There are definitely two sides to surfing: there’s the stuff in boardshorts and bikinis, and there’s the stuff of getting up at 3am on a winter’s morning when it’s raining outside. This is a story about the latter…
I want to go surf one of the most recent big wave discoveries ‘Finn MacCools’ on the North coast of Northern Ireland, it’s a wave that needs a pretty rare combination of wind, tide and big swell to come together, I’m not even sure I have the combinations right, but I’m not going to find out by laying in a warm bed. I shut up the annoying alarm on my Nokia, fire up the porridge and hit the road with my brother Tam who’s keen to grab some shots. It’s still raining, the roads are empty and the early hour Radio1 DJ seems like a good guy but needs to talk less and play records more. We’re on a schedule; Tam has to get to work in Belfast for 9am so this little adventure sees no time for chit chat. We pull into the car park at the visitor centre of the world famous Giant’s Causeway just as day breaks. The distant sea is grey but the skies look like they might clear, it’s a typical Ulster morning when forecasts mean nothing and you take whatever is thrown at you, which normally means an A-Z of weather words.
