Paudies Photoblog

Good times in the white stuff

I wish I could do this stuff.

Cool spiderman shit

Ok well not really a bonanza, but there were some barrels.

It took a while to get there but some waves were had last Sunday. I’m not sure what I expected really, but it was mostly sunny, with good winds and a bit of swell, and that sounds like a pretty good day to me.
Most of my trips recently I’ve gone expecting absolute perfection, and, as usual, have been disappointed.

This time I just cruised up, I didn’t even speed, that much. I’d only been to this spot once before so maybe that’s why I didn’t have many expectations. Which was good because it looked awful. Everybody was sitting around wondering why the hell it was so crap. Around the corner the swell was booming, but in this little bay it just wasn’t quite doing it.

“Maybe it’s the tide”

“No it needs more wind to hold it up”

“Hang on let’s just see what this set does”

A lot of excuses were made everybody was itching to get wet, and it was a couple of groms who eventually got my hyped up enough to jump in. Unfortunately, one of them snapped his board straight away and I didn’t get to hook up with the other on any decent ones. Although the kid with the snapped board got his pieces together dropped them back to the van then went bodysurfing for about an hour, getting more barrels than anyone.
Find the stoke where you can.

Barry slotted, who cares about the close out.

I really really hope this is a spoof, found this link on postsurf.com

http://watermanleague.com/index.php

SUPs are the most ridiculous unfunctional piece of water equipment available.

I’m all for using whatever board suits the conditions from long board to lids, but I have yet to see any place where SUPs have any benefit over any other board unless it’s flat and that puts them in the same category as kayaks.

This video makes me think it’s definitely a spoof. The whole “Out of control” thing followed by guys not in control of their boards.

SUP World Tour

In other news check out Kelly’s crazy boards for J-Bay, which is live here. Trials are on today.

As in foot.

I love new places. I don’t like travelling though anyone who says that is silly. Being in new places is awesome I’m all for that.

Travelling is sitting in some contraption for hours on end getting a sore arse and possibly a headache. The day they get a teleporter working on humans will be a happy day indeed.

I do too much of it and I hardly ever leave Munster let alone Ireland.

So it was with a heavy heart that I made plans to head towards Bundy last weekend. Nice medium size swell, winds were a bit strong but offshore and most importantly there was going to be clear skies. The plan was to leave Cork around 4am, should be able to do Cork to Bundy in about 4 1/2 hours without killing yourself and probably 5 1/2 hours coming home in the evening when normal sane people are driving.

So calls were made making sure that there would surfers willing to head in my general direction while surfing. Days went by and the forecast was staying the same. Bugger guess I’ll have to the drive after all. Now for the most part I can handle fairly long drives I’ve bloody enough of them, I just freak myself out a little bit when I lose concentration a little and suddenly find I’ve driven ten miles without really being aware of what exactly happened. I try to tell myself that my brain is actually working fine just not bothering to store away anything it’s processing, but for all I know I could have been driving as straight as this tide line made entirely of empty limpet shells (weird, but cool)

I just get a sore arse and start getting bored after the third hour usually. Although I once had to do a drive from Cork to LA with no radio and nobody to talk to and went a little bit crazy.

Anyway, the clouds kicked in Saturday evening so the call was made not to bother going to Bundy. Ten hour round trip for cloudy waves was deemed silly. So I decided to head West in search of waves for my own pleasure. I haven’t searched the coast south of the Shannon properly at all and felt like finding some new waves.

So I got a sleep-in and only got up at 0600

But the dawn was gorgeous and I actually listened to my own advice and stopped the car randomly when I saw a nice scene, resulting in the shot below over some random lake in Cork.

The problem with most of Cork and Kerry is that it’s all big mountains and steep cliffs, so you get the odd fickle beachy but not many reefs. So I decided to go exploring. My plan was to try and discover some new epic reef that’s perfectly sheltered in a SW wind. (Why is it always epic why can’t it just be a nice normal wave)

I found a road that went most of the way up a mountain and then got me wellies on. Actually I started walking in my runners then went back and changed after I saw the terrain. Good old bog and marsh.

There was a bit of steep hill but it didn’t look that bad, and anyway I had wellies. I could walk through anything.

