Hooked - The Early Days of Surfing in Scotland - video Dailymotion

The Scotsman

Hooked - The Early Days of Surfing in Scotland

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00:43The surfing thing came about because we were both interested in cars

00:48and things American generally.

00:50Drag racing, Beach Boys, all of that sort of stuff.

00:54And then we were going to university

00:57and had a short holiday between the end of school and university.

01:05And we thought, because I had bought a surfboard at that point,

01:09let's go to Aberdeen, because I used to live there.

01:12So I knew there was waves up there.

01:15We went to Aberdeen?

01:17With no transport except the train.

01:19The other chap was Stuart Crichton, who was also at school with us.

01:24And we took my board, which was a 9'6 pop-out, onto the train,

01:33got to Aberdeen and then walked from the station

01:37carrying said board all the way down to the beach,

01:40which was two miles maybe, something like that.

01:43We got to the beach fully expecting our surfboard to be the only one around.

01:49And we thought, well, we're not walking back and forward with this all the time,

01:53so let's try and find a place to store it.

01:56And we asked the guy in charge of the pavilion

02:00if we could leave the board somewhere.

02:02He says, put it in beside this other one.

02:06At which point we were somewhat deflated,

02:09because George Law had been surfing there for a year before

02:14and his board was kept permanently at the beach.

02:18Being poor prospective students, we didn't have enough money to buy wetsuits,

02:23so it was on with the trunks and into the September Aberdeen sea with no wetsuit.

02:29It was very cold. The caretaker of the pavilion was a nice chap

02:35and he took pity on us, really, actually,

02:37because when we were coming out frozen,

02:39he had a wee wood-burning stove and we sat around that.

02:43Blue would be an accurate description, yes.

02:47And George Law, who'd been surfing there for a year,

02:50just had a vest made of neoprene.

02:52He didn't have a proper wetsuit and he'd been in right through the winter,

02:56which in Aberdeen is quite some feat.

03:09What happened was there was a few people by this time with surfboards

03:14and one of them was a guy called Pete Rennie.

03:16And Pete Rennie didn't have a driving licence,

03:19but his father was very sympathetic and he had a car,

03:23so he would give Pete with his board and me with my board a lift down to the beach.

03:29And we were looking at Dunbar, Belhaven, round about that area.

03:34And one day we were going to the beach

03:38and this van was coming up the other way with a board on the top.

03:42So we screeched a halt and it turned out to be Bill.

03:45It was just quite near Belhaven Bay.

03:48And, where did you get that? Oh, New Zealand.

03:52So Bill had started surfing in New Zealand

03:56and we had never met anybody else with a board before.

04:01And, you know, quite amazing that people were now appearing out of the woodwork, so to speak.

04:08I had surfed down there for a wee while before I met Andy and Ian.

04:12First time surfing in Scotland. Oh wow.

04:15December 1967. Cold.

04:21I was more or less there by accident because my surfboard had arrived from Australia.

04:26I lived in New Zealand, then Australia, and then I shipped the surfboard back.

04:31And somebody said to me,

04:33why don't you go to Peace Bay, I believe there's waves there.

04:35And I said, that can't be possible.

04:37So I did go down and the waves were reasonably big at the time

04:42and the water was very cold, so I didn't really stay in the water too long.

04:47Wetsuit? No wetsuit. No, I didn't have a wetsuit then.

04:50So it was shorts and in.

04:58Did you get a wetsuit fairly soon after that?

05:0168, I think what happened.

05:03Yeah, in 68 I went, my wife and I went down to live in Newquay for the surfing.

05:11I found a company that sold neoprene rubber with drawings of how to cut out a wetsuit.

05:16That was more or less a diving wetsuit though, you know,

05:19with the big flap at the front and the buttons and all that sort of stuff.

05:22And they sent you this neoprene in a plan in a tin of loom.

05:27So my wife and I spent a week cutting all this out and sticking it all together

05:31and that was my first wetsuit.

05:33It was truly uncomfortable but it was warmer than not having a wetsuit, that was about it.

05:38It didn't really bother me surfing on my own, to be honest.

05:41I'd rather surf on my own than surfing in some of the crowds that are on the beach today.

05:46Well we soon realised that Peace Bay had better waves than Bellehaven, as a generalisation.

