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Once upon a time, long, long ago, surfing was a hippie sort of sport.
Drop-outs everywhere embraced it, making the rhythm of the ocean the
drumbeat of their alternative lifestyles.
Not any more. News has come out of Cornwall that Josh Lewsey, the rugby star
and poster boy of middle England, has fallen in love with the sport and
bought a second home in Cornwall as a result. What’s more, he has plumped
for St Agnes, which for years was the national stronghold of hard-core surf
culture. The surfing inhabitants were known as the Aggie Boys, and they
devoted their lives to their local break, defending it against all comers.
So committed were they that, for years, St Agnes was more or less a no-go
area for other surfers.
To get an idea of the impact Lewsey, 30, is going to have, imagine a bunch of
travel-lers parking their caravans on a garden square in Belgravia and
having a camp-fire singalong. The Aggie Boys are gobsmacked.
They are not the only ones. The way that surfing has moved from the fringes of
our culture slap bang into the mainstream, has astonished everyone familiar
with its traditions. Surf-clothing manufacturers sell T-shirts by the
truckload in Covent Garden boutiques, and Britain’s beaches are flooded with
surf schools. It is becoming a more savvy, year-round scene, too, as people
begin to realise that the biggest ocean swells hit our coasts not in summer,
but in autumn and winter.
Lewsey, who also owns a property near the ground of his club team, London
Wasps, in High Wycombe, is typical of this new wave of interest. Most
newcomers to the sport are older than one would expect, and more moneyed. In
part, this is simply because men and women who tried surfing on teenage
holidays are coming back for more in later life.
It is also because longboarding has come back into fashion in the past decade.
Riding long boards is a mellower, less athletic pursuit than shortboard
surfing, and all sorts of people who thought they were much too old to be
catching waves are taking to the water.
Among them is Adrian Willey, 40, the UK sales director at IBM Personal
Computing, now Lenovo, for 18 years. He discovered surfing through his
winter pursuit, snowboarding, and it’s changing the shape of his life. He
has taken a 12-month sabbatical and bought a two-bedroom flat off-plan in
Newquay, just along the coast from St Agnes. It’s part of the 52-home Zinc
scheme – a block that wouldn’t look out of place on Miami’s South Beach –
which is being marketed by Knight Frank (01392 848844, www.knightfrank.co.uk).
Prices for the two-bedroom flats start at £275,000, rising to £575,000 for
the largest units.
“I was planning to spend a lot of time down there,” Willey says, “and was
thinking about renting a place for the summer. Then I saw how expensive
rentals were, and how strong the market was for them. I realised I’d be
better off buying a place of my own and letting it when I don’t need it.”
Now he is the excited owner of a south-facing ground-floor flat with a large
terrace overlooking Newquay’s most famous beach, Fistral. The only problem
is that it won’t be ready until early in 2009.
Willey is part of a trend that is transforming this north Cornwall town. For
years, it has been regarded as the country’s surf capital, but in the past
decade it has been engulfed by a tidal wave of stag and hen parties, and its
image has suffered as result.
Now, many of the hotels that housed such revellers are closing, to be replaced
by sparkling new developments. According to the local council, nearly 1,000
houses and flats have recently been built in town or are in the process of
planning or construction, in a community whose permanent population hovers
at the 20,000 mark.
Not every buyer is a wave slave, however. “I’d say the majority are in their
fifties,” says Stuart Harding, an estate agent with the Cornwall specialists
Stratton Creber. “They’ve got spare cash to spend, love the Cornish
lifestyle and want a place for their personal use, rather than a buy-to-let
investment. There are plenty of others who are buying somewhere to store
their surfboards – or for their surfing children.”
Whatever the reason, prices in Newquay are rising fast. When Knight Frank
released the first of its innovative Surfpods developments there in 2005,
the starting price was £99,000 for a 258 sq ft studio; the scheme is said to
have sold out in 45 minutes. Now it is marketing Surfpods 2, with studios of
a similar size costing at least £129,500 – a 30% rise in two years. The top
end of the market is also healthy: Stratton Creber says that at least two
houses in town are changing hands for more than £1m.
Another area to benefit from the surfing buzz is north Devon, which has the
advantage of being a shorter drive from Bristol, London and Bir-mingham.
There are fewer surfing spots here, but what the area lacks in quantity, it
makes up for in quality, thanks to the superb barrelling beach-break at the
north end of Croyde beach.
Prices in the area start at a much higher level than Newquay, however:
according to the Halifax, the average price of property in nearby Braunton
is £261,057, compared with £223,199 in Newquay. A good location will
significantly increase that price: Taylor Underwood (01271 323290, www.
tuprop.co.uk) is selling a five-bedroom house within walking distance of
Croyde beach for £1.6m.
