Scotland

This story first appeared in 'Surf Session' magazine in 2002
CLICK HERE for photo's from this trip. (Opens in new window.)

Close to the cliffs of Cape Wrath is a mysterious beach pounded by Atlantic anger, come on a day when the mists and drizzle are hiding colours and contrasts and you might catch a glimpse of the bearded fisherman whose ghostly form haunts these empty sands. No one knows who he is or why he's here, it could be that he was led to a watery grave by the deadly beauty of a mermaid. After all it was on this same beach just a hundred years ago that Britain had its last recorded mermaid sighting. Legend and mystery abound in northern Scotland, the wild feel of the land seems to breed a rich tapestry of stories, but often the truth is as peculiar as the fiction. Further east of the shadowy ghosts of Cape Wrath is a river named after the God Thor, it may no longer be the home of Nordic gods but instead it's the only place I know of in Britain where seals can be seen resting on the river bank in the heart of a town.

I've been surfing for over fifteen years and been on a fair few surf trips, some to well known waves, some to unknown waves, but in all those years I'd never before been on a proper surf trip in my own nation. I suppose this is quite common, I mean why go on a trip in your own backyard when the rest of the world can seem so much more exotic and inviting? Well after fifteen years it was time to put that right and so early on an April day myself and a group of friends took the long road north to the end of Britain and a land more exotic and inspiring than I could have ever imagined existing on my own doorstep.

OK maybe it being on my doorstep is a little misleading, it would take a surfer from Cornwall longer to get to the Scottish north coast than to Hossegor and I think we all know which one most choose. And did I say my nation? Well maybe a few years ago I could have said that and got away with it, not now though. Devolution has given Scotland its own parliament, its own education system, its own rules and even it's own bank notes. In the towns and cities of the Scottish south you might not notice a difference from the England that you just left behind, the unimaginative high streets are full of the same chain shops and the pubs the same conversations. But pass over the snow draped mountains and onto the bleak moors of the north coast and you seem to cross an imaginary frontier and enter into a world apart, a world where the happenings of London or Edinburgh seem to have little relevance to day to day life. It was the first time in many years that Britain has excited me.

We began our hunt for waves from the small west coast town of Ullapool and set off north along quiet single lane roads. We passed by silent lochs and mountains embraced in mist, snow lay deeply on the shady northern slopes and in the shelter of the valleys we found eerie forests of twisted trees. The first beaches we came to were hidden from Atlantic energy by the Outer Hebrides and on this day were still, but we knew that when the big winter storms sweep across Scotland generating swells that
can turn ocean going tankers into toys to be thrown around that these beaches become seething cauldrons of crashing waves. We pushed on; past Cape Wrath and into Durness, the most northwesterly village on the mainland and a place that I could not imagine living in, but am so glad that I visited. I think it must have been the weather that did it, normally I hate the incessant drizzle and the cold and the wind of my Britain, I just don't see the point in it, but here on the mainland's furthest tip I was left feeling strangely exhilarated by its obvious power and influence. The effect the weather plays on even the tiniest aspects of peoples lives in this village is impossible to overestimate, on our first evening we tried to buy an umbrella to protect our camera equipment from the rain, but were told we'd have to travel two hours to either Thurso or Inverness to get one, because up here people don't use them as the wind destroys them in a second. The weather had even rusted out the village cash point. Throughout our stay in Scotland we found that the weather, and its constantly changing patterns, was always at the top of our minds, the wind strength and direction could change half a dozen times in a day meaning that suiting up in front of offshore, peeling waves and then watching as it swung directly onshore as we hit the water and then back offshore again as we got out was almost standard. Each morning we'd go through the routine of checking the swell and the wind and then studying our maps trying to work out the best spot for the day's conditions, only to find it utterly different by the time we'd made our decision.

Despite this we did get some waves in this northwestern corner, on one beach we found a left wedge bouncing off high cliffs. In Cornwall it would have been crawling with surfers, here the beach was empty but for some oystercatchers. The headland overlooking this beach, like many we surfed, was marked by a graveyard. I have know idea why this was so, but it seemed somewhat appropriate, a kind of subtle reminder of the powerful forces of nature that surfers are playing with up here.

