Mike Ball is now a teacher in Herefordshire. He grew up in the landlocked Midlands of England more than 100 miles from the sea - but in the 1960s he lived the dream and became a surfer. Here's Mike's story.
Of all the unlikely places for an early interest in surfing to fill the mind of an impressionable teenager, a muddy wooded hillside three miles from the centre of Birmingham is high on the unlikely list.
Wednesday was games day at our grammar school in 1965. My friend Bob and me would endure hours of boredom acting as markers for the cross-country runners.
But Bob had a book about surfing with pictures of Bells Beach and Sunset. The featured rider was Midget Farrelly.
We learnt all about surfing without ever being closer than 120 miles to the sea. We did however start skateboarding in late '66.
We gave up on school sports and spent Wednesday afternoons skateboarding on some of the new high-rise estates that grew in the 1960s and in the Clent Hills.
I saw one of my old skateboarding friends from that time on one of those television archaeology programmes recently. He is now a Professor of History.
Our early skateboards were disassembled Jacko roller skates fixed to a surfboard shaped piece of oak fashioned from desktops 'obtained' from school. We then somehow discovered that American skateboards could be bought in Newquay in Cornwall.
For the princely sum of £4-19s-6d each, the two of us became owners of Hobie skateboards, with a bicoloured wooden deck and clay wheels. These boards, purchased in 1967, did sterling service until the mid seventies.
An Easter trip to Cornwall revealed to us landlocked Midlanders a surfing enclave straight out of the American dream. This '67 trip to Newquay was to give us two, young Birmingham skateboarders the opportunity to graduate to the giddy heights of surfers.
The first surfboard we bought was my friend's 10-foot Bilbo. If you were more than 100 yards from the water it needed two of you to lug it to the waterline.
This was quickly followed by my purchase of a custom-built 7ft 6inch Bilbo board. I remember going to the factory to discuss my requirements and to have my body size and weight assessed by the shaper.
I think the workshop was in Pargolla Road in Newquay and the shop was on the station forecourt. There was often a VW combi parked at the rear of the shop with visiting surfers camping in it.
Newquay became a biannual ritual being visited at Easter and again in the summer for several years.
At some point the Gower Peninsula in Wales was added to the itinerary for a bit of late autumn surfing before the winter shutdown. I can remember Dave Friar's surf shop in the Mumbles being the only one I could find in the Swansea area.
The photos of surfing in the snow were taken at Rhosilli Bay in late November one year.
I once surfed with a surfing superstar. Or so he seemed at the time. A guy called Mark Ormsby who was from South Africa and had had his picture in the back of Surfer Magazine.
We spent an Easter cruising around the surfing spots of Newquay in my bosses Mark 2 Jaguar. Mark even surfed a mighty three-foot swell using MY board at Fistral. He was good compared to the UK surfers and did draw a crowd when he was in the water. With hindsight he only rated a single column width mention in Surfer Magazine at the time.
The Hang Ten jacket and Lee jeans that I donated to The Surfing Museum can be seen in one of the photos, and there are several pictures of the jeans in a progressive state of self-distressing.
It's amazing to me how surf wear has become high street fashion. Back in the 1960s it was almost impossible to buy any form of surf-wear in the UK.
We used to buy plain white tee shirts and paint surfing or car images on them. Footwear comprised of Dunlop tennis shoes, in white, with the panels being painted with Humbrol enamels. The stuff you used to paint model aeroplanes.
Jeans were either Wrangler or Lee Rider both of which cost £2-2s-6d. If you were rich you bought shrink to fit Levis that cost £2-7s-6d. These were the more economical jean being guaranteed not to rip or tear. The guarantee really worked and if you ripped your jeans and bothered to return them to the shop they would be replaced. They were not guaranteed against wearing out or the stitching coming apart!
I think I stopped my visits to the coast around 1972 or '73 when family responsibilities started to take over my time. I still occasionally went surfing until 1975. I eventually sold my board to a guy in Birmingham who was manager of a skateboard shop in 1977 for the sum of £27. Not a lot in today's terms, but to put into perspective, it was more than a quarter of a weeks wage to me.
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