A Year in the life of Surf Mama
Categories: Blog, events, Photos, surf mama • Tags: Art Car Boot Fair, Ballydavid, Biarritz, bundoran, guethary, Liverpool, surf, surf mama, surfbooks, surfing, travel writing, wilma johnson
Category Archives: Blog
Indian Summertime
Autumn in Olatua isn’t so much the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness – it’s more the season of scorching sun, big swells and surf pros slashing across the waves. South winds ice the village with Sahara dust, thunderstorms like Hammer Horror special effects shake the house at night. You have to make the most of the Indian summer , because as anyone who lives here through the year will remind you, in ominous tones reminiscent of Game of Thrones…. ‘Winter […]
Categories: Blog, surf mama • Tags: beach, Biarritz, guethary, st jean de luz, surf, surf mama, surfing
August in Olatua
‘August is party season. The village is packed, the bars are packed, the wave is packed. Apart from the usual crowd you have to negotiate swimmers, divers harpooning octopus,rubber dinghies and jet-skis.’ Some people leave the village for August, the crowds are insane compared to the rest of the year, but sometimes it’s more fun to just go with it, fiestas in Pamplona, Bayonne and every other town village or hamlet in Pays Basque. Parties every night in the […]
Categories: Blog, Photos, surf mama • Tags: August, Biarritz, Olatua Surf Mama, Summer, surf, surf mama
Surf Mama #1
I arrived in London at my mother’s house and there by the door were these two wooden bellyboards, they brought back vague memories of childhood holidays in Lyme Regis. Stormy days when the whole family would pack a picnic and head off to Charmouth beach to catch the waves under the cliffs, Mary Anning’s dinosaurs embedded in the mud. The children were only allowed waist deep half terrified by threats of currents that would whisk us away, half ecstatic to […]
Categories: Blog, Photos, surf mama • Tags: 80 something, surfing, women surfing
Jazzing the Glass
The flat spell continues, soon surfers will start to lose their religion and make the ultimate sacrifice to the pagan sea gods by burning surfboards, while manically beating on their bongo drums to summon up a swell. Partly to remember what a wave looked like Florence and I headed over to Jazz the Glass in Biarritz last night for the opening of Sylvain Cazenave‘s exhibition of surf photos from four corners of the ocean. I have a running joke with Sylvain after I […]
Categories: Blog, surf mama • Tags: Biarritz, surf, surfbooks, surfphotos
Back to my Roots
After a crazy week in London launching the book it was quite calming to get back home and back to my roots with the Mamas Surf Club on friday. A bit too calm in fact – we had the sort of waves I dreamt of when we first started in 2005, tiny to non-existent. For a while we had another motto alongside ‘Out of the kitchen and into the Surf’. ‘Never too small for the Mamas.’ But I’ll say the […]
Categories: Blog, letter form Olatua, surf mama • Tags: Biarritz, mamas surf club, surf, surf mama, wilma johnson, women surfing
Seagull Style
I was getting pretty stressed out by my knee injury recently, finding it hard to jump lightly to my feet on my board – in surf lingo my take off totally sucked. So I decided to avoid stress and go bellyboarding using this elegant lady as a role model ( you will notice that she’s surfing straight towards the brewery). It was not really fun and gave me my hit of adrenalin rush- all waves are overhead when your lying […]
Categories: Blog, surf mama • Tags: bellyboarding, seagulls, surfing
Surf Mama 