There was a time long ago when surfers forecast what the waves were going to be doing in the future themselves- just by looking at a picture of squiggly lines. They didn't go on the interweb and get spoon fed numbers and stars. These squiggly line pictures were hard to find -the world wide web only existed in Tim Berners-Lee academic brain at the time- and to see them you had to watch the BBC weather religiously...
Continue reading "Let The Froth Commence..." »

Exactly what it says on the tin- some of the worlds leading freeski fellows surfing on skis. Check the clip after the jump-
Continue reading "Skiing In The Surf? Truly Bonkers..." »
Last time we had a comprehensive, well, as comprehensive as possible in the black art of board design, look at three of the fundamental aspects of board design, namely: Rocker, Outline and Bottom Shape. That trinity don’t work alone and in this issue we’ll round off the other interplaying factors that make your board go good or surf like a lump of wood.
Continue reading "More Surfboard Wisdom..." »
Film of the year- Avatar (in 3D at the IMAX you'll not beat the experience of being in a cinema. Sure the story is Dances With Wolves and the US is nasty for invading Irag for oil but we knew that already).
Worst- 2012. CGI shite. Considering what Cameron did with Avatar it's about time everyone else stopped using their 48k Spectrums and gets with the program.
Continue reading "Things Of The Year..." »
Now I don't usually do cameos in world champions new mini sites but seeing as it's Mick I thought I'd do it this once... I'm the speccy berk in the opening shot, just tastefully out of focus at the back... I don't normally rock a beard I'd just been on the road in Europe for a month and standards were slipping.
Continue reading "Slide Mag's Guest Cameo Appearance In The Micktory!" »

1. No matter how many fin keys you own, the length of time it takes to find one is in direct proportion to the quality of the waves.
2. There is no way round a wet wetsuit in the winter, buy two.
3. It will take exactly five minutes from when you buy a new board until you ding it on a lampost, door frame or car.
Continue reading "Surfing Wisdom Reduced To Bullet Points..." »

Had to wait until the mags came out in case this got used. Didn't make the cut in the UK due to space constraints but should be in ASL... Ladies and Gents the scores are in: The 3 big European World Tour events scored on the availability of coffee, food, parking, waves, controversy and more... In chronological order.
Continue reading "The Results Are In..." »
We’ve been mercifully free of the disease that is localism in our islands. Sure there are places where you tread and park carefully but the innate friendliness of British and Irish surfers, borne from the days when seeing another surfer was a rarity, still holds sway. Which is why you’ll hear arrogant young Turks say things like this, ‘Yeah all the locals are super mellow, didn’t seem to mind us paddling past them at all to go deep…’ That’s what is known amongst locals as a queue, an orderly way of handling reef set-ups.
Continue reading "How to be a Redneck Local Asshole…" »
Mr Nunn of Wavelengthshire sent me this pic last week. It's a new British slab, it is nuts, it really needs a jetski to get you into it. Mr Tim of Wavelength shot it 1st and the fellas from Carve weren't far behind. So now we have the anti-Rileys... A good thing for all the natural footed slab freaks out there. I await further shots in the mags with interest...
Continue reading "Oh My It's A New British Slab- Number 10..." »

Learning to surf is a lot like learning to drive a car. Sure, you can go out on yer lonesome, bumble around and crash into a few people, alternatively you can get a few lessons from an expert to give you some pointers about how to handle the thing and learn the rules of the road. Once you have the basics mastered and have solid road sense then you can go off by yourself. At this point, like in surfing, its best to have a slow, cheap, beast of a car, cos it doesn’t matter so much if it gets knocked and you are less likely to wrap yourself around a tree because you can’t handle the power.
So a foamy or mini-mal is the equivalent of a beaten £400 1.0L Fiesta… Where is all this ‘analogy crap’ heading I can hear you ask?
Continue reading "Adopt An Artisan Today..." »
You may, like many people, be wondering what the hell Twitter is. Or have started an account stared at a blank page and thought 'huh? that's shit!'. Well it's simple- it is a microblogging platform. A user can post updates of up to 140-characters and that's it. Much like the status update on FB. But that's not the be all and end all. It's about following people be they pro surfers, celebs or friends and using it for communication (especially news and event updates), sharing links and it has the benefit of not being a closed loop of just your mates like FB. Cos if there's one sure thing the likes of Kelly and Parko would not be your friend on FB but you can follow them on TW.
Continue reading "Pro's Twitter On..." »
This weekend was dem British Nationals. An important event. Cos calling yourself 'British Champ' opens many doors and generally means you don't have to make tea for anyone anymore. It was at Fistral (quelle surprise- it should be at Thurso like it used to be!) and the surf was flat dribbly shite on Saturday (so small and poopy looking on the webcams that I didn't even bother going) but it built a bit for Sunday and was contestable, onshore, closey-outy, dribbley shite instead. In other words business as usual for British comps... Not that the dire surf prevented some serious schwacking, punting and gouging from going on.
Continue reading "Reubs Rides The Nationals Express..." »