ride Scottish waves it’ll more than do nicely, thank you. And it’ll more than adequately fire up the stoke. So here’s to a New Year with lots of stoke, lots of waves and lots of laughs for everyone. What more could you need…?

Alf Alderson
http://www.alfalderson.co.uk
Multi-award-winning freelance journalist and author of Surf UK - the definitive guide to surfing in Britain.