Jack Johnson. Flip-flops. That Guinness advert. Stitchless technology. Silent movies of the ocean showing in pubs. It is as if all kinds of random things have been thrown together by an enormous wave and carried to our shores. Surfing may have begun as a countercultural trickle, frozen out of British popular culture by small seas and an inconsiderate climate. Now it is a vast breaker. Once the exclusive domain of gilded young men, more than half a million people of all shapes and ages now surf regularly in Britain. This year, another half a million will join them.
The waves have been democratised, the elitism of an underground sport swept away by commerce and mass participation. But while the surf boom is attracting thousands of teens, middle-youth and women once barred from the sport, rampant commercialism has, for surf diehards, snatched some of its soul. And although surf tourism is transforming many of our seaside communities, it is also creating tension between stockbroker surfers and the locals who feel crowded out.
Unfolding from the pinch of Watergate Bay, two miles of sand offer a classic English seaside panorama. Dogs run between stripy windbreaks. Two children swing pink spades. A plump lady in a pink vest sits bolt upright, reading a doorstop of a book. But there is something in the air and on the water that was not part of the scene even five years ago. The salty wind brings a rubbery tang, rising from the Neoprene of warm wetsuits. And on an overcast Tuesday, in waves barely 2ft high, bob 75 surfers. Almost all are beginners, wobbling on fluorescent "foamies", big learner boards that are easier to stand up on.
Just north of Newquay, Watergate Bay symbolises the remarkable transformative power of surf culture. Until the turn of the century, its sprawling clifftop hotel was all chintz and wicker chairs. A shack on the sand sold beach balls and ice-creams. Nothing much had changed since the railways ushered in an era of mass tourism more than 130 years before.
Will Ashworth took over the hotel from his parents in 2000 while his older brother, Henry, spruced up the beach shack. Its sleek renovation provides achingly contemporary accommodation for adventurous professionals who visit the shack - now the "Extreme Academy" - to go waveskiing, kitesurfing, mountainboarding or, of course, surfing. Afterwards, they dine in the newest branch of Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant, which opened at the resort six weeks ago. It has already taken 25,000 bookings.
Every indicator suggests that 2006 will be a record year for surfing. There are 500,000 regular surfers in the UK, according to the British Surfing Association, the sport's governing body (membership up 400% to 10,000 in the past five years). This year, it estimates the same number again - 500,000 - will try surfing. Surf teachers believe that half their learners return to the waves. Last year, on Newquay's Fistral beach alone, the BSA taught 8,000 people how to surf. Fistral Surf Hire reports a 20% increase in people hiring their boards and wetsuits this season. Newquay may live up to the boast of surf capital of Europe, but surfers are finding breaks in all kinds of unlikely places, from Cromer to Berwick to Brighton.
"All these people are paying £35 to learn to surf, £5 to park and £5 for a tea and hotdog. It soon adds up," says Chris Thomson, a professional surfer surveying the scene on Watergate Bay. But surfing is doing something more radical to tourism across the south-west, south Wales, western Ireland and parts of Scotland. Because waves get bigger and better in autumn and winter, new surfers are visiting beaches at all times, creating a putative 12-month tourist season. "Five years ago, surfing was important. Now it's fundamental to what we're doing," says Ashworth, 31. "If we want to help Cornwall's economy, tourism has got to become all-year-round. We have made that leap." The old hotel employed 10 people; now it employs 70 people throughout the year (and a further 60 in summer). Business this year is up 20%. The region is benefiting: surfing directly provided 1,036 full-time jobs in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly with a turnover of £64m, according to a 2004 study.
It is glued seams and an end to stitching that has turned surfing into an engine of all-year-round tourism. People used not to surf in Britain simply because it was too cold. A revolution in wetsuit technology has opened up new waters, according to writer Alex Wade, whose book about British surfing, Surf Nation, will be published next year. "Wetsuits are a world apart from the ones you wore 20 years ago or even 10 years ago," he says. "Britain has always had great surf but that has transformed things. You can be warmer in the water than you are out on the beach."
Surf boutiques selling expensive wetsuits with names like Psycho have sprung up at the back of beaches. Teenagers mill about the ProSurf shop at Fistral, where more than 100 learners are negotiating gentle breakers. From surf boots to silvery board bags, the accessories are a world away from the simplicity of the wave riders of Hawaii, first recorded by western eyes in 1779 from Captain Cook's Discovery. Lieutenant James King logged the natives who met the "greatest swell" by balancing on wooden planks and were dispatched "with a most astonishing velocity".
The bronzed surf dudes of Hawaii may have intimidated prospective surfers ever since, but there is a cheery, beginners' vibe to British surfing. Surf schools are proliferating (there are now 60 BSA-approved schools, compared with 20 five years ago) and, with no entrenched national surf culture, there is no shame if you are a forty-something first-timer. Among the Watergate Bay beginners is Tom Wilkinson, 43, a chartered surveyor from Lincolnshire. He has left his sons (three and six) with his family at the hotel and is taking his first surf lesson with a friend. "We just had an hour, and after 20 minutes I was absolutely shattered. It's a great sport. Once you get your board, the waves are free."
Women are also behind much of the boom. There are an estimated 100,000 women surfers in the UK, up from 10,000 three years ago. The female surf brand Roxy began as a modest offshoot of behemoth surf brand Quiksilver; it now accounts for more than a third of its business. "More than half our customers are women," says Barrie Hall, the BSA's head coach. "At least 50% continue to surf once they have been on a course."