05:51Once you got your head round surfing over the rocks and stuff like that.

05:55And Caldingham was almost a last resort in a lot of times.

05:58It was more sheltered.

06:00You could get into Caldingham but Caldingham was a funny kind of break.

06:04They used to just break right through the whole beach rather than giving you a decent ride, you know.

06:09But you have to bear in mind that there wasn't any decent weather forecast.

06:13There certainly wasn't a swell forecast.

06:16So you went down the beach on the basis of, it's Saturday, let's go down the beach.

06:22And if there was waves, there was waves.

06:24And if there wasn't, there wasn't.

06:26There was only, let's say, 10 to 12 people in total.

06:31So there wasn't the pressure to go and find somewhere else, if you see what I mean.

06:36So we surfed White Sands and places like that.

06:40Gullan, if there was a huge south-easterly swell.

06:44North Berwick.

06:46But there's waves round about the lighthouse at Barnes Ness,

06:53which I've only surfed in the last 10 years.

06:56Because there never was the pressure to go and seek them out, if you get my drift.

07:02I surfed off the rocks at Dunbar, near the harbour, in the town itself.

07:07That again wasn't a great idea because the police pulled me in to tell me that,

07:12What are you doing? We're about to send out the lifeboat for you.

07:15And I thought, the lifeboat would have probably got wrecked, but I didn't get wrecked.

07:21We got to the point where we realised that if the weather forecast said northerly winds,

07:27there was going to be something down the beach.

07:29But it took several years to get the forecast worked out

07:35so that you would know it was going to be offshore and a swell coming in.

07:40Because there was absolutely nothing on the TV or anywhere else to indicate what the conditions were going to be like.

07:46I used to drive down to Portobello Beach on a Friday night, late on,

07:51and have a look and see what was coming in there, see if there was a wee swell.

07:56Because there was a wee swell at Portobello, you could probably be fairly certain there was something further down the coast.

08:11Well, Billy's responsible for that because you went up there, didn't you?

08:14Yeah.

08:15Was it a cousin or something? A wedding you went to?

08:17I went to a wedding up there, yeah. When was that?

08:20I must have been about 68, 69.

08:23Was it not a bit later than that?

08:25Was it a bit later than that?

08:2670.

08:27Maybe 70, yeah.

08:28And I went to a wedding in a place called Betty Hill.

08:31I looked out the window in the morning and these waves were rolling in and I thought,

08:34Oh wow, this might be the place to be.

08:36I didn't have a board with me, of course.

08:38But I did have a trip up there very quickly after that and that sort of got the North Shore going.

08:44But in those days it was more, we went to Betty Hill.

08:47We did.

08:48Yeah, we didn't go to Thurso, we went to Betty Hill.

08:51The thing I remember about going up to Betty Hill was you used to leave work at four o'clock

08:57and you drove for hours and hours and you got to Betty Hill at half past eleven.

09:03Because there was no Keswick Bridge, it was a Keswick Ferry.

09:07No Cromarty Bridge.

09:09No Cromarty Bridge.

09:10Up over the strewery.

09:11Yeah.

09:12And then we took the single track road up the last bit from Helmsdale.

09:18Yeah.

09:19By which time it was usually getting dark and there was three or four cars charging up this single track road,

09:26being aware of sheep.

09:28Betty Hill was quite good because there was a choice of waves up there at Torresdale and Far, Farby, Strathy.

09:36And nobody else had ever been up there as far as we knew.

09:44To go into Aberdeen in September with no wetsuit on and decide you're going to carry on with it.

09:50Yeah.

09:51It takes a certain kind of person.

09:53It's got to be.

09:54Pretty sad.

09:55It's got to be pretty sad.

09:57But there's got to be something about it.

09:59Oh aye.

10:00That forces you to continue, so to speak.

10:03Yeah, it's a company.

10:04Well, it's a company, but it's also the buzz of just the fact that you're there.

10:08Basically, it's you and the wave.

10:11When you stand up and you ride that first wave into the beach, you think, this is amazing.

10:18Went out, tried it a few times, fell off lots of times.

10:22And then eventually I stood up, and once I stood up, I was hooked.

10:26That was it.

Hooked - The Early Days of Surfing in Scotland

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