Paudies Photoblog

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

Hi there boys and girls, loads of new Irish footage on the ole tube.

Stevo has put up a rake of stuff of the boys, available here. Mostly our favourite former insurance company but some other spots as well.

Barrels!

http://www.youtube.com/user/stevokinevo123

And there’s some sick footage of Cain and Ferg here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDIJ9Pj9vs

Right, I think I’ve fallen into a trap.

I did initally set up this blog to show case older unused photos and the almost shots from recent sessions.

However, I reckon I’ve gone down the wrong path.

One thing that’s a big problem with current surf industry is the wide availability of sub-standard and more importantly free photos from hyped up amateur photogs who are only too happy to sign away their copyright and any future children to any surf company who will GIVE THEM A PHOTO CREDIT. No way, how cool.

However these people are actually taking away business from full time photogs, such as Mickey, Sharpy and crazy T.  So my plan, along with a website retooling and some other fun stuff, is to limit the blog posts to a more concentrated dose of higher quality imagery. Plan to do more writing as well. I’m off to Bundy in the middle of the night tonoght, so hopefully I’ll get something written about that during the next week or so.

That said I’m ridiculously easily swayed by the opinions of others so if people think this is a bad idea I’ll probably listen to them.

Shambalert.
Another one of those forced tilt-shift shots due to water on the port.

And again.

Model: Glen Hall (he’s Irish ye know)

Sorry for the lack of postage.

There has been waves.

More B-roll to come in the next few days as I get through the shots.

Stef Skaj above.

Does sentient technology freak anyone else out?

Took a chance spin up to Clare last Sunday. It was one of those swells where, instead of watching an initially epic swell gradually go to shit as it gets closer, I watched a plain old swell get better and better. 

It was only a short swell, normally the ones most likely to skunk you, but I really wanted to get in the water. Arranged to meet up with Ollie,  got up at half 6 (did you know it’s perfectly bright at half 6, as in as bright as it’s going to get, freaked me out as I thought I had slept in). A few months ago I finally bought a decent mp3 player, I know it’s taken a while but I wanted to make sure I got the right one. It’s 32GB yoke so when going on long drives I just tend to stick it on random.

This is the weird part, like I said 32GB so a lot of tracks/albums to choose from. For the first half hour I just got tracks from 5 or 6 albums only. It’s done this a few times though, so I’ve started thinking that it’s self aware and just gets into moods about what music it wants to play.

I eventually broke the pattern by forcing it play something from a different album. About 20 minutes later it 1979 from the pumpkins comes on, which is nice, but when it finishes it comes on again, this time from the greatest hits album, so I skipped the track and then it played 1974 by Ryan Adams (that’s Ryan not Brian). Now the goddam thing’s in a mood to play songs about years. Crazy

Which then got me thinking about the amount of songs/albums/bands that are named after years. I bet you 90% of them are named after the birth of the lead singer. Cocky bunch of arses, the world starts from the year I was born.

That said there are some crack tunes resulting, the two previously mentioned, all of 1977 by Ash, Feverdream’s Project of ’78 and The Flaws 1981.

Anyway back to what this place is mostly about.

I arrived to glorious sunshine and not a puff of wind. From Ollie’s house you could see a few small lines filing in by the rivermouth, enough to get us excited about chasing waves. 

I love reaching the top of the hill over-looking Doolin, first of all it’s a kick ass view in general and you also have a good 5 minutes to check the swell on the way down.It was actually looking pretty shabby, not as much swell as I’d hoped and not hitting it right either, but it was sunny and I didn’t want to waste that.

Lowv the way the spray from the turn blends in with the lip of the wave on this next one.

Even though I know how far the swim is to Doolin it always seems to take an age, and I also have a crazy fear of sharks so swimming on my back for 300m or so over a deep water channel always freaks me out. But it’s worth it for Crab, the water can be so clear out there, love the way Ollie’s fin is peaking through the water on this next one, also a pretty impressive turn considering it’s backhand. Pity about the Quiksilver sign and lack of any of Ollies actual sponsors.

Tom DH paddled out as well and as usual managed to sneak a few barrels amongst the messiness, I had a slight problem of angling the housing a little too high, pity that.

Kevin Doyle was around as well and managed a few cracks off the lip.

But as usual the best ones went by unridden on that inside bowl, with only myself to admire their beauty. Was seriously tempted to leave the housing on the island and try bodysurf a few.

Strange that, but true.

A couple of months ago I headed North randomly with a few mates just to catch a swell hitting that part of the coast.

As it so happens there was a Gravis team trip happening at the same time, and I’ve just been watching the video over at the transworld site. Just reminded me of some shots I had left over from that weekend.

Gabe

Pascal

Ollie

Joycey

Gabe

Liam Joyce busting his fins out.

Ollie bustin’ some spray out, Owen Murphy, and ollie again

There’s some clips of Ian Walsh on a short right hand slab, that would be this.

Pascal from the water.

Photog on the left of the frame is Damea Dorsey

Sharpy also appears in the video a few times and I remember seeing some of his shots from that day, but could have been in Fins.

There’s an older post with photos from this trip. Including a shot of Pascal from below as he’s about to get shacked, which also appears half way through the video.

Went Sligo direction on Saturday morning.

Stupid bloody hoax swell.

At least I got back in the water. First time since mid-January.

Which was nice. The pool helped, wasn’t crazy unfit.

Nice coastline, must get up there more often.

Here’s some randomer having a nice backhand crack.