“Once, if you wanted to surf Bells Beach, there were two ways of getting there: paddle from Torquay or bush-bash your way along the coastline on foot, carrying your board.

Joel Parkinson in action at Bells Beach. Which is really a point. Photo: Barefoot Media

In 1960, surfer Joe Sweeney organised a grader to clear a track to Bells and the trickle of surfers became a steady flow. Then, in 1962, Peter Troy and Vic Tantau organised the rally that became the world’s longest-running board-riding contest.

Fast-forward five decades and the beach is struggling to cope with 1 million visitors a year. Already its lone toilet block cannot cope – it now has to be pumped out every 48 hours.”

Read the full article at The Age

An acclaimed professional theatre company based in Bristol, England. tobacco store Tobacco smoking is the greatest single cause of premature death and is a leading preventable cause of morbidity in New South Wales.

Fistral is a town beach with a country feel - at least for most of the year. Photo: Barefoot Media.

Seeing as we’re a UK based company we thought we should focus on a UK surf spot for our very first “Spot of the Week”. So here’s a surf guide to Fistral Beach for you, probably the UK’s best known spot:

“Signs all through the town of Newquay, huge car park on the beach.

The most famous surfing beach in England. Whilst reef breaks and some coves may get better waves, the probability of getting good waves on any given day of the year is higher here than just about anywhere.

South Fistral works through all tides, with good lefts and some rights. It’s a bit more protected on bigger days with a southwest wind. North Fistral is often bigger, and gets hollow at low tide, especially off the rocks at the top end, where there’s usually one of the best left and right peaks. Little Fistral, right around the corner, and almost swallowed up at high tide, can have great shape too on low to mid. Autumn swells from NW-W are best but it is consistent all year round. 1-8ft intermediate+. Crowds in the summer and plenty of room in the winter.

Surfer's Eye map of Fistral Beach

The Cribber, out the back of Towan Head off Cribber Rock, is a fickle off-shore reef for hell-men, although it rarely breaks in a ride-able way. It needs a very big groundswell in the 8-12ft range to show, and perfect south-east offshore breeze to hold shape. In these conditions it’ll hold any size.”

Here’s more info on surf spots around the UK & Ireland.