I look at my watch and realised it was time to stop admiring the view from underwater and try and get some redemption waves. I’d worked out by now that that the swell was a lot bigger than forecast, the line up super shifty on rogue sets and there was nothing else for it but to just try and dig into a couple. It took a while but the first wave I caught felt all the better for it, paddling in all my focus was on just catching a wave but once I was riding the enormity of the setting was a massive rush on the senses. Suddenly the view of the hexagonal stones is racing past your shoulder, it’s a pretty fast wave so it’s a bit of a blur but it felt like my brain was trying to slow it down and take in the view. There’s no beach as such, the entire shore is rock and boulder lined so it’s quite a surreal feeling watching the rocks get ever closer and your eventual kick out ever more critical. With a few more under my belt and our deadline to get my brother Tam to work drawing closer I grabbed one last one which fortunately lined up to just let me out at the edge of the bay and an even more fortunate scramble up the rocks. Ding free and super charged on even more respect for a favourite place I looked round at a shoreline that has remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years. To the North I can see the distant shores of Scotland in the mist and if it weren’t for the anachronism of the latest and greatest in wetsuit and board technology in my hands, the setting is timeless.
Interacting with nature goes hand in hand with surf sports but when you get a chance to surf in places that are as raw and as untouched as the Giant’s Causeway it makes our sport even richer in feeling. Before I got too intoxicated on hippy dust there was still the very unromantic hike back to the car park. Luckily the timeless but potentially very tiring moment was killed by a snort of diesel exhaust heralding the arrival of a massive Mercedes van! A film crew had got special permission to come down and shoot an advert but with the weather against them had to abandon plans, oh the joys of Irish weather when you are a surfer! If I’m honest a couple of thousand Euros would have seemed like a cheap fare at the time for a lift back up the hill but a few hundred pleases later and Tam and I bagged a lift right back to the door of my van.
As we drove back to Belfast in the snake of rush hour traffic the contrast couldn’t have been greater but a morning surf takes the edge off most things. Tam made it to work, no boards bruised and I didn’t even mind that the DJ was still talking too much. At this point most tropical surf stories end with a few sunset beers as the dying sun deepens the tan round your smile. Like I said at the start but this is a story about surfing in Northern Ireland so my ending isn’t sexy and sun drenched, it’s tea on the sofa and toast in the toaster. It may not be sunny but its home and scoring good surf here is what makes my pasty faced smile deeper. SUP
