La Piste

La Piste, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

Vive la France!!!

Not too many people looking to paddle out this day at La Piste. Had to be really fast on your feet to make one of these freight trains. Sooo beautiful though...

Mundaka

Mundaka, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

We were staying up north when the southerly winds started ripping through the surf out front. Swell continued to build and so we headed south to Mundaka. Hoping that the sandbar had truly regained some semblance of its former glory. The photos don't lie. The bar is back in form. Unfortunately the locals have been starved for the past couple of years and are really hungry. It's been a difficult place to surf as a traveler for many years, but now it's near impossible. We were paddling out in pitch darkness listening to the sets hammering the bar and already there was a Lower's like crowd rotating through the peak. I spoke with one guy from New Zealand who had been out in the dark for over 2 hours!!! I can barely surf when I can see. I can't imagine trying to weave backside through Mundaka's pipes in the dark.

SW France

La Piste, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

We'd been huddled next to the fireplace in the living room at Dave's place for nearly a week drinking way to much espresso, eating far to many french pastries, and driving ourselves mad trying to finish Sudoku puzzles. The weather in the Bay of Biscay is unpredictable at any time of the year but, in November, you just know you're going to get hammered by a storm at some point. These wicked storms coming in from the North Atlantic bring weeks of rain and wind but they also bring the swell, and plenty of it. Just gotta hope the winds switch east. On this morning we knew there had been a change. The dampness we'd gotten used to had left the air and you could smell the pines in the crisp morning offshores. After a quick jog through Napoleon's pine forest, then up and over the sand dune to where we're greeted with corduroy lines to the horizon. The midnight offshores had worked their magic and straightened out the ragged stormy mess of the previous week into ruler edged lines. We we're stoked to see a new sandbar had formed where once there had been none. The storms move so much sand every time they come through you just never know what you'll be looking at till you get there. With only a single fisherman casting from the shore the three of us feasted on perfect right hand sandbar barrels. Later that evening with Dave smoking us out with one of his wet wood fires, we poured out a little Vin rouge and re-lived the days waves. We all decided that at this point in our lives it's not about the quantity of waves but the quality we occasionally luck into. And in France, for all of the elements to come together you've got to be lucky!

View from the back of the van

View from the back of the van, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

This is when the trip took on another whole dimension. Surfing an overhead, offshore pointbreak alone is getting to be a rarer and rarer event these days. I kept looking around waiting for everyone to show up. Luckily as I got out a few guys from Edinburgh visiting for the weekend showed up so I didn't have to keep pinching myself to see if this was really happening. The Orkney Islands are an amazing place. To surf in front of village remains that are more than 5,000 years old alone was an incredible experience. The waves fired down the point. Smoking offshore plumes off the backs of waves. The twinnie was a speed demon. Dark water, yet crystal clear. The next day I surfed the right till the 8 foot clean-up sets drove me in...

Trail to Spekes

Trail to Spekes, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

How we found this spot I'll never know. We'd traveled down from Lynton through the stunning forests and rolling hills of Exmoor National Park. The van wasn't feeling 100% as we pulled up the steep dirt road leading to the farmhouse. I actually stalled the van on a steep section and then it would not start. Rolled backwards out of the farm driveway and then jumped it down the narrow road in the center of the village. Always a good way to announce your arrival! Once parked up in the fallow fields the farmer lets people camp on during the summer I grabbed my twinny and started walking down to the coast to see what was out front. Through a couple of fields, down a dirt path and just to the south there was a nice A-frame reef set up with just couple of guys out. Perfect fun Twinny surf.... First surf in the UK. Sunny, warm, uncrowded and feeling more like central coast of California than anything else.