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World Belly Boarding Championships
This Sunday 4 September, Chapel Porth Beach is home to the biggest retro fest in the South West: The World Belly Boarding Championships. Entry is free, just bring your plywood and jump in (no wetsuits allowed).
Returning home with my first wooden surfboard in the back of my car last night felt like a rite of passage. But more than that, I’d spent a hugely enjoyable evening with two of the most impassioned wooden surfers in Cornwall: Sally Parkin and John Isaac.
Sally runs The Original Surfboard Company and John is a keen retro – geek, photographer, surfer and runs Revolver, an artistic interpretation of a surf shop in Newquay (that refuses to open on a Saturday). Sally, now in her early fifties, grew up with wooden surfboards in an era seriously lacking in foam boards and neoprene. She explains that: “I always loved the boards and we always had one in the house. It’s a different type of surfing. With a foam board you’re sitting up in the wave but with these you are sitting in the wave, it’s more like body surfing.”
The Original Surfboard Company was set up by Sally just over three years ago with the aim of “making the boards stylish again. I wanted to change the image of wooden boards and inspire younger people.” As her teenage son and friend open the back door leading from the beach, nonchalantly sporting wooden boards under their arms, it seems like she is making progress. The younger son is also spotted later riding the waves on wood despite his peers on foam.
And there are plenty for the boys to choose from: boards are stacked across the family’s hallway, integrated into the house like pieces of furniture. These potential wave catchers of gleaming wood, gentle edges and subtle shaping are a simple statement of human interaction with the sea that reached its peak in Newquay in the 1930s and the 50s and is justifiably experiencing a resurgence.
The wooden boards are history, fun and style captured in ply, harking back to the days of polka dots and stripes and all-in-one bathers for men (with little belts). The retro look is bang on trend as the Marc by Marc Jacobs spring/summer collection 2011 testifies and as high-waisted shorts, little dresses, structured swimsuits and chunky bikini bottoms sweep the high street in a nostalgic nod to mid-twentieth century beach culture.
Apparently this early wooden precursor to stand up surfing dates from the 1800s but took off after World War One in the 1920s when veterans returned home, a story outlined in Alan Kent’s highly entertaining Surfing Tommies. Surf riding originates from Hawaii where surfing is defined and dominated not by the stand up surfers (who tend to gaze down from on high at the bodyboarding fraternity) but by the type of board that you ride.
There’s nothing to stand up about at the now highly popular and endearingly quirky World Bellyboarding championships. Held at Chapel Porth beach (just up from St Agnes), the numbers have swelled from a handful of diehard grannies in woollen swimsuits to thousands of prone devotees. Sally secured third place in the women’s under-60s last year, a feat she attributes entirely to her Original Surfing Co. board. Jack Johns, world famous pro surfer, also used the same board (with gaboon as the inner layer) and won, hence the board is now known as the Championship Board. The company also make a 100% gaboon board which is a little terrifyingly light and frisky for a wave newbie such as myself.
Having spent last Saturday afternoon being battered and pummelled by the waves in an attempt to surf on a fat foam board, I thought of my plywood version in the car with much fondness. In fact I missed it, wanted it and had had enough of the gung-ho foam wrestle in the seething badlands of Aggie. I could barely carry the yellow and blue plastic monstrosity back up the beach (girly arms) and knew that my wooden board would fit under my arm as neatly as a good handbag. Surf-riding, bellyboarding, bodyboarding (whatever you want to call it) is a sport for anyone and everyone of any fitness level and with minimum gear; from 80- year -old ladies to teenage boys. Now that’s seriously cool.
Sally offers custom-made boards with different prints, designs or logos as well as the standard wooden boards, all at very reasonable prices. The boards are also very popular as signs, keep your eye out around Cornwall for them. To order your own board, find out more about the fascinating history or to indulge in some visual nostalgia, contact originalsurfboards.co.uk. No lessons necessary, just get out on the waves, wait till one taps you on the bottom and fire away, belly down.
They have one of those boards at the gorgeous Skippers cottage in Mousehole, will test it out for a bit of belly boarding next trip at Sennen Beach
Purchased a board from Sally at the Atlantic Watersports Games in Bideford today, can’t wait to get out and try it – looks like so much fun! 2011 World Championships? Seriously maybe
It is huge fun, the GCG will be at the World Champs and I will also be entering the cake comp, so come on down!