Unless they have pocketed a City bonus, few surfers will be able to afford one
of those. Increasingly, anyone looking for a cheap, cheerful pad near the
beach must shop elsewhere. However, there aren’t too many spots on the
British coastline that can compare with the southwest, which combines
good(ish) weather and exposure to the big swells of the north Atlantic. Much
of the rest of Britain is either shielded from the waves (by Ireland) or
facing the wrong way (towards the Continent).
There are a few exceptions, however. Pembrokeshire is one, and the Gower
peninsula, near Swansea, another: both offer easy beach breaks, and much
trickier barrelling reefs. For buyers, the good news about the latter is
that prices have dropped in the past year – by 4% in Porthcawl, according to
the Halifax.
John Francis (01792 360060; www.johnfrancis.co.uk
), an agency that covers most of west Wales, has a two-bedroom flat for sale
above Caswell Bay – one of several surfing beaches on the Gower peninsula’s
south coast – for £159,950.
Or how about Portrush, on the north coast of Northern Ireland? It’s actually
much better placed than Cornwall to receive good surf, as it catches the
swells that march down from Iceland and enjoys predominantly offshore winds.
(On Cornwall’s west-facing beaches, onshore winds can be a problem, turning
the waves into chaotic, unsurfable chop). City of Derry airport is just 35
minutes’ drive away, and there is more wonderful surfing to be had further
west, along Donegal Bay.
The problem? You can forget about bargains. The end of the Troubles and the
economic boom across the border have sent prices spiralling. Armstrong
Gordon (028 7083 2000; www.armstronggordon.com),
a local property specialist, says that off-plan two-bedroom flats in
Portrush start at £235,000; in nearby Portstewart, a three-bedroom Edwardian
semi, needing work, changed hands this summer for a staggering £2.8m.
To find anything that could be called properly cheap, you will have to pack up
your board and go to Scotland – in particular, to Thurso, just down the road
from John O’Groats. It enjoys the same kind of north-facing location as
Portrush, as well as flat, kelp-covered reefs that generate extraordinary
barrelling waves. Caught in the right kind of sunshine, they look just like
those that unfurl on North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii – until, that is, you see
someone surfing one in a thick, sealed wetsuit, complete with booties and
gloves.
The area got an added boost when the O’Neill Highland Open was held there in
April, bringing some of the best surfers in the world to the coast. Young,
Robertson & Co (01847 896177; www.caithnessproperty.co.uk),
a local agent, is offering one-bedroom properties here for as little as
£36,000. But, c’mon, Thurso? It will take a few more years of climate change
before the market warms to the most northerly town on the British mainland.
The surfing property market is the broader property market in microcosm. So,
what’s a young surfer to do, if they are aching for the next wave, but have
a little – not a lot – of cash to spend?
One of Lewsey’s new neighbours in St Agnes has a suggestion. “Buy a camper
van,” he says.
Top 10 surfing destinations
Newquay: The Cornish resort is surf city UK, with great nightlife, too
Porthcawl: The Welsh version of surf city – but without quite as many
posh boys
St Agnes: Great beaches if you can get on them. The protective locals
guard them fiercely
Porthleven: Home to Cornwall's most notorious wave, a heavy break of
the same name
Newcastle: It's cold and inconsistent, but on a good day, it has
world-class reef breaks
Thurso: Remote, but offers wondrous waves
Portrush: Northern Ireland's surfing focal point
Croyde: Has probably the best beach breaks in Britain and is famous
for its barrelling A-frames
Bude: Wide, open sandy beaches and a chilled-out atmosphere
Outer Hebrides: Rough surfing diamonds to be found here, with few
people on land, let alone in the sea
SURFING UK
North Devon: This fourbed bungalow sits between a golf course and sand
dunes, with direct access to the beach. On the outskirts of Saunton, and two
miles from Braunton, it is on the market for the first time in50 years.
For sale for £750,000,through Webbers; 01271 812263, www.webbers.co.uk
Cornwall:This four-bedroom mid-terrace house is 500yd from Towan beach
and Newquay town centre. It has two reception rooms and a small rear garden.
For sale for £250,000, with Stratton Creber; 01637 876275, www.strattoncreber.co.uk
Glamorgan:This large two-bedroom flat, in a converted Edwardian house
on the seafront at Porthcawl, on the south Wales coast, has great sea views.
For sale for £249,950, through Peter Alan; 01656 771600, www.peteralan.co.uk
Caithness:This B-listed former manse in Thurso dates to 1870.It has
seven bedrooms, two reception rooms and outstanding views across Dunnet Bay.
On the market for offers over £220,000, through Georgesons; 01955 606060, www.georgesons.co.uk