About ten minutes into my hike, the steep hill was reclassified as mountain. Tiring but still at the fun stage. I reached the top of the first ridge after about another 20 minutes. Mountains are bigger than they look. Scrambled up over the ridge to find a herd of crazy shaggy and horned sheep (Sorry, no photos, camera firmly secured in my backpack for the epic ascent). The sheep did a legger and I was left with the sight of another feckin’ 400-500m of climbing to do (normal distance not vertical)  (was feckin’ steep though). At this stage I wandered hopelessly off my planned path, but I didn’t know where the hell I was so it didn’t matter too much.

Two more ridges later and I got to the summit. The only problem being that there was a big plateau in the direction of the sea so I had to do more trekking to actually see any water. This was about an hour in and I was starting to think I should have brought some food, water or at least my phone with me. Also conditions were shite for photos mostly cloudy boringness in one direction and horribly glarey sun in the other.

I eventually managed to find somewhere overlooking the bay I had been heading for and I realised how far above sea level I was.

Some nice lines bending in and fairly sheltered by the look of it but no way in hell I was going back for my gear, back up and down into the bay, and then back up out after a surf.

Still it was worth the trek, all I need now is a ski or a boat. Hey at least I’ll have something to keep saving for after I get my new rig.

Oh and everywhere else was blown out and shite, but I did make it back to the house in time for lunch

Both for and the blog.

Popped in for a (very) quick one in L.A.hinch today.

My first wave was a laughable attempt at a right (backhand). Very wobbly take off, one foot at a time job, I somehow managed to be standing by the time I got to the bottom, pumped a little to get speed then stopped. I managed to pump off the wave. Go me.

Next one was a little better managed to actually bottom turn go to the lip and come back down before I lost my speed. Then caught a left that closed out so I took it in on my belly.

Jaysus I’m unfit.

Strict pool regime starting tomorrow.

In the meantime, normal photoblog service resumes with my boy Jacko Scanes whacking one off the top last Autumn,

Well my pops swam across the English Channel last night as part of a relay team.
He was first in the water at 1pm yesterday and they finished around 5 this morning.

He has started a blog at , will be updated in the next day or two I’d say.

Well I got back in the water without a camera for the first time since May I think. Headed down to a fun little beachy in Cork with some mates. Got some fun little ones at the start, was nice and punchy, even hollow sometimes, in my head I was doing this

I more than likely wasn’t though, Hugo is a master barrel rider.
Ended bodysurfing for the last hour and got loads of barrels and a lot of sand and in water in every place possible. My back is still tender from one particularly nasty shore dump.

Also Happy Birthday to my good friend Marie, it’s not until tomorrow but I will be sans ordinateur.

So we went to the gym last night.

I’ve been using the Wii Fit a good bit recently (good for stretching and some workout but not very good as an overall training method) and wanted a bit of a change of environment, unfortunately the gym we went to was pretty bad, over crowded, loads of machines in a tiny space. Not sure why I went to be honest, the only machine I like using is the rowing machine.

But I did and I got over my fear of the treadmill (for a bit anyway). The reason I have this fear is because while I was in college I worked in the campus pool and used to get free access to the gym. Usually I’d run on the jogging track but decided one day to have a go on the treadmill instead. About a minute into the run I was feeling fairly ok so I decided to have a glance at the TV, it just so happened that the Toxic video was on it.

I had heard a lot about Britney in the videoand wanted to get a look myself, unfortunately I have a slight tendency to not run exactly straight. I managed to cross my leg over, hit the still part of the treadmill and crashed forward, of course the treadmill was still going and sent me flying backwards leaving me dumped in a small sore heap with the treadmill still flying around a couple of centimetres from my head.

Lots of laughter and cringing ensued (everybody else and me, respectively).

Hence my fear of treadmills. So last night I managed to concentrate for five minutes and not fall off, watching my feet the entire time. But it was bloody scary, my feet still veer all over the place as I’m running and as a result I’ve decided that outdoors running is the way forward, or just go swimming.

Went for a swim this morning, first time in a pool to train in years, it felt good though. I managed to do 30s for a fifty, with just a push off, no dive.

Sorry about the lack of a photo, the computer in work is playing up and won’t load the applet I need to attach a shot, I’ll try again later.