A couple of photographs from last Saturday taken with my iPhone 3GS. Sometimes it is difficult to see the results of the photo just taken, so I was quite pleased with these once I could see them on a computer screen.
Newquay Bay early Saturday morning 3 March 2012.
On the last Saturday of every month a small group of willing volunteers carry out a beach clean at Fistral Beach in Newquay. At times the task at hand can be daunting due to the high volume of rubbish and because it is just not possible to remove the thousands and thousands of tiny pieces of plastic from the beach by hand.
However we are aware that the marine rubbish that we do remove will hopefully not go back into the ocean and the food chain. As a surfer and beach goer it is always good karma to give a little something back.
The Fistral beach clean is run under Keep Britain Tidy’s BeachCare programme. BeachCare organiser Neil Hembrow has compiled some stats from the first fourteen beach cleans and it is interesting to see what has been collected and the comparisons between Fistral and other beach cleans.
More on the BeachCare programme can be found here. The next Fistral Beach clean is Saturday 28 January, details below;
For the weekend warrior living in the South West, this weekend gave us an opportunity to sample the swell that surfers had been frothing about during the week. Saturday morning revealed corduroy to the horizon…
On Wednesday we tweeted about the big surf being forecast for the weekend.
The swell duly arrived on Saturday and then built over the weekend. Having not been able to watch previous tow in sessions at the Cribbar reef, it was a joy to spend some time this afternoon watching the tow in teams do their stuff. At the time the photographs below were taken, magicseaweed.com had forecast 13’ waves at 13 seconds with the breaking wave estimated at 15’ double overhead.
Mahalo to the tow teams.
Sunday 26 June was a beautiful day in our bit of Cornwall, a warm sun shone down from a blue sky and a clean swell fanned by light off shores lit up the beaches. So after surfing in the morning a visit to the Vintage Surf Meet added to my surf stoke. There were many familiar Newquay faces and a few friends in attendance. Here are a few pictures of the event and of surfboard logos…
The view from above Lusty Glaze beach looking across Newquay Bay
More on the event can be read here –
http://www.facebook.com/notes/museum-of-british-surfing/the-vintage-surf-meet/10150300940189460
http://vintagesurfboardcollectoruk.blogspot.com/2011/06/yesterdays-meet.html
Last night saw the opening of Kevin Cooper’s ‘Layers’ at the Café irie in Newquay. It was good to go along in support and see the art on display in an interesting café setting. A collection of Kevin’s art will be on show for the next two months.
If you are unable to get to the Café irie you can see (and buy) some of Kevin’s posters at the Kahuna beach bar on Tolcarne Beach.
Café irie – http://www.cafeirie.co.uk/
Kanuna – http://www.kahunatolcarne.co.uk/
More of Kevin’s work can be found on his website – http://sleeplessink.blogspot.com/
Sunday 26th June 2011 sees the Vintage Surf Meet taking place in the car park above Lusty Glaze beach in Newquay. This looks like a fascinating happening for any one interested in vintage surfboards. The event starts at 09:30 wrapping up at 12:00.
The wonderful event poster was designed by Nick Radford. More of Nick’s work can be seen at his frootful website; http://frootful.co.uk/
More event info at – http://vintagesurfboardcollectoruk.blogspot.com/ & Lusty Glaze details – http://lustyglaze.co.uk/
I was very interested to learn recently of a unique surfing event run by the National Trust; the Boarder Series junior surf competitions. The events are for the environmentally aware surf grom with Under 16 and Under 14 divisions for both boys and girls.
The series starts with the South of the Boarder event in Cornwall on Saturday 16 April at Poldhu Cove (near Helston). The North of the Boarder event is on Saturday 14 May at Crantock Beach, Newquay.
Our responsibility to pick up beach litter is a key theme of the events and is reflected in the competitions unique scoring system, in addition to scoring waves surfed, the amount of litter collected is also scored; one carrier bag of beach litter is worth a point. The litter picking points are added to the surfing points of the first heat.
More on the events, surfing and the NT can be found at the following links;
Surf Competitions in Devon and Cornwall – http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-global/w-localtoyou/w-devoncornwall/w-devoncornwall-surf-competitions/
Surfing and the NT – http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-activities/w-activities-surfing.htm
The NT’s Surf Ambassadors – http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-global/w-news/w-news-further_news/w-news-bestbeaches.htm
Yesterday saw the fifth Fistral Beach clean organised by Keep Britain Tidy. After the initial look over the beach there didn’t appear to be much litter for the twenty odd volunteers to pick up. The past week has seen very high tides combined with big surf and the beach and sand dunes were given a bit a beating so much of the litter was taken out to sea.
A closer inspection of the beach revealed insidious plastic (particularly at the high tide line); thousands of very small pieces. So much so that it is almost an overwhelming task to remove. Picking up the bigger pieces of litter is obvious but the benefit of removing the small plastic items is that they are prevented from entering the food chain.
The bulk of the tiny plastic pieces were polystyrene and other types of plastic foam, difficult to effectively remove from the beach without the use of something like a sieve.
I could not help but think ‘how do we stop plastic such as foam ending up on the beaches in the first place’? I was asked by some people out walking what we were doing. They acknowledged that the beach cleaning was a good idea but it was their thoughts on where did the litter come from that made me make take notice. Ships out at sea, seagulls and beach visitors were given as the main culprits for beach litter.
Ships and gulls? I’m not too sure about that. There is no doubt that visitors to the beach are responsible for a lot of the litter found on beaches. The wind carries litter down to the shore and daily tides deposit the remainder. So how does litter enter the ocean?
Evidence shows that ocean plastic is entering the food chain. As much as there is a need for people to pick up and remove beach litter we all need to think of and be aware of the consequences of our actions with all that we buy and ultimately dispose of. Thankfully there are people and organisations like Harry (from Saco, Maine), Surfers Against Sewage, Keep Britain Tidy and The Surfrider Foundation who care and are taking action. More on Harry and his sterling efforts can be read about on his blog http://theflotsamdiaries.blogspot.com/.
Today saw the first big swell of autumn arrive on the north coast of Cornwall. Predications for Fistral Beach were for a westerly swell with a near shore wave height of 8 foot at a period of 11 seconds.
This morning the occasional set looked a solid 6 to 8 foot with smaller in between sets. The paddle out from the beach looked like a lot of hard work so the best option to get out back was from off the rocks at south Fistral.
The photos below are of some of this morning’s rock hoppers…
