The View From the Shoulder: New book to tell story of Scottish surfing

This October it will be 20 years since I wrote my first story about surfing for The Scotsman and, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see I probably have Torness Nuclear Power Station to thank for my big break. In the autumn of 2005, Dunbar-based surfer Sam Christopherson had decided to hold a big wave contest at the reef at Barns Ness, in the forbidding shadow of Torness’s enormous grey reactor, and – perhaps because of the unusual confluence of nuclear power plant and niche aquatic activity – I managed to persuade Scotsman Magazine editor Alison Gray to run an interview with him in the outdoors pages.

Torness Nuclear Power Station | Getty Images

“It’s a sketchy place to be,” Sam said of his chosen location. “Because you’re next to the power station it feels like you shouldn’t be there anyway, and when it’s big there’s lots of water moving about over an uneven reef, so you know if you don’t get it right it can all go a bit Pete Tong.”

Happily, when the contest eventually ran in lumpy, double-overhead conditions later that autumn, none of the competitors came a cropper on the reef. Having sat shivering out on the wind-strafed point all afternoon, taking notes on the action with nearly-numb fingers and wishing I'd worn twice as many layers, I sent an on-spec report to the sports desk which, of course, competing for space with all that weekend's football, rugby, golf and the like, never made it into print. Still, it was a start.

I was only dimly aware of it at the time, but in the mid-Noughties Scotland’s wider surf scene was just starting to recover after several difficult years. First established in 1975, the sport’s governing body, the Scottish Surfing Federation, had ceased to exist in 2000 due to declining membership, and it wasn’t revived again until 2004, meaning no national surf contests took place during that time. If Scottish surfing was mentioned at all in the media during this period, it tended to be as the punchline to a bad joke. Most people you met didn’t even seem to think surfing was something you could do in Scotland, and for years I carried a picture of a perfectly-peeling head-high wave around with me, just so I could show it to non-believers.

Fast-forward to the present day, however, and things are very different. The Scottish Surfing Federation, recently re-named Scottish Surfing, has an enthusiastic new CEO in place and is bringing surfing to more people than ever before through outreach and inclusion programmes; Scotland’s best-known surf spots are much busier now than they were 20 years ago, the demographics much more varied; and, of course, with its incredible capacity to serve up 1,000 tailor-made waves per hour, the new £60 million Lost Shore surf resort at Ratho has the potential to grow Scotland’s surfing population at an unprecedented rate.

The View From the Shoulder at Thurso East, as captured by photographer Janeanne Gilchrist | Janeanne Gilchrist

While all this has been going on I’ve mostly been working on the arts desk here at The Scotsman, but since 2005 I’ve kept on filing semi-regular stories about surfing for the Scotsman Magazine, first on an ad-hoc basis in the outdoors pages and then, from 2009, in this weekly outdoors column. Every now and then I’ve featured overseas surf stars (Californian Rob Machado, nearly-but-not-quite world champion in 1995, was a highlight) but on the whole I’ve kept the focus on surfing here in Scotland – not just the contest scene, but also all the other things that make surfing here special.

Over the years I’ve written about surf artists, filmmakers and photographers, surf activists and surf scientists, surf innovators and surf entrepreneurs, and next month a selection of these stories will be published in a book called The View From the Shoulder: A Portrait of Scottish Surfing. The book will also include a selection of photography – in particular by talented lenspeople Malcolm Anderson, Janeanne Gilchrist and Mike Guest – and an exhibition of some of their best pictures will be on display at the Staunch Industries showroom in Leith from 25 July until the end of August. All author royalties, plus some of the proceeds from the exhibition, will go to the environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage, who continue to fight for cleaner seas for all water-users.

The View From the Shoulder: A Portrait of Scottish Surfing | Arena Sport

So what have I learned, in two decades of writing about Scottish surf-sliding? Well, I’ve learned that surfing can mean lots of different things to different people – as a source of challenge, relaxation, inspiration or healing – but that, in almost all cases, it’s an activity that has a positive impact on people's lives. I’ve also learned how to write with very cold fingers.

Perhaps most importantly, though, I’ve learned that coming from the periphery (and let’s be clear: Scotland is still a remote, little-known corner of the surfing universe) is no reason not to dream big. Just look at Ben Larg, a native of Tiree, population hovering somewhere around the 650 mark, who just finished third in the world at the Big Wave Challenge at Nazaré in Portugal. If you'd said that was going to happen 20 years ago, nobody would’ve believed you – not even me.

The View From the Shoulder is published by Arena Sport on 3 July priced £12.99, see www.arenasportbooks.co.uk. The View From the Shoulder exhibition will be at Staunch Industries, 19 Bernard Street, Leith, from 25 July until the end of August, see www.staunchindustries.com For more To find out more about Surfers Against Sewage, visit www.sas.org.uk