Surfing in Polzeath

The “juniors” at Harrowbarrow Primary, Years 3 though 6, had their annual outing to Polzeath, Cornwall, for surfing lessons last Saturday. We all went along, but Rebecca was the only one to surf. Polzeath is on the north coast of Cornwall about an hour’s drive from Harrowbarrow.

Rebecca’s teacher, Mark Goodright, grew up surfing in this seaside village, and he has been teaching his students to surf here ever since joining the Harrowbarrow Primary faculty. The students were fully kitted up by the Surfs Up! Surf School,

including boards and wetsuits. Wetsuits are a necessity given water temperatures of 13.4 °C (56 °F)! There was a good contingent of 22 students participating in the trip,

and Rebecca was excited for the opportunity. It’s definitely not a trip that a school in western North Carolina would do - it's too far to the beach! Maybe Hatteras School in Buxton? There it is probably part of the PE curriculum!

Gwendolyn was too young to participate in the surfing lessons, but she did have a classmate, Rebecca, to play with.

We had time to kill, so Christine, Gwendolyn, and I all rented full-body wetsuits and a bodyboard.

You can see behind us in the picture above that the beach is incredibly flat at this site. It took almost ten minutes just to get to the surf at low tide because the tides were extreme due to spring tidal conditions. Given the chance of rain and the need to stand in the waves to view the surfing, we didn’t take our camera close enough to get pictures of the surfing.

Polzeath is an ideal place to learn to surf as the flatness of the beach produces a consistent stream of small waves. Unfortunately, the day that we were there a continual cross wind of about 20 mph made the waves unpredictable. Still, I saw Rebecca get up on her board several times. She lasted about ten seconds each time, much better than I did the one time I tried to surf! Finally, though, the cold water and getting hit in the head by the surf board took their toll and she was done for the day. I was proud of her. Surfing is a tough thing to do, and she was very brave taking it on, especially when viewing the roughness of the surf and hearing the roar of the waves.

The girls’ favorite part of the day was the beach time that they spent with their friend, Anie, who has appeared in this blog twice before. They must have spent two or three hours digging in the sand, which gave Christine and I plenty of time to bodyboard.

We hope to return to Polzeath over the next six weeks or so for more beach fun! Gwen obviously missed the cue to look up, but I wanted to get a picture of the whole family in here.