As you head east along the north coast the scenery begins to change, the glacial carved inlets and moody mountains start to fade away and in their place come the no less spectacular flat and wind battered moor lands, grazed by shaggy highland cattle. Population centres remain rare, but the beaches and waves don't stop coming and on every point, reef or sandbar the chances of encountering another surfer are minimal.
And then just as you are getting used to the raw starkness of this coast you come to Thurso. It may be a small town by most standards but in comparison to where you've just come from it feels like a city. No-one could call Thurso attractive, at least not in the standard sense, its isolation and the dull granite buildings make it seem grey on even a sunny day and when, as is more common, the weather closes in and shrouds the town in cloud and rain, its run down and dying shops and lack of inspiration can cast you into an instant depression and to me it symbolised all that is bad about small town British life. But maybe that was just a negative attitude on my part, because occasionally the town would produce something that would force me to look at it in a different way, seals playing in the river named after a Norse god next to a supermarket car park, the strangely clear light after a rain squall or the beautifully long sunsets. Though maybe the most important impression that came across was the warmth of the towns' people. This welcoming friendliness quashed in an instant any images I'd built up in my Britain of the Scots hating the English and this friendliness was most evident in the busy pubs, where unlike in my hometown girls approached us to talk and their boyfriends didn't threaten us in return. We met a couple of the few local surfers and heard stories of surfing in the frozen winters when blocks of ice flow down the river and straight into the Thurso East line-up. We also bumped into other traveling surfers; a crew from Aberdeen and another from Wales both were past visitors and both said that despite the cold and fickleness of the north coast just one barrel at Thurso East would bring you back again and again.

It took some time for Thurso East to show us why it's so well regarded, but we occupied ourselves in the meantime with other waves, the most reliable of which was a long but fat right point. One afternoon, after surfing, we went to the mainland's most northerly point, which contrary to popular belief is not John O Groats, but the nearby Dunnet Head, and fortunately it's retained more of an end of the world feel than John O Groats. Standing at the top of sheer cliffs a lighthouse is all that marks this spot, and a small notice revealing how sometimes, in the winter, rocks thrown up by the waves one hundred and thirty metres below smash the windows of the lighthouse. There can be no better demonstration of the power of the storms that engulf this corner of Scotland. We also found a surf spot here, but it would take a boat and a very brave man to ride these waves as it's maybe the most extreme surf spot in Britain, a heavy left breaking on a reef at the bottom of enormous cliffs and thrust out as far north as it's possible to go in this country, exposed to every ounce of north Atlantic rage. At least we thought it could be Britain's most extreme surf spot, but that was before we met a woman in a shop who told us where that most extreme spot was really to be found. She told us that in the right conditions somewhere in the
seven mile wide channel between Dunnet Head and the Orkney Isles a 'surf spot' wakes up that goes by the name of the "Merry Dancers" or the more sinister "Bores of Duncansby" and it holds standing waves of up to ten metres as well as some terrifying whirlpools. The Merry Dancers are formed by the action of storms pushing against a tidal flow of up to ten knots that can be seen visibly racing like a river around the Pentland Firth. The Merry Dancers are so formidable that even the massive tankers that think little of an Atlantic gale give them as wide a berth as possible. Then she told us the almost unbelievable news that these waves have been ridden, not by surfers like us but by a group of local surf kayakers, "I've watched them out there, they look like they're having the time of their lives", as far as we were concerned this was one surf spot they could keep for themselves.

"The view you get as you paddle out through the channel and look into the tube is as good as you'll see anywhere", so Tom, one of the Welsh guys told us about Thurso East. On our last day we saw what he meant, fellow bodyboarder Rob Waldron and myself had surfed it very small, but as perfect as a two-foot wave can be the evening before, but this day was different, there was proper swell and open barrels. We'd pulled up in front of the break that morning to find that the Welsh guys, the group from Aberdeen and a couple of locals were already on it, seven people, a Scottish crowd. As the tide dropped the waves started getting better, the swell continued to build and the cold started to drive the early arrivals in for breakfast eventually leaving just two of us in the water. Afterwards one of the guys from Aberdeen told me that for him it was "The best wave
I've ridden in the UK", I couldn't have agreed any more. The Welsh boys were almost foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm for the wave, Rhino, who surfs well enough to know better than most of us, reckoned it was pretty much as good a wave as he's surfed anywhere. Tom liked the variety, "There's gift tubes that you have to do nothing for and then there are ones that you have to steer through and work for". It was Jem though, who'd turned out to be the tube master of the day, who probably summed it up best, "Being in a line-up where perfect waves are coming through, I mean really perfect, and there's only you and your friends in the water, that's a rare thing, but not here".

One hundred years ago it was claimed mermaids lived in northern Scotland, maybe they did, maybe they still do, to be honest I don't care because like I said the truth can be stranger than the fiction. And for me what was harder to believe than any fairy tales about mermaids, ghosts and Nordic gods was that the northern limits of my 'nation' did something to me that I still find truly unbelievable, for the first time in years Britain had made me excited.