"I never thought of it as a boys-only sport," says Roxanne Speight, 22, staying at Watergate Beach hotel with eight friends all learning how to surf. "I like to think anything he can do, I can do too," says Hannah Gilgan, 25, who is visiting Fistral to pick up surfing with her boyfriend, Dale Pickstone. "As a beginner you don't feel that everybody is going to go, 'Oh God, she can't do it,'" she says. "If I was in Hawaii I'd feel really conscious that I was the only one who couldn't surf."
Jack Sykes-Wood, 19, a student, spends his summers teaching people how to surf. Teenagers want to surf because of the way it is marketed, he reckons. Surf pro Kelly Slater has his own PlayStation game. Singers such as Jack Johnson play on their surf-dude image. Surfwear, says Sykes-Wood, is practically a public-school uniform. A telecoms engineer from Portsmouth, a fireman from Stevenage, a media sales rep from Peterborough: Bohemian Like You may thud from the stereo of a Ford Fiesta parked at Fistral, but Britain's affluent, democratic and unashamedly commercial surf scene has grown far from its underground roots when, as John Bryant, manager of Fistral Surf Hire and a surfer for 45 years, puts it, surfers lived "like Hell's Angels".
Surfing nearly died out in Hawaii in the 19th century as western influences corroded the Polynesian way of life. "The abolition of the traditional religion signalled the end of surfing's sacred aspects," write historians James D Houston and Ben Finney. "With surf chants, board construction rites, sports gods and other sacred elements removed, the once ornate sport of surfing was stripped of much of its cultural plumage."
Some surfers feel they have undergone a similar process today. Surfing's tousle-haired, testosterone-fuelled underbelly has been mass marketed out of existence. For all the branding such as the Extreme Academy, there is nothing remotely extreme about a chartered surveyor braving 2ft waves with a bright yellow board. "There was a time in the 70s when you could have gone, 'I'm a surfer' and chicks would have gone, 'No way!' Now it's like chicks go, 'Whatever,'" says Sam White, 25.
Just south of St Agnes, where old tin mines poke fingers above heathered clifftops, White and Dan Marks, 23, are catching notoriously fickle breaks between their shifts as lifeguards. Both are young local men who have arranged their lives around the waves. Now they see their "secret spots" besieged and their passion appropriated by advertisers. "All that surf stuff is a bit lame - Jack Johnson, beads," says White. "Burn the beads. The lifestyle is cheesy. It's just a business, to put out magazines and sell more clothes."
There are growing numbers of surfers and a finite number of suitable waves. In Cornwall, as elsewhere, angry confrontations spark up between local surfers and newcomers. For those locals who cannot afford to buy a home, the mere presence of BMW-loads of City weekenders surfing their secret spots is a provocative act. "It gets quite territorial when you get a group of people come in," says Marks. "If you're always here you're looking for it every day and then the waves happen to be good at the weekend when it's crowded. It's frustrating. You've made the sacrifice by staying here, by not having a good job, so you can surf."
"Newquay's beaches are a zoo," says White. "The busier it is, the less waves there are to go around and the more frustrated people get and the more carnage there is. It's more dangerous, too, with people letting go of their boards." But beginners quickly become more adventurous. These days, legendary secret spots where locals use ropes to climb down cliffs can be found on the internet.
In Australia, surf rage has led to mass brawls. Even surf legends such as Nat Young have been beaten up for daring to visit certain breaks. In Cornwall, graffiti appeared at Portreath saying: "locals only" after two surfers from another part of Cornwall were beaten up by locals 18 months ago. Marks and White have never done anything "that bad" against newcomers, apart from hollering a few "fuck offs". The boys at Portreath are more militant, they say. "They put [surfboard] wax on car windscreens. That's a good one. Stick things up the exhaust pipe. Or pop two tyres - pop one and they can get the spare out; pop two and you're fucked," explains White.
As an antidote to the modern world that is embraced by it, surfing is snared in all kinds of paradoxes. For pro surfer Chris Thomson, part of its beauty is its lack of rules and regulations. But he admits that British surfing would be improved if beginners were made more aware of the basic etiquette (chiefly, don't "drop in" on waves that surfers have already caught). He'd like to see signs on popular surf beaches, giving the basic commandments of surfing.
Thomson benefits from the surf boom but notes that the global megabrands (O'Neill, Ripcurl and Billabong) are also doing very nicely. Many surfers feel companies that thrive on the surf scene could put more back into the sport. "There's nothing wrong with commercialism per se," says surf historian Pete Robinson, founder of the British Surfing Museum. "It's not a bad thing if the people making money out of it are prepared to put something back into the sport." The BSA is careful not to criticise its sponsors but, without government funding, it survives on a shoestring.
Marks and White recognise the ironies. Surf shops run by their friends are thriving but they would prefer Cornwall to return to the days before stockbrokers flew from London to Newquay for a day's surfing. "We want the money but not the crowds," says Marks. "We need it but it sucks," nods White. And they know things will not go back to how surf folklore says it once was. "I can't see it becoming unpopular again," shrugs White. "Once you try it, you get into it. Everyone else will feel the same as us."
Brands, advertising, image, peer pressure, transport and the leisure society may bring people to pick up a board. But the thing that drives so many to return is surfing's intrinsic pleasure. Karen Walton, national director of the BSA, came to surfing only after she began working at the BSA 15 years ago. "Once I tried it, I thought, 'My God, I should have done this years ago.' It sounds sappy but sometimes it's enough to just paddle out there and be on the ocean."
"You're jumping off the continent and immersing yourself in the sea," says Thomson. "It's always a new adventure. It's not like playing on the same football pitch - every time you go out to that pitch, it's changed."
"You have to try it to understand it," whispers Robinson. "There's such a simple pleasure and beauty in taking off on a wave that's been created thousands of miles away and drawing your own lines on